Miles (18 page)

"To
Catch a Thief"-a-rama.

Brennan
suddenly turned and looked at me with serious, almost frightened eyes.  A
gigantic green hailstorm erupted in the icy heavens with a loud pop. 
"Kiss me.  I don't care if anybody sees."  Two bright red
umbrellas of streaming light cascaded into the air, with the trumpet of sharp,
staccato crackling, the sound of the world's largest firing squad opening
fire.  We didn’t stop until some of the saliva that was running down our
mouths began to freeze.

"I
don't know if what I'm feeling is love,” Brennan panted, “but I know I want it
to be."

Flash. 
A stupendous flash of exploding silver balls fired upward towards the watching
stars, accompanied by the shrill whistle of incoming artillery.  But it wasn't
as big or as loud as the flash I felt inside of me, inside of my hand as I
squeezed Brennan's and more or less smiled.

"Let's
go home."

*

We
started the second blaze of the night in the fireplace, which was filled almost
to the grating with ashes from our earlier effort.  It was the only light
in the family room.  I had taken our large Inuit mural, a patchwork of
different Arctic animal furs Unc probably scored from some poor Eskimo over a
bad bet, off of the wall and laid it at our feet.  We moved into the
other's arms at the same time, our second, perfect hug, before I took a step
back and slowly undressed Brennan with hands I could barely keep from
shaking.  I left his socks on.  I wasn't sure how to take them off
with him still standing.  He kept his face close to my body as he returned
the gesture.  He left my socks on, too.  We threw ourselves onto the
mural almost as one and wrapped the fur around us.  The logs continued to
crackle and burn in the fireplace.

It
tickled.  It hurt.  It was the highest high, warmer than the fire,
wet and tight and smooth all at once.  We didn't say a word.  Our
hands, our lips, our legs, and our bodies said everything we each wanted to
say, and each wanted to hear.

*

It
was I don’t know how many hours later.  I was at last beginning to fade
into sleep when Brennan shook me awake.

"Let's
get dressed."

"I
don't want to," I moaned.

"Come
on.  It's a surprise."  He smiled me into submission.  I
complied wearily.

The
next thing I knew, I was sitting in the passenger seat of the DeVere's freezing
Volkswagen minibus, teeth chattering, staring out into the deep blue eastern
horizon at the edge of Lake Michigan as the sun crept out through the scattered
clouds and over the murky, churning body of that Great Lake.  Brennan had
driven to Rainbow Beach, the fairly dreadful strand of the rag-tag
neighborhoods of the Southeast Side that always seemed to be in the toxic grey
pall of the nearby and rapidly-diminishing steel mills.

That
New Year's Day morning, however, Rainbow Beach looked as good as the south of
France to me.

The
sun actually sparkled off of the lake and the large, flat chunks of ice that
floated on the surface.  The further the sun rose, the fewer clouds there
were in the bright blue sky.  The windows on the bus were beginning to ice
up.  We could see our breath in front of us.  I could feel Brennan's
on the side of my neck.  He held me from behind the seat he was kneeling
against, resting his chin on my shoulder.

"I
always wanted to come see the sun rise on New Year's Day."  I leaned
my head against his as I caught a squad car turn into the beach parking lot in
the corner of my eye.

I
yawned long and loudly.  "Don't worry.  It's not the company,
it's the hour."  Brennan pressed me tighter in his arms.  He was
about to kiss the side of my face when we heard a gravel-voiced cop on the
squad's rooftop bullhorn order the lot of us out of the parking lot.  A
few other cars fired up and left.  Brennan slid back into the driver's
seat with disappointment.  We were the last to go.

Well,
almost as good as the south of France.

*

Somehow
we got home, got undressed, and fell into the cocoon of my bed.

Without
inhibition or embarrassment, Brennan moaned softly as he crawled into my arms
and closed his eyes.  If I wasn't tired to the point of collapse, I might
have reflected about what I was thinking and feeling about myself and us, there
in bed together. 

But
I didn't.  I exhaled with greedy satisfaction and went to sleep with
Brennan's face in my eyes, not feeling alone at all, not caring what would
happen after that, exulting, dead bodies and frightened so-called best friends
notwithstanding, that Jesus loved me, this I knew.

* * *

Twelfth Night

I
woke up after the phone rang for the twentieth time.

Nicolasha
was crying.  Was he drunk?  He kept saying he loved me, and begged me
to let him come over to our house, locking me in some twisted stage
fright.  I kept trying to talk to him, to somehow calm him down, but he
wasn't listening.  He wouldn't let me interrupt either his tears or his
nearly incoherent wailings, which drowned out my urgent whispers.  Brennan
didn't hear me or the racket on the other end of the phone, even though he was
curled up alongside of me under the covers, with his face resting next to mine
on the pillow.

And
then the doorbell started ringing, over and over again.

I
accidentally hung up the phone as I tried to move out of Brennan's arms and the
warm bed without waking him.  Our clothes were nowhere to be found. 
Someone began pounding on the front door as the doorbell's irritating chime
melodies blended into themselves without pause.  Christ!

I
threw Dad's greatcoat on over my naked body and opened the front door. 
Felix burst into the entryway and slammed the door behind him.  Before I
could say a word, he tore the overcoat from my shoulders and wrestled me to the
cold ceramic tiles, which were wet from the snow on his shoes.  Felix
knelt onto my chest and pinned me to the floor, his eyes burning into me with a
jungle's frenzy. 

The
phone began ringing again.

Felix
shoved me back to the floor and ran up the stairs, toward my bedroom. 
Without putting the greatcoat back on, I stumbled up in chase.  I thought
he would attack Brennan, but, instead, he was kneeling once again, this time at
the foot of the bed, sobbing like a child, mumbling my name, and demanding to
know why he wasn't in the bed instead of Brennan.

My
eyes burst open as I gasped for air.  I was sweating, even though I was
cold, lying outside the pile of covers that Brennan remained tucked into. 
He woke up with a start.  I looked away from him and sat up at the edge of
the bed with my head hanging low. 

I
ignored the cold air on my body as I sat in silence, catching my breath and
feeling the depth of my own exhaustion.  I regretted not getting drunk
last night, and suddenly felt alone again, momentarily, until Brennan reached
up and pulled me back into the warmth of his arms and the bed.

My
eyes floated absently toward the ceiling, bright with morning sunlight. 
Brennan draped half of his body over mine and snuggled his face close to me on
the pillow.  Neither of us spoke for a long time. 

"Happy
New Year."  I smiled involuntarily as I looked into Brennan's eyes
with sad relief.  He began running the tips of his fingers over my bare
chest, ice skating along my rib cage and over my erect nipples. 
"It'll be a while before all the hurt goes away."  I
nodded.  A couple of years?  "It will, eventually.  You
just need time.  And love."

Love.

"My
Dad has an expression for it." 

I
tried to hide my amusement.  "Your father has an expression for just
about everything."

"Didn't
yours?"

"No,"
I sighed.  "Not for the last couple of years."

"I'm
sorry."

"Forget
it."

"When
you're hurt or confused," Brennan continued, "you know, like an
animal that's lost its way?  You want answers and you want to stop
hurting, but you have to keep going." 

"Why?"

"If
you stop, the hurt will get worse.  You'll die, somehow."

"Everyone
dies, Brennan."

"I
don't mean die as in dead, but die, here, inside."  He put a warm
fist over my heart.  "So you put up walls around you, around your
spirit, in your soul."  He leaned down and kissed my chest, near my
heart.  "Rifles go up.  Cannons.  Missiles.  You shoot
anything that comes near you as you keep running away."

"Running
away sounds good to me, Brennan."

"But
it won't change anything."

"Yes,
it will.  I won't be here."  My voice was level and cold. 
"I won't sleep down the hall from where my Mom and Dad used to.  I
won't have to take the train through what's left of my old neighborhood. 
And I won't have to pretend to be happy, or loved, or some person hardly anyone
knows doesn't really exist."

"
I
know.  Your teacher knows."

My
teacher.  I shook my head.  My God, I thought.  "I want to
go away."  Suddenly, I felt tears welling up inside of me, and the
rest of my body straining against them.  Brennan pressed himself closer
until I relaxed again.

"You'll
still hurt.  Whatever you hurt about here, you'll hurt about
there."  He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, brushing
it back off of his face.  "Time and love will make the falling of
walls and the lowering of rifles happen.  That's what Dad says."

All
you need is love...DA da da da da DA...

It
sounded hackneyed, at first, but the earnest intimacy in Brennan's voice
carried the words past my reaction into my heart.  I began fighting tears
again.  The damned things followed me into the New Year, I thought! 
I was comforted back into a semblance of restfulness by Brennan's continued
proximity, and the relief I felt when neither the phone or the doorbell rang as
we laid there together.

"The
falling of walls and the lowering of rifles, huh?"  I hated the sound
of my voice, pock-marked with the tears I refused to let go.

Brennan
kept staring at me with his compassionate green eyes.  "You should
just cry."

"No." 
I then realized Brennan had been writing something on my body with his
finger.  "What are you writing?"

He
grinned shyly.  "Do you want me to read it out loud?"

I
grinned, too.  "Yeah.  Make it forever."

"Make
it become forever, you mean."  Warmth and silence.  No bells and
no chimes.  "I wished you a Happy New Year."

"That
isn't what you wrote."

"Yes,
it is."

"Is
it?"

"No." 
Brennan closed his eyes and took a short breath.  "I wrote I loved
you."

I
was so shaken by hearing those words and believing them, somewhere deep inside,
I tried to make it into a joke.  "So, you've decided, then. 
Love, that's what you were feeling last night."

"No,
I was feeling the two of us all over each other,” he chuckled.  “But I
feel it now."  Brennan began writing again.  "I love
you."

"You
don't know me so much."  My wall wasn't ready to fall, yet.

"I
think I know more than most people do.  I know I'd like to know more, over
time.  You know, time?"

"I
don't know you very well, either."

"You
will."  Brennan smiled.  "How do you like me, so far?"

I
smiled back as a few stones fell off the top of that wall.  "I think
I love you, too."  I should have felt afraid to say that, but I
didn't.  "I know I want to."

Brennan
didn't comment on the appropriation of his very tender, very special expression
of our previous night together.  We stayed in each other's arms for
another sweet, long time.  I considered staying there for the rest of the
day, the Rose Bowl be damned.  "If you're gonna take your pain and go
somewhere, don't you dare go without me," Brennan whispered.

I
didn't think I would, either.

*

It
was six o'clock a.m..  The deli had just opened.  The old brothers
from Sverdlovsk were amused to see me almost an hour earlier than usual. 
I ordered a bowl of their over-spiced oatmeal and some raisin toast, and sat
alone, reading the paper without paying much attention to the stories my eyes
glanced over.  I kept wondering if Felix would be there to meet me by
seven, like we always used to, last year.

"How
are you?"

I
looked up from the dull editorials with faint surprise.  Nicolasha smiled
poignantly at me, and took a seat at my table.

"I'm
okay."  He raised his eyebrows a bit.  "Really."

"Good. 
You know you can call me, for anything."

"I
know."  I surprised my teacher by taking his hand for a moment. 
"Thanks, little father."

Nicolasha
pulled his hand back awkwardly as the older brother placed a carafe of
fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice and two glasses on the table.  We both
glanced at the steady stream of commuters and students passing the deli in
their morning rush until we were alone again.

"Who
are you taking to the symphony, this Friday night?"

"I
thought we were going together," I said, taken aback.

He
laughed quietly.  "That would not be
kulturny
, giving you a
gift, and using half of it myself."

"Oh." 
The juice was insufferably tart.  It needed some vodka, and a pound of
ice.

"Another
close friend has invited me already.  He doesn't have box seats,
unfortunately."  Close friend, huh?  I wondered if it was the
person who took the pictures in the photo album.  My teacher gave me
another one of his melancholic smiles that hung so naturally on his soft
face.  "Thank you for considering me, however."

It
was almost seven-thirty, and there was still no sign of Felix.

"Wouldn't
your uncle enjoy going?"

"He's
still in Minnesota."  My tone revealed my personal misgivings that
Uncle Alex intended to come back at all.  Nicolasha looked
uncomfortable.  I decided to brighten things up a little.  "A
friend of mine from home wants to go.  He's never been to see an
orchestra."

"Considering
your love of Shostakovich, I'm sure you'll be the perfect companion for him."

We
walked to school together without speaking.

*

Felix
walked up to me at my locker as I stuffed my satchel full of morning
textbooks.  There was an immediate and enormous tension in the air between
us, one you could almost reach out and touch with your hand.  I tried to
keep my face blank, but could feel my eyes narrow with a touch of anger that
made the impassivity of my voice that much more cold.

"I
thought you were coming back the other night."

Felix
looked like a young deer caught in an auto's oncoming headlights.  "I
was going to."  A senior made Felix move to get into his
locker.  "...I wanted to."  His voice trailed off.

"You
could have called."

"I'm
sorry."  I closed my locker and began walking to class, with Felix
following a step behind.  He suddenly took a breezy tone.  "My
parents were hoping you could spend the weekend with us."  I stopped
and turned around to face him.  He offered me his hand, but I didn't take
it.

"I'm
going to the symphony Friday night."

"Oh." 

I
walked off first, and felt bad about doing so almost immediately, but not bad
enough to go back and shake Felix's hand, or smile at him, or even turn around,
for that matter.

*

The
small but elegant white marble and gleaming brass lobby of Orchestra Hall was packed
with its well-dressed and well-heeled subscribers, fat-cat patrons, and a few
interlopers, like me and Brennan, who just came to hear the music. 

That
was the problem with orchestras and operas, Uncle Alex would often
remark.  They were patronized and supported by landed gentry-types who
gave their money and presence easily, but little of their real
appreciation.  They went to these performances to go, to be seen, rather
than because they really liked Bruckner's symphonies or a Verdi operas.  I
supposed Unc would know, because the same orchestra crowd of "culture
vultures", as he derisively called them behind their crusty backs, were
the ones who dominated the art gallery scene that kept the Uncle unit in funds.

I
saw what he was talking about.

We
worked our way through the crowd and damn nearly choked on the grotesque
mélange of cologne, perfume, hair spray, cigarette smoke, and garish and highly
visible jewelry worn by women that all the makeup in the world couldn't
salvage.  Not once did I overhear anyone remarking on that night's
upcoming performance, or discussing either Soviet classical music in general or
Shostakovich in particular.

I
would even have been happy to hear somebody complaining about the modernity of
the night's program, something else that irritated Unc about the average
orchestral customer's sensibilities, the conceit that any classical music
written in the 20th Century was necessarily modern.  I mean, is a Marilyn
Monroe film or a Benny Goodman record modern? 

I
felt bad for Brennan the minute I saw the crowd was largely made up of the sort
of tight-lipped, grey-suited rich (and almost rich) folk that so often made him
and his parents out to be little more than low-end white trash.  He wore
my black tweed suit, one of Dad's expensive silk ties, and his own pair of
black cowboy boots, which he polished just for the occasion.  I thought he
looked great, if a little unnatural in the suit and tie.  He was the only
guy in the lobby with long hair.