Miles (19 page)

I
made do with my favorite of Dad's suits, a maroon double-breast with silver pin
stripes, which made me look like a young Capone protégé.

"Do
you see your teacher anywhere?"

"No. 
He said he'd be here, though."

I
glared at anyone I caught staring at Brennan and his long hair with a
disapproving look on their face.  There was some goof who kept staring at
both of us, however, with a little smile on his face.  He had bright blond
spiked hair and a black moustache and pointed goatee, and wore little granny
glasses on his thin and shifty face.  As he approached us through the
happily oblivious and chattering crowd, I noticed his silky jacket, which
looked like an old Beatles outfit.

"My
name is Basilio."  He handed both of us a stylish business
card.  "Forgive the way I was staring, but I do a lot of work for
magazines in Europe, and I'd like to do some business with you.  Both of
you have a great look."

"What
kind of work," Brennan asked?  He seemed bemused by the whole
thing.  I sensed something about the Eurogeek that I couldn't quite place,
something I didn't like.

"Photography." 
No.  It couldn't be.  "I have a studio up near Wrigley
Field."  Christ, I knew there was something about him I didn't
like!  "Give me a call and we set something up.  I might plug
you into some good money, maybe."

I
could see Brennan was interested, and looked that much more so when the magic
word 'money' was used.  This Basilio person was certainly interested in
him.

"Little
friend!"

Nicolasha
stepped beside me to warmly squeeze my shoulders. He touched Basilio' thin leather
tie with his free hand, and smiled at Brennan, who nodded his head respectfully
to the music teacher he had heard a lot about as the minibus wound its way into
the city earlier that evening. 

"Have
you all met?"

"Well,
Nicky, I was just introducing myself to the young men."  Nicky? 
"You must be the star writing student."  His eyes appraised me
closely, and made me feel uncomfortable, despite Nicolasha's hand, which
remained on my shoulder.  "I hear you have shot at an Ivy League
school."

I
shrugged.  Brennan, however, looked like someone who had just been slapped
in the face, but was determined not to show any reaction to the rest of the
world.  I knew that look!

"He
has to go someplace with plenty of rain and snow," Nicolasha said, "a
place where Russian music is at home.  Besides, no real writer can bear
the sun until they have become famous and alcoholic!"

Brennan
and Nicolasha and Mister Photographer laughed, but I didn't.

"And
what about you...?"

"Brennan. 
Brennan DeVere."

"Ah. 
Brennan.  I like that name."  Brennan was embarrassed, but
enjoyed the attention, all the same.  "What are your plans for
college?"

My
friend's fluster became acute and apparent.  Over pizza the other night, I
discovered Brennan was self-conscious about the subject of college, afraid that
he wouldn't be able to attend a good college unless it was on an athletic
scholarship of some sort, something he felt cheapened by.  While he tried
to coming up with a decent answer, Nicolasha cleared his throat diplomatically
and gestured to the crowd, which had begun moving to their seats.

"We
can talk after the performance."  Brennan and I both nodded toward
Nicolasha.

"Maybe
dinner," the strange photographer added.

I
shot a final glare at Basilio before leading Brennan up the winding staircase
toward the box seats.

*

Dmitri
Shostakovich wrote fifteen symphonies, an unusual but powerful and important
body of work that made him the premiere symphonic artist of the twentieth
century.  While a few of these works were written as Soviet political
vehicles, rather than purely aesthetic compositions, the overall quality of
this canon is hard to overstate.  Any listener with a shred of interest in
the symphonic form can discern in these an enormity of style, line, and
sensibility that far surpasses the idle carping of critics, who can't see
Shostakovich as anything more than a noteworthy composer of the Soviet
Union.  But what do critics know, anyhow?

We
sat alone in our small corner box, overlooking the bright and clean stage where
the Chicago Symphony players got comfortable and adjusted their
instruments.  The applause for the first violin was polite.  The
applause for the conductor, Sir Georg Solti, was vigorous.  He was well on
the way to making our CSO competitive with the very best orchestras in the
world.  The old Magyar alone was worth the price of admission. 

Brennan
pretended to whisper something in my ear when he in fact kissed me as the
auditorium silenced itself and Sir Georg raised the baton to beckon the
triangle to sound, the flute to blow, and the bass to play, beginning this
oddly enigmatic symphony.

I
did a Charlie Chaplin and mimicked a silly person moving bits of their body in
a strange rhythm to the trumpet solo of the second subject, almost making
Brennan burst out in laughter.

The
quotations of
William Tell
brought both of us to act like we were riding
horses.  We could
feel
the icy vibrations from our neighbors, all
but willing us to sit still and stop enjoying ourselves.

I
personally think Shostakovich would have enjoyed the bizarre facial expressions
and devilish physical gestures me and Brennan exchanged, trying to make the
other one laugh out loud first, even though, if either one of us actually
had
guffawed like we wanted to, Sir Georg himself would have stormed up there to
beat us into submission.

The
pause between movements at a live concert has always been a point of hilarity
for me, what with a couple of hundred people suddenly being switched
"on" to cough, hack, wheeze, groan, sniffle, and sneeze, only to be
switched "off" by the fearsome conductor, a few scant seconds
later.  We ran through quite a repertoire of coughing wheezes and hacking
sneezes before we stopped and were plunged into the driving elegiacs and inner
sadness of the second movement Adagio.

Brennan
listened intently, but kept turning to his side, watching my face harden and
then withdraw from the crowd as the violin solo filled the white shell of the
concert hall. I was assaulted with faces, Mom and Dad's faces, the different
faces I had seen on both of them throughout our last Christmas Eve.  The
funeral march made me look away from the orchestra and close my eyes.  I
wouldn't let Brennan slip his hand inside of mine until I began to cry
silently, despite my every effort not to, and took his hand in both of mine,
crying the faces out of my sight.

I
wondered what Nicolasha was thinking of, hearing the same notes.

The
third movement Scherzo came and went through my shaken mind.  It was as
seemingly random and dissonant as
The Age of Gold
introductory and dance
allegra, but had such superior depth I decided I needed to listen to it many
more times before I even began to understand what Shostakovich was getting at.

I
became convinced that Basilio character was the person who took the naked photographs
of Nicolasha.  It made me dislike him even more than I already did.

It
was funny to watch and feel Brennan take his turn at drifting off into the
murky depths of his own thoughts as the richly individual fourth movement
Adagio-Allegretto played on.  Unlike me, he spared himself the indignity
of public tears, but seemed to welcome and appreciate it when I wrapped the
palm of my hand over the back of his warm neck and squeezed gently a couple of
times.

The
final applause was thunderous.  I was gratified to see Brennan yell out a
few "Bravos!" for the band.

Before
we left the box for good, Brennan took a good, hard look at the interior of the
hall, memorizing it for future reference.  "No telling when I'll be
back here, especially in seats like these." 

"I'm
glad you liked it."  I fiddled with Brennan's tie.

He
nodded with satisfaction.  "I feel pretty wild, hearing music like
that.  Thank you." 

Brennan
Albert 'Thank You' DeVere. 

Thank
you for coming over.  Thank you for breakfast.  Thank you for having
me over.  Thank you for calling.  Thank you for a wonderful
time.  Thank you for inviting me.  Thank you for being my
friend.  Thank you for letting me be your friend.  Thank you for
staying up all night to have jungle sex with me.

(He
never said that.)

We
left Orchestra Hall without seeing Nicky the Music Teacher or Basilio, his
faithful Euro companion.  If Brennan was disappointed, I couldn't
tell.  I wasn't.  We sang loudly along with The Moody Blues on the
chilly ride back to the gulag of suburbia.

*

I
switched my bedroom stereo to Dad's jazz station, turning the volume low enough
for us to hear, but quiet enough for us to sleep, when we eventually got around
to doing so.

I
was getting used to the sensation of sliding between the cool sheets and under
the heavy quilt on my bed, and then to be met by another warm and naked body,
which would surround it with mine.  You've no idea how much pain seemed to
slip away with each second spent like that.

"How
come you changed the channel?"

"Don't
you like jazz?"  A rich Duke Ellington indigo played softly in the
background.

"I
haven't heard a whole lot of it, but sure I like this.  Very cool, like a
black-and-white picture of a rainy city at night, you know?"

"Dad
loved this station."  Brennan reflexively kissed me on the forehead,
like I might forget he was there in bed with me.  "I guess I'm
classical music'ed out."

"It
doesn't matter.  Anything they'd play would sound shitty compared to what
we heard tonight.  By the way - "

"No. 
Don't say it."

"Say
what?"

"Thank
you.  You don't have to thank me for everything.  I don't want you
to."

Brennan
laughed quietly.  "Why not?  It's polite."

"It's
insecure.  I don't want you to be thanking me every five minutes.  If
I'm giving you something or doing something with you, it's because I want
to.  If you want or need something, well..."  I felt an
enormously soothing, warm flash across my body that made me tingle. 
"I want or need to give it to you, not because I want to hear you say
thank you, but..."  Brennan felt the flash, too, and pulled us closer
together.  "You don't have to keep saying thank you."

We
were silent for a few minutes, both struggling to ignore the urge to reach
below our waists for the other.  That's why we were upstairs in my frigid
bedroom, instead of on the floor, in front of the fireplace.

"Can
I ask you a question?" 

"No."

Brennan
ignored me.  "You want or need to give something to me, not so I'll
say thank you for the umpteenth time today, but...?"

"But?" 
I could picture Brennan's face getting all lemony with being needled.  It
turned me on, too.  All of a sudden, I wanted to go downstairs and start
up the fireplace.  Damn it!

"Well? 
You said it.  But...?"

I
exhaled noisily.  I was genuinely tired.  I hadn't slept in twenty hours,
but I then recalled how it used to feel when I slept alone.  Sleep could
wait.

I
sat up and slipped my arm around Brennan's shoulders and draped the other
across his chest and held his face with my hand, like we were posing for the
movie poster of "Gone with the Wind".  I slid a leg in between
his and lowered my face closer to Brennan's.  I could see him smiling in
the dark. 

"The
point of being friends is filling in some want or need in each other, whatever
those happen to be.  And I want to, for you.  With you.  And
from you.  Not because I want you to say thank you, or because I want to
have sex with you - "

"Or
because you want to make love to me?"  His voice was almost as quiet
as the Thelonious Monk solo tinkling in the dark beside us.

"No. 
Not that, either."

"Did
we have sex, or make love?"

"Does
it matter?”  His fingers tightened on my arms.  “OK, it feels like
making love, to me.  As if I’d know."

"Me,
too."

"Shut
up, Brennan."  He pulled his head up and kissed me on the lips. 
"I do it because I love you, and I want and need you to love me
back."

"I
do."  He kissed me again.  "I love you."

A
chill crossed through my consciousness, recalling Felix saying he loved me,
before he ran off; thinking about Nicolasha, how afraid he was to say the same
thing; remembering Mom and Dad, how they used to say it all the time, and how
little it was said between any of us for...too long.  How it would never
be said again.

Nonetheless,
the chill was momentary.  The moist warmth of Brennan's thin lips rolling
along mine broke my thoughts, and I eagerly let them, until his lips drew close
to my ear.  I could feel him giggling in his closed mouth.