I land this time among a nest of tents and cookfires. It’s weirdly painless, just like last time. I stand to take stock, still shivering a bit from the memory of cold. It’s a warm and still evening. The sky is clear and bright with stars. The moon is almost full, yellow against the void of night. The camp itself seems to sprawl out quite a bit. They aren’t modern tents, with ties coming down to stakes and zipper doors and tarps, rather they seem to be made of some brown canvas material, and held up from a pole, or sometimes two within their center. I fell and rose just short of hitting one of them, which is a small blessing considering the wary looks I’m getting from a few men and women just a couple meters off, who are looking up at me over meat on spits held dripping over the fire. Some are still eating, but watching me, guarded.
“Hi.” I don’t know what else to say. One man with a beard covered in grease and long hair pulled up into a topknot raises a spread hand in salutation. From next to him a woman beams at me. “Coral?” I approach the group.
“Hi [garbage], haven’t seen you in a few days.” The other men in the group make room for me to sit of a fresh log pulled up to the flames.
“How did you get back-” I begin. But words fail me for a moment. “Wherever this place is?” I finish.
“Oh Don helped me,” She answers. “After I died and woke back up in the hospital I cornered him to ask what the fuck happened.”
I notice she’s wearing the same uniform as the other men in the camp. A white double breasted shirt with a stiff minimalist collar over straight white pants. Many of the clothes of those eating around the fire are stained from the grease of their food and have the look of old much washed items, worn and patched with dirt from years of use. Some pants have holes in the knees.
Coral continues:
“He told me about the Through, that’s where we are, and gave me a book like yours.” She flicks her gaze across the camp, the fire, the starry sky. “It’s pretty cool here don't you think? It makes a lot of sense. That a place like this was hiding away. I think so anyway.” She smooths her well worn uniform lovingly. A wistful look clouds her face for a moment. “Anyway I think he wants to talk to you. He’s a general here. I guess they don’t call it that.”
“An influencer,” One wiry boy supplies around a mouthful of what [garbage] realizes is rabbit.
“Like insta,” Coral says. “His tent is that big one.” And she indicates with a gesture toward a wide three poled canvas tent which rises above all the rest. Coral turns to the wiry boy and begins engaging him with questions about the will of the forests. I can see that I won’t get too much more information from either her or the rest of the group, so I make my way to the tent. A sleepy looking woman is sitting outside of its entrance cleaning her nails with a cord-wrapped dagger. Her hair is also pulled into a top knot. She looks up when I approach, then scans me from my socks to my well washed hair, and all the scrubs in between.
“What.” She says flatly.
“Coral told me Don wants to talk. I’m [garbage].” I say. With no change in her bored expression, she waves me into the tent. I lift the flap, which is surprisingly heavy, and bend down slightly as I enter the room beyond. It’s lit with candles placed in wide bottomed holders on square wood tables throughout the space Entering, I find myself immediately in a kind of boardroom. A low slab of wood is placed in its center, with large round cushions on all its sides. On the far end of the tent there is a small row of beds, stacked with simple blankets, wool pillows of the same type as the cushions around the table, and bulging hiking packs, which look of a contrastingly modern design, including plastic clips and brand names sewn in patches to the outside pocket.
“Come in [garbage], I’m very pleased you made it to the camp. I hear from Coral that your first bore dropped you right into king Null’s inner chambers. Sorry. That was not my intent. I have something important to give you. Something you will need to find Gus I think. Here, have a seat.” I don’t sit, but I do walk around the table. I can feel the heat rising again, the blood quickening.
“How do you know I’m looking for him?” I start, but quickly move forward from there. “That bastard Zach, in the castle, he’s the same little shit I saw at the house Gus gets his (_____) from. Are you working for him?”
“Easy. We like the king as much as it sounds like you do. Have a seat. We should talk.” He’s holding his arms up, over the table, motioning for me to back down, to sit. The table itself is strewn with documents and maps. I can make out on one of them what I assume is the castle of Zach’s It’s laid out like a block next to the edge of a sprawling first which has above it an ominous steer’s head, accompanied by text in the same calligraphy of the journal, reading simply ‘animalia’ in foreboding red ink. I sink down into one of the voluptuous cushions.
“Alright, you have a lot of questions, anybody would.” Don smiles to himself. “I have answers. First, yes: the king you met, king Null, is the very same man you ran into on the surface. Zach, or Zachariah in full. He’s a dual occupier, meaning he exists both here and on the surface simultaneously. There aren’t many who can do it, and even fewer who know how to learn. Null stumbled onto the skill in his studies. The trap house that he runs in Portland, it’s kind of a dual occupier too. Probably only because Null’s will is suffused throughout it. He’s a very willful individual. You’re angry with him. That’s understandable. I’ll warn you though that Null didn’t take Gus away. The (_____) he provides his denizens isn’t a lure or a trap or anything short of a drug. In Portland, he runs a business. Gus came to buy (_____), bought (_____), and that would’ve been the end of it, except that for some, perhaps yourself included [garbage], using (_____) can be a strong catalyst for inadvertently falling into the Through.”
I’m nodding along to Don, though what I’m hearing is legitimately insane. That’s where I am now though, I guess. In an insane world below the world, on an insane mission to find my insane boyfriend.
“Where’s Gus now?” I ask, circling my hand in the air to move things along. Don continues:
“Where he is exactly is hard to say. Null probably knows, but getting it out of him might be impossible. The only thing the king cares about at all is the Through itself. He’s devoted to mapping it. Though his method is different to the Network.”
“The network?”
“That is us,” Don sweeps his arm to take in the table, its maps and charts, letters and scraps. “Which brings us to why I brought you here. The network is the oldest Through based community there is. From the origins of this sacred space, there has been a kind of extended family motivated by its unique qualities. Not least of which you’ve experienced twice yourself already. That death here is not death on the surface, but more like waking up. Not exactly the same, but close. And that boring a hole from there to here, or vice versa, can lead you to entirely different locations each time, depending on will and circumstance. You can understand why these two alone would be enough to call for extended research, not to mention the utmost secrecy. It is unfortunate that Coral slipped in, but she has proven to me at least to be of little threat, if only due to her lack of credibility.” Don must see my growing impatience, my bouncing knee and continual raking back of my hair, for he speeds his speech a touch.
“My own purpose in the network is to survey the surface, in search of remarkable subjects to the Through. After you broke across, with no use of boring at all, from king Null’s surface house to his castle, well he tried to keep you there, from what our catfish reported, but anyway, that obviously didn’t work. But along with your presence, a malevolent force appeared. It doesn’t so much live here, nor does it fully live on the surface. But it makes its home between the two, within the social ties that give the Through its form.”
Don makes less sense to me the more I listen. From outside of the tents, I hear muffled shouts, incomprehensible but decidedly angry. Don jerks his head and freezes, listening intently, looking like a dog trying to catch a scent.
“I can’t explain everything now, I’m sorry. I have to give you something, and I can tell you where to start looking for Gus.” He goes hurriedly from the low table to a dark wood chest sitting near one of the cots against the back of the tent. From it he withdraws a thin silver object. He brings it to me, his face grave. It’s a short sword within a black and silver scabbard. It’s hilt is inlaid with a single quarter sized emerald, dazzling even in the low candle light.
“This is a weapon brought here to the Through by your boyfriend, before he went rogue he entrusted it to me. It was meant to be the sword he’d use to slay the worm, but I don’t know whether he’s abandoned that cause or whether he’s been stolen away from it. Either way I think you’ll find it useful. Most of all because it has been designed by the master artisan Gus and the modelmaker Zachariah. It has many useful properties, please take it.”
I do take it. It’s heavy. Something about it seems familiar. I’m sure I haven’t seen it before. I haven’t seen any real swords before, but I know it still. From somewhere.
The voices have grown louder outside, and closer. Don sets himself to the task of gathering papers from the table, which he runs to the chest the sword came from and stuffs into is unceremoniously. As he does this he continues instructing me in a harried frantic tone.
“Gus and Null thought they could find the worm through the Magnate, Madam Par, may she die a cruel death.” Don adds the last bit like an incantation, emotionless and flat. “Sadly she doesn’t have a permanent location in the Through. She knows the structure of this place more…” Don crams the lid of the chest shut and locks it with an iron key he produces from the pocket of his bright white trousers “...intimately than anyone else. Practically speaking. Null has a better grasp of the theoretical truths behind it, but she… Well she uses it more than either of us. No doubt she’s the only one who can find the worm in a meaningful, physical way, though Im sure Null knows exactly what relationships it will feed on next.”
The voices are right on top of us now, and the clear sound of fighting sprouts up outside of the entrance to the tent. Don has calmed somewhat, now that the papers are safely locked away. He looks at me again, stern and wary, just as he had back in the ward. I suddenly feel the weight of the sword I awkwardly hold in my arms.
“They’ll kill us soon.” Don says. I balk. The cold hilt of the sword feels foreign in my hand but I move to draw it. The blade glints in the guttering candlelight. It’s half bared when Don rests his hand on mine, staying it. “I’ve given it to you, so you won’t lose it. Even after. A little pitying smile half lifts his lips. “When you come back, find the Magnate. Madame Par. You shouldn’t have much trouble, her scouts are everywhere. But she can’t know you’ve seen me. Sorry [garbage], trust me, when it’s over, the memory will be just like that of a dream.”
I open my mouth to ask Don what he means, but he already has the glass stopper removed from a via, drawn from his other pocket. He dashes the liquid in my face and I’m blinded immediately, a searing pain slashes across me, every inch of the skin the liquid hits feels as though its been raked across hot coals. I hear myself scream and the sword slips from my hands. Then Don shouts something, I hear more voices, the unmistakable sound of steel on steel, of agony around me. I try to wipe the foul acid from my face and find that I’ve swollen out, the liquid only coats my hands and I feel them burn and begin to bloat as well. I'm thrown to the ground and kicked and stepped on, then, finally, a great bloom of thunderous pain from my chest, a force that crunches through me then yanks away.
I feel a lake of hot blood pool beneath my body and a high shrieking whine like a tortured animal. I die quickly. And, as Don said, when I wake, it is as from a dream, and the pain only a memory.
______________________________________________________________________________
[garbage] woke up groggily, feeling at his face and chest. The dregs of a panicked dream evaporated from his mind. The seatbelt was confining and he reached to undo himself. He looked to the driver seat and saw Coral watching him.
“Good morning sleepy.” She said softly. He stretched his legs as best he could.
“Mm, we here?” He asked.
“Just for a few minutes now, yeah. I figured I’d let you sleep though. Figured you had a rough night.”
“Yeah.” The memories flooded back like an unpleasant brick of angry stone in his mind. His apartment building loomed over him, the cedars that surrounded it swaying in the still rainy breeze. “We better see if he just crashed at home.” His mouth felt dry. He coughed and hauled the door open roughly. Coral followed suit and the pair of them navigated the rain to the black iron railings and outdoor carpeting leading up to the second floor. [garbage] tried to temper the hope that bubbled up through his sickening fear and anger, and fed his key neatly into the door handle. The cool air of the apartment met them with its stillness.
“Uh oh,” Coral whispered. On the couch, slouched over the arm, was Gus. [garbage] rushed in. His breath was lightly clouding from his mouth. On the coffee table there was Gus’ phone, his wallet, a leather notebook, and a small amber glass bottle with a glass dropper set next to it. Gus was breathing shallowly when [garbage] knelt down to him to check. His lips were dry and slightly blue. [garbage] shook him, calling out his name in a high panicked voice.
“Coral, call 911,” He said, growing more strangled. He stood and dashed to the bathroom, where he tore open the medicine cabinet and snatched out the conspicuous inhaler within. Coral was speaking into the phone when he re-entered, her own voice very calm, even polite.
“We’ve had an overdose. 1307 Cedar way. (_____), yes. His lips are blue. Yes but it seems hard.”
[garbage], wide-eyed, jammed the plastic inhaler up to Gus’s nose and depressed the plunger. Immediately Gus’s eyes opened wide and he began coughing and laboring for breath. He sat up and [garbage] fed him a stream of questions, while his head lolled and sweat began to bead on his face. His hands shook and tears flowed fast.
“I’m sorry [garbage], I just wanted to kill it, I didn’t want to lose you.” He sobbed “We’re finally getting along, I just wanted it gone for good I’m so sorry.”
His voice was hoarse and labored and he took little gasps of air every few words.
“Don’t worry about that love. Don’t worry about anything okay? I’m not angry, I’m not.” And it was true, [garbages]’s anger had all evaperated away, his wide worried eyes wore nothing more than pure concern. His hands were shaking, trembling as he stroked Gus’s hair, his shoulders, his slimy cheeks. Gus’s apologies were quickly drown in full by the sobs and in breaths taken straight through clenched and bared teeth. He sounded like an injured soldier soon to have his leg sawn off.
“Who is he?” Asked a cool and female voice above. “How did you know he’d be here?”
[garbage] was distracted, focused fully on his love in pain, but pulled his eyes away from Gus to search the woman’s eyes in frantic stunned confusion.
“What are you saying?” He asked, but Coral seemed as stunned as he was.
“Who is this guy?” she asked again. A cold sinking feeling swept through [garbage]. He turned away from her.
“How close to it were you?” He demanded from Gus, who was watching Coral with some deep horror. His sobbing had stopped.
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“Am I supposed to know her [garbage]?” He asked softly.
“Yes, you know her. Fuck. How close?” Gus mashed his flannel sleeve against his face and wiped away the mucus poorly. But he didn’t get a chance to answer. Instead, when his eyes were clear, he fixed them on the far wall. His pupils constricted and his mouth fell open. [garbage] wheeled around to see what horror had transfixed him.
Along the stucco wall and beneath a framed silver showcase of fabrics laid in little strips, there was a great circle of linen scraps, all black and ragged, which had not been there before. It was covered with threads and dangling yarns, which made the thing appear to drip, as with thread snottites and cloth rivulets. Two red wooden eyes cut out of some flat board and painted with white circles were stapled on marking either side.
As they watched it, the hairy dripping thing protruded further from the wall. The joints where the beastly form met the wall were steaming forth and billowing white blue clouds of cold away from it. It grew and jutted out. They watched, like rapt and unbelieving children, as it opened up its red felt mouth. The yarns and threads within it gave the unmistakable impression that its glass toothed mouth was filled with rank saliva.
[garbage] stumbled up from the couch, his arm hairs were standing on end and his stomach was one great knot of fear and trepidation. But he staggered from the room and into the dining area, up to a glass jeweled black painted metal bucket they had repurposed as an umbrella stand. He held the edge of their purple and green swirled dining table, rummaged through the umbrellas and the devil sticks and pulled out from among them a short thin wooden sword, which had been painted with silver spray paint. It’s hilt was set with a bulky green glass jewel, made larger than life so as to be seen from deep in an auditorium. A carefully painted dark gray channel, as for blood, ran along its length. [garbage] hefted it in his shaking hand and took a steadying breath, then reimmersed himself within the billowing cloud of cold that the living room had become.
When he entered, the cloth-wire form of the worm had fully emerged from the wall and was slithering in halting sickly motions, just as if it were being pulled by long invisible threads. Coral had backed herself against the front door, hand on the handle behind her back. Her phone had fallen to the floor, where, from its speaker, could be heard the first responder asking the empty air “Hello?” and “Did he respond to the inhaler?” The man in question was standing up on the overstuffed dark green couch and feeling shaking hands along the wall, such a look of venom in his eyes and a snarl fixed on his lips.
The worm was tugging itself toward him, muppet mouth agape and glass teeth glistening. [garbage] swung the wooden prop at the nearest part of the beast that he could reach, and where the sanded glittering wood made contact a tear appeared across the fabric body. Bright red polyester cloth shone in the rent across its worried felt and cotton strip tail and little red ribbons streamed from the wound, collecting on the floor between them. [garbage] already had the wooden sword held high to make another swing toward it, but it pulled its head around to see what thing had hurt it, moving quickly but in that staccato fashion, like a puppet beast.
Its painted eyes were splashed with yellow. It reared itself up, swinging slightly as if it were suspended from a rope. It yawned its felt jaw open, letting loose a predatory peal of anguished roaring, the sound of a shovel dragged across a rusted sheet of tin. [garbage] swung again and another split appeared across its shaggy wire frame body. Ribbons squirmed out onto the floor to join the others strewn about the room. The beast buckled and thrashed across the floor, but just when [garbage] hefted back the weapon once again it pressed its face into the tasteful carpeting and bored right through.
It was over. The thing had slithered jerkily into the carpet, past it, and away. Only the red ribbons remained. [garbage] looked up with wild eyes to coral.
“Who is he?” he demanded, pointing a quivering finger an Gus. Coral balked.
“Gus, it’s Gus. Your boyfriend.”
[garbage] dropped his stage sword and let out a gasp of breath.
“Did it bite you at all Gus?”
Gus, still standing up on the couch, shook his stark white head.
“Alright. Fuck.”
In the distance the wails of a siren were growing closer. Coral picked up her phone and shakily continued her conversation. Yes, she was still there. Yes the inhaler had worked. Yes, she could see the ambulance, there through the window below.
“You should tell Don we found him.” She said when she’d put her phone away.
“Yeah, I’ll text him.” [garbage] answered.
The EMTs loaded Gus up in the ambulance. [garbage] let him answer their questions himself. He elected to take his own car rather rhan ride along with them, and after handing them the bottle of (_____) from the table, he and Coral climbed back into his geo.
“I’m glad we got here in time.” She said as they pulled out of the parking lot.
“Yeah.” [garbage] answered. “One time we won’t though, you know? One time he’ll just fucking die. At least it’ll be over then.”
Coral turned out into the main street. The sound of the rain of the windshield, the tick tick of the blinker, and the whoosh of the rain on the street all wove together into a soothing backdrop as they made their way toward the hospital. Coral’s cold hand, still shaking, found its way back into his. Almost without thinking, maybe out of habit from the trip to the coast, maybe to distract himself again with something real and something easy, [garbage] resumed his story, and Coral listened, her eyes a little sad, her smile small but wistful.
______________________________________________________________________________
With Garbage around to pull me back, I made friends again. Well I made one friend. Alright, Garbage made a friend. But I was the one who was actually friends with him. Joseph Jordan, everyone called him Jojo. He was around my age, thirteen or fourteen I think. It must have been thirteen because I was fourteen when I ran away. You’ve heard a little about that already. Anyway Jojo was what you would call a bad influence. Not that I was a saint of course, but he was a kid that was just determined to be bad. The reason for his enrollment at our fine school for the unreasonable youths was a little bit of a legend, in that we never really pinned down exactly what it was, and Jojo himself took great pleasure in muddying the waters as much as he could.
The story would grow another head each time it was whispered behind homework books or over government breakfasts, so that right in the beginning we had him down as a bit of a fire starter, which we’d seen the likes of before in a kid named Blake, an older teen who ended up in juvenile detention after the home. But by the end of it, not only had he ran through the local mall stark naked with a can of gas streaming behind him, but he had stolen all the games out of the gamestop, beaten up the security guard, and set the blaze off with a cluster of hand grenades on a belt, like Indiana Jones.
Jojo didn’t so much encourage the ridiculous stories as shiftily change the subject whenever it was brought up, always with a furtive glance over his shoulder as if some private detective was listening in and taking notes. That as good as confirmed it. The details and embellishments started stacking up like so many layers of a decadent criminal fondant cake. When it was just him and me, however, climbing trees behind the home or playing N64 in one of our rooms, he divulged a version of the truth that was far more bare and, while less gusto fueled and cinematic, perhaps all the more deviant for its likelihood to be the real story, or near enough.
“I do love fire,” he said to me as we fought our way through a stage in Starfox, both laid against my bed, eyes glued to the bulbous CRT. “I love to watch it grow. Thats why mom and dad sent me here. I stole a lighter out my dad’s work bag. He smokes. And then from my friend sam’s mom’s purse. My dad’s was a zippo though. That’s the metal kind. They’re easier to light. And once right out of the store. They always have them right there by the register you know.
“Anyway the first time I didn’t mean to make the whole place burn down. I was just fucking around with a lot of fireworks my friend Sam got from his brother. We probably should’ve just gone outside., but it was raining and I really wanted to see them go off. So Sam said his friend Rob had a barn we could use, with a big space where it could go up and bang by the ceiling. The first couple of ones were great and they just came back down and we stomped on them to put them out. Shit!”
His ship in Starfox had crashed, he stuffed a couple cheesy curls into his mouth and we loaded the level up again.
“I had this great idea where we could tie the rest together and light them all off at once. I saw some eagle scouts do it at a camping trip one time. It was way cooler than just one at a time. So when we did it, it would go off bang bang bang, like a machine gun. Anyway it was really cool in the barn because I think it was even louder, since we were inside. But a lot of them landed all over the top part, where they kept all this dry grass, and we just figured it would go out like the ones outside if you left them. Cheater!” Once again Jojo’s ship had crashed and he punched my shoulder before stuffing his face again and reloading.
“Ow Jojo,” I said, punching him back. But he only laughed at that, this mocking laugh like my punch had been too weak to hurt him.
“So we were halfway back to Rob’s house when we smelled the smoke. I thought the rain would put it out but it didn’t. The flames just kept getting bigger until it was all on fire. It was so bright and hot. Rob and Sam ran back to the house to tell Rob’s mom what happened, but I went back to the barn, as close as I could get to the fire. It made a noise like if you wave a stick on fire but a hundred times louder. I like that sound.
We got in huge trouble though. His mom was swearing at him and stuff, and they called the firemen to put it out. But after that, I just wanted to see it again, a fire that big. Fuck You Dipshit!” I’d won again, this time shooting him down point blank, and he threw his controller down and kicked me in the leg. I was half angry, half pleased. I kicked him back but it only made him laugh at me again.
“What are you laughing at, asswipe?” I insisted. He grinned at me and his face took on a weird dark expression.
“You can’t hurt me,” he told me.
“Bet I can,” I disagreed, and rolled over onto him, started punching him real hard in his arms and chest. But his grin stayed fixed on his face and he just giggled like he was getting tickled. His weird reaction combined with an embarrassing erection that was stirring, maybe just from the physical contact or from something bubbling up of my awkward young sexuality, caused me to roll off and to cover myself up, face flushing, with the bag of chips over my lap.
“See?” he said proudly. “Nobody can hurt me, I know how to stop feelings.” He snatched the bag of chips away, but just to stuff a handful in his mouth, much to my relief.
“What do you mean?” I was struck by his claim. Feeling pain had become a constant part of my life, be it from pounding my scarred fists into the wall, or from getting pounded on a bit myself. Jojo grinned wickedly and pulled his pants right down so that his white underpants showed over thin pale thighs. I was really thrown then, and thought things had taken a sharp turn back toward the half-formed thoughts I’d pushed away. But what he showed me, twisting his leg so it shone in the light, was completely alien to me.
In many various stages of healing, webbed across his narrow thigh, rough cuts, all superficial but as numerous as blades of grass were torn into his skin. I watched them as he turned his leg and saw that some were recent enough to still be glistening a bit. I didn’t know what to say and after a few stunned silent seconds he pulled his pants back up.
“I did them myself.” his voice was braggadocious. He punched me really hard in my shoulder then. I was confused by the whole thing but it hurt enough to get my blood hot, The familiar rising anger began to turn Garbage’s attention calmly out toward the scene. But Jojo held up a hand like a crossing guard, his devilish grin still fixed in place.
“What does it feel like?” he asked.
“It hurts you fucking moron!” Garbage was coiled in the shadows of my mind, ready to step in, to pull me back.
“Of course it ‘hurts’” said Jojo. “What exactly does pain feel like though? Just think about it. Why does it hurt?” I was taken aback once again, and felt the venom of my anger subside a bit while I focused on the sensation of the pain.
“It’s like. It’s like it’s growing out of me, like theres something pressing out from inside my arm.” This got a strange laugh out of Jojo. Then he did something that made very little sense to me. He took his balled up fist and slammed it into his own arm. Not just once, but over and over. He had the same grim smile and wondrous determination on his face as he did. When he was done there was a small gray bruise all pink around its edges where he’d hit himself.
“Nobody really knows why it hurts,” He said, with the same glee that could be expected from having found a cash stuffed wallet lying on the sidewalk. “There’s no reason pain should be bad.” He concluded, and returned again to the bag of chips abandoned on the floor. “Come on, I’ll beat you this time.” He loaded the level up again and, finding nothing else to say, I grabbed my controller.
That night I sat up in my bed after lights out with a plastic knife I had smuggled in my cargo pocket from dinner. I had my pants down and my leg turned in. I was staring at my thigh, right where I’d seen all the lines of Jojo’s leg, the white serrated piece of cutlery poised over it like a flyswatter ready to flatten a waiting insect. That first time it was barely more than a ragged impression on my skin. But when I sat there feeling the sensation bloom out from me, focusing on why I thought it should be bad instead of good, I caught the edges of what Jojo was describing. And I felt this secret pride, like I had been initiated into a new kind of brotherhood. I looked up to the shard of green glass that was still perched on the shelf above my bed.
______________________________________________________________________________
[garbage] sits in silence for a moment, then looks up with a short shudder, with a feeling like he’s hit his elbow right in the funny bone, a splash of ragged nerves that courses over his whole body and pops into this colorful awareness in his head. Madeline looks back at him. She has a clipboard ready. He recalls, dimly, having watched her enter, having greeted her when she came in, watching her sit and ask him something. He looks to the little desk in the corner, which is plastered with pages of printer paper, each covered top to bottom. He remembers having written something important down on them. A lot of important things. The leather journal is propped next to them against the wall. He looks back to Madeline
“What?” He asks. Her face is patient. Her pen poised over paper.
“Last we spoke,” she said, her words slow and clear. “You said that Gus was getting into (_____). Can you tell me more about that?” [garbage] let her words fall into place within his mind and shape into a comprehensible idea.
“Yeah. Gus.” He lets his right hand, which is clutching at his thigh, relax. “Well I’ll start by saying that things did get better before they got worse. Tempers calmed and all that. We started sleeping in the same bed again. I can’t say that was so much of a big deal to Gus, but it was huge for me. I felt this grand release that day, when we decided living in separate rooms wasn’t what we wanted. What brought it on was a friend of ours, Rochelle. A friend of Gus’s, to start, as all my friends in those days were. I mean, are, really, that much hasn’t changed.
She was over playing a game with us, this fiercely complicated board game having all these little colorful wooden pieces, some of glass and all sprawled across a board between our beers and popcorn. We had it set up on our ragged dining room table that was painted all in swirls of purple, with the sanded light wood showing in its own negative contrasting swirls that Gus was planning to fill in with green, when he had the time. Rochelle was a stage manager friend of Gus’s that I was actually meeting for the first time that day. I’m friendly with strangers, or at least talkative, so it was going well, we were having a good time. But at one point Gus got up
“Anyone need another drink? Rochelle?” She shook her head and the cascade of auburn curls swayed. Her pinched mouth was pricked askew in thought about her next move in the game. Her rosebud lips twisted out with a wry thoughtful expression. But when Gus was in the kitchen, she looked up, flashing me a half ironic, long suffering frown. In a hushed voice she leaned over the table a bit and asked me something that surprised me.
“What’s got you fighting?” she whispered.
“Gus told you?” I asked back. She shook, her hair catching the light and bouncing bronze and red.
“I can tell just the way you two talk. It’s a gift.” I eyed her doubtfully. Gus was coming back and Rochelle leaned away.
“Where were we?” He asked, examining the board.
“Rochelle thinks we’re fighting." I let the nugget of revelation clack across the table. In the quavering silence that ballooned, Rochelle shot me an exasperated look, but Gus actually smiled. Not a happy smile, just this wry little smirk like some impending conclusion he was well aware of had finally arrived. He sat down and fixed Rochelle with a curious look.
“She knows things like that.” He said simply. Rochelle by this point was a little pink, and tried to backpedal.
“It’s not my place, so sorry, I just thought I saw some tension and I thought maybe I’d see if I could help, maybe one of you at I time, I thought.” She swung her head around at me but I just raised my eyebrows.
“I’m not one for that kind of dancing around,” I said.
“Why don’t you do a reading?” Gus suggested. “After the game.” Rochelle brightened at that.
“ Oh, sure!” She said, and we played on. The game resolved after another hour. It was one of those games. When it did, Rochelle took us both into the living room, where we sat on the rich high piled carpet and she pulled from her silver buckled bag a deck of quite pretty black and ornate-backed tarot cards. At the start of the reading she offered some mild disclaimers.
“Tarot can’t tell the future,” she started. “Nothing can. It hasn’t happened yet so it’s not tellable, like the past and present can be. What this is,” she raised the deck and in the low and moody lighting of the room it flashed dimly, reflecting the sconces’ orange light from its veneered surface, “is a tool for conversation. Each card is loaded up with symbols, meaning, all these separate bits of what it means to be a human, and its up to us, together, to find out how they correspond to you two. More specifically, to your two’s love life. So,”
She flipped a card over and laid it out, then two, then more, all coming one after another without comment and forming a cross shape in the carpet. Their bright and colorful designs depicted people, animals, cups, swords, stars, and moons. That reading was a trip. Right from the beginning, I don’t care what she said about it being a tool for conversation, there was something deeper happening there than just a therapy session, no offense.
“[garbage] do you feel like you have to make an effort to be noticed by Gus? And Gus do you feel like you have to walk on eggshells around [garbage]?”
These two questions would’ve been embarrassing and difficult to discuss with a stranger normally, but they were somehow made more palatable by their expression through a reading of cards. They would’ve been enough, alone, to fill hours of our time with processing, hashing out the whys and the blame. They were instead answered by a reluctant nod from me and a curt “I do” from Gus. I watched his face but it was as unreadable as a smooth stone tablet. The reading only got deeper from there.
With every new question, every yes or no from us, with every poke and prod into the mire of our tension-locked relationship, I felt a kind of release. I watched Gus’s face melt away from its tablety reticent block. And he started to watch me back, too. Inch by inch, we approached one another, both emotionally and physically. By the end we were right next to each other once again, hand in hand.
Gus was monitoring me like he used to, before the whole miniature separation cleaved us within our own house. He was holding me like he used to, in that protective firm way. Touching my hair, squeezing my hand. For my part, I felt more secure in him, more confident that I could trust he’d be there.
“You’re amazing,” I told Rochelle. She was packing her cards away and dipped her head a bit.
“Nah, you guys are the amazing ones. You had it in you, I just loosened things up a bit. Broke some ice.” She had another drink with us and then took her leave. Gus and I stood there when she’d gone, still hand in hand. He was regarding me with newly melted eyes.
“Will you move in with me?” He asked.
The room I had been sleeping in was converted over the next few months into a dual purpose library and studio for both of us. Gus brought his sure hand to the wall decor, the throw rugs and the hangings, and it was once again an expression of our combined tastes. A sewing machine, an easel, a writing desk, and a kind of bliss, a second wind for us. But the wind turned out to be a gust. A brief refreshing spring waft of sweet annual flowers that quickly gave way to oppressive summer heat.
By this time Gus was in full tilt with his career. He had shown that he could bring unique ingenious craftsmanship to any production’s tables, and he was welcomed into the theater artisan’s guild. It was wonderful news for him and we had a grand party to celebrate. We invited all our friends, all the people I wouldn’t have known without him. But it was hard for me. I feel selfish even remembering it out loud, and maybe it was selfish, to expect that anything on that day would be about me, since it was after all Gus’s party. But there was a kind of distance there that I wasn’t familiar with. A gap between myself and him that seemed like more than just his usual standoffish pragmatic laser focus.
I couldn’t catch his eye, you know? I couldn’t close the gap, and after the party that night it only seemed to widen. The next few months were terrifying, frankly. Gus wasn’t acting like himself. He wasn’t talking to me. All that magic glue from the tarot reading had dissolved. He and I spent sometimes days without much more regard than “how was work?”, “What do you want to order?” and “Goodnight.”
He started to stay out with his friends from the guild late into the night, sometimes I’d be asleep already when he finally got back. If he came back at all. He started losing weight. He grew nasty circles under his eyes. In hindsight all this shit seems pretty straightforward. All kinds of inevitable. Back then though, it was haunting me. I swear I thought he had cancer or something. He was cagey as fuck all the time, if I asked whether something was wrong or how I could help or just for any indication that he was even aware how off he was.
I found him passed out one morning, draped over his sewing machine with one hand bleeding dark red into the satin cloth bunched up beneath the needle. But he still wouldn't admit that anything weird was going on. He looked up at me, blank eyes drooping, and said he must have just been tired. I didn’t know what else to do, so one night when he said he was headed to a planning sit-in, I followed him out. He was getting a ride with what looked like a few other people. I ran down the stairs to get in my own car and follow him, half hoping I was just being a jealous boyfriend, and that I’d just turn back around when we got to the guild clubhouse.
Instead they pulled into the driveway of this huge house, one of the types that’s too big for its own lot so there’s no room for a yard. I parked across the street and watched them all file in. They looked like corpses lining up to fill a grave.