Alone Together

On and onward we go, with a few twists in the story, and in the way it is told (as always). To be honest, I'm a little sad that the story is winding down, and I'm not quite sure what I'll do when it's done. In some ways, it might never be done, because there would always be more stories to tell. But just as every story has a beginning, it must have an ending too. These final chapters are going to be rather sweeping in scope, each one covering a large span of time, 20 or 30 years, at least, sort of roving back and forth. To avoid each chapter being over 100 pages, the chapters are going to look at similar, and sometime overlapping events, with the focus changing in each one to highlight different story-lines. As a result, not all characters will appear in each chapter (like in the last one). Finally, this chapter is one that has a lot of personal meaning to me so I hope you'll let me know what you think. You can write to me at denis141@hotmail.com. I always write back, usually promptly.

REMINDER: Join my yahoo group if those of you who read the story at Nifty want to get the story earlier, and formatted differently. The website can be found here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alone_together-novella/ Also, nominate the story at the Boy Band Story Awards here: http://jcv.5u.com/all/bbsa/index.htm

SPECIAL THANKS: To my pal Sheila for help with the French (among other things), and to Zack for making an observation in his last feedback email to me that became the kernel of a pretty important story-line in this chapter.

DEDICATION: To my Aaron, my muse, with love.

DISCLAIMER: I don't know NSYNC, and this story is purely a work of fiction. This story also contains male/male loving (and occasionally some smut). Thus, if that's not your thing, or if you aren't old enough to read this, you should stop reading now. Sorry.

ALONE/TOGETHER

Chapter 42: OF LOVE ALONE: Part 3: a long the riverrun, past.

We have no passions left to love the spring Who had suffered autumn as we did, alone Walking through dominions of a browning laughter Carrying our loneliness our loving and our grief.

How can we know another spring. For there will come no flower where was fruit before Now we have little use for spring's relentless seeking Who walked the long, unquestioned path Straight into autumn's arms Who saw the summer passions wither Into a leaf to hide our naked tears.

Earth is still sweet, for autumn teaches bearing And new sun will warm our proud and cautious feet But spring came once And we have seen the road that led through summer Beautiful and bright as clover on a hill Become a vast appalling wilderness and rain While we stood still, racked on the autumn's knowing Binding cold love to us with the corners of her shroud.

~ Audre Lorde, "Second Spring" (1977)

"I cannot somehow put together those nightmare cries with the lazy Sundays talking with friends in the back garden, or the evenings reading Plato. Thus if things were darkening I did not see, and that is one of the cruelest ruses of the virus, letting you think the good times are real times. Besides, I was locked in a true romantic's presumption now, with every page I turned. No matter how scorched the earth became, no one could take Plato away from us, not what we'd managed to read together. And I did think it consciously...that it was Roger who was like Socrates. He, of course, would have groaned with distress to hear such an outrageous exaggeration...But I don't especially mean that his mind was as fine as Socrates', or his integrity so unsullied. I only mean the honesty and simplicity, the instinct that he wasn't better or wiser than anyone else. I was too shy to say it out loud, but then, from here on, there was much that would have to go without saying. Whoever Socrates was, we had read that book together for the same reason, to see how a man of honor faces death without any lies."

~ Paul Monette, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir (1988).

"Do you miss him?"

Doyler sighed, and with the breath spilt all the tide of his loneliness and fears. "I miss him aye," he said. "He was pal o' me heart, so he was. I try not to think of him, only I can't get him off my mind. He's with me always day and night. I do see him places he's never been, in the middle of a crowd I see him. His face looks out from the top of a tram, a schoolboy wouldn't pass but I'm thinking it's him. I try to make him go away, for I'm a soldier now and I'm under orders. But he's always there and I'm desperate to hold him. I doubt I'm a man except he's by me."

~Jamie O'Neill, At Swim, Two Boys (2001)

I. Escaping Hades.

When asked years later about the story, and his greatest regret, James did not stop to think, nor hesitate to answer. He leaned forward in his chair and stared at his interrogator, a twenty-one year old journalism student with a constellation of acne stretching up across his left cheek to temple in an angry swath. It was a college public radio interview show, and James was the guest, there to talk about his first book.

"Not finding those boxes," he said.

"Boxes?"

"Yes--boxes," James said, leaning back in the metal folding-chair and resting his hands in his lap. "Three cardboard boxes."

"What was in them?"

"Life."

He stagger-stepped into the fading hours of a still bright April afternoon, blinking as his eyes fought to become accustomed to the light. His tongue dueled with two molars in the back of his mouth, trying to dislodge a popcorn kernel stuck there. People jostled past him, impatient as he stood stopped and tried to free his glasses from the front pocket of his windbreaker. The glasses barely fit in the half-ripped snapped-shut pocket and he swore under his breath for having clumsy-shoved them there again.

--Damn. There now.

And then, blink, blink, the glasses were on. Farsighted, James could see only things in the distance clearly without his glasses. Anything within arm's reach, or a few feet further out from there, was fuzz-blurred and indistinct, spectral-shaped, haunting the periphery of his vision.

Half-past four on Thursday, the movie just let out. The Orpheum five-dollar matinee, a rotating bill of eccentric films that was James and Shelley's weekly escape from Trusts and Estates, a class both were taking pass-or-fail, and despised. It was taught by a humorless hawk-nosed man, appropriately-named Professor Beaker, who prowled the stage finger-stabbing the dead air in a cavernous class room at the law-school. When they attended class at all, which was rarely, they sat in the back row and passed notes back and forth, trying not to laugh at the funniest ones.

James searched the crowd for Shelley, somewhere ahead of him, beyond the small sea of bobbing heads. She always moved faster than him, an expert in crowds, and claustrophobic in them; she exploited the slightest gaps to break ahead of someone slow, or in her way, to free herself of the commingling mass that made the back of her neck prickle with panicked sweat. This had been unnerving at first, because James was by nature one who tried to keep up. But after a while he understood, and it no longer bothered him when Shelley darted off and disappeared; he knew she would be waiting in the clearing at the crowd's edge, there where it dissipated and fell apart. He usually found her in front of the toy store, two doors down the block, The Puzzle Box, their de facto meeting place. That is unless the movie-crowd was really large, in which case they would meet across the street in front of Zorba's restaurant, infamous for selling the second-best gyros on State Street.

James flowed with the out-rushing crowd departing the theater, down the sidewalk, past The Puzzle Box. He maneuvered toward the sidewalk's outer edge, mumbling a litany of excuse-me's as he tried not to trip or stumble. Craning his neck, he looked for bus-traffic, then stepped off the curb into the street. Shelley lurked in front of Zorba's, thirty-feet away, her hands on her hips, waiting. He smiled at her as he approached, happy himself to be out of the crowd.

"I don't suppose you're in the mood for a burrito as big as your head?"

"My head or yours?" James said, struggling his glasses up his nose.

"Yours, of course," Shelley laughed. "It's bigger.

"Let's go to the Flaming-O. I like the booths there."

"And you love the bad tempura."

"No -- you like the bad tempura," James said, half-serious. "I like the patty-melt."

"Whatever," Shelly said, grabbing James' arm and tugging him along, past Zorba's to the corner, and then back across the street. "Better than sitting in the TA's office and grading legal memos."

"Wait," James said, stopping. "Let's go to Genna's Lounge instead."

"Uh-oh." Shelley made a face and frowned.

"What?"

"It must be dark and stormy at the Jamesville Inn."

"The Jamesville Inn?"

"That haunted hotel in your head."

"Very amusing," James said, not sounding amused. "But a bit of a stretch, I'd say, as melodramatic metaphors go."

"Probably true," Shelley said, shrugging. "But I wasn't named after the author of Frankenstein for nothing."

"Which would make me?"

"Bride of Frankenstein."

"Sort of."

"Shall we go?"

"Yeah."

The two of them walked wordlessly for two blocks, turning left at West Johnson, and then right on University Avenue. Shelley was right that James had something on his mind, but he wasn't sure that he wanted to admit to it. He'd have a beer or two and see, sitting in their same dark back booth that reeked of smoke, eyeing the pickled-eggs floating ghostly glowing white in the glass jar that sat next to the cash register.

"Do you know the story of this place," James said, holding the door open for Shelley, and then following her to their booth, a quick nod to the bartender first. "Hey Kristi," he said, then turned back to Shelley. "Every place has a story."

"You always say that," Shelley smiled, watching Kristi wander over with their beer. Two frosty glasses clunk-clunked on the table, then the pitcher, draft Leinenkugel sloshing. "About places and their stories. You're obsessed."

"What can I say," James said, shrugging. "I was a double-major in history and philosophy. It warped me."

"Les dangers de l'education."

"Mais oui."

"Hey, watch the foam on mine."

"Sorry," Shelley said, licking the overflow from her glass and smiling at James now doing the same. "You should pour next time."

"I will."

"So what's the story of this place?" Shelley said, settling back against the booth, one arm resting on the table. "I know you know."

"As a matter of a fact, I do," James said, a light laugh leaking from the corner of his mouth, followed by a smile that Shelley was happy to see. Maybe he's not depressed, she thought. I hope not.

"Well, let's hear it, Mr. History."

"It opened in1964."

"See -- now, how did you know that? Or remember?"

"The internet, my dear." James laughed again, this time a throaty laugh that made Shelley think that maybe he wasn't depressed about something after all. "And the library too. I like to look things up."

"And remember."

"Yeah--and remember."

"So it opened in 1964."

"Yes, by Frank Genna," James said, leaning forward and putting his elbows on the table. "It became the fourth of a famous quartet of bars on the block -- the 602 Club, which is still open, of course."

"Remember the night there when Rob K. got so drunk he wet his pants and didn't know it?"

"Potty-Pants Bob, not a helpful nickname."

"Better than...anyway, your story."

"The other two bars in the quartet, both now closed, were Bob and Gene's and the Black Bear Lounge. The part I like though is that the area bounded by Genna's and the Black Bear on this side of the street, and Jocko's Rocket Ship on the other side of the plaza, came to be known as the Bermuda triangle because people were said to get lost there for days at a time."

"That's funny."

"And interesting."

"Totally."

"But there's more."

"Somehow I knew that," Shelley laughed.

"In addition to the political graffiti in the bathrooms, some now sixty years old, this place was notorious for gambling."

"Really?"

"This booth in particular."

"Well that's cool."

"C'est vrai."

"Tell me more."

"One local lawyer..."

"It had to be a lawyer."

"One local lawyer ran a black-jack game right here in this booth. Never-ending it seems. They also played rap poker, gin, and dirty clubs, at all hours, of course."

"Of course."

"And for money."

"Of course."

"One story has it that one particularly unlucky night bartender lost his shirt."

"Literally."

"Maybe," James said. "But either way, he lost the entire night's till too."

"I bet that guy got fired."

"You're assuming it was a guy."

"Oops."

"It was Frank's wife," James said. "Anyway, that's the story of Genna's Lounge."

"Next time, we should bring cards," Shelly said. "And play poker. In honor of Frank, and that grifter-lawyer."

"Good idea," James said, nodding slowly as his gaze drifted from Shelley to the egg-jar, then to the smoke-dimmed mirror behind the bar. Newspaper clippings, faded, tattered, the color of moth-wings, flapping in the whorls of air spun through the place by the ceiling fans. Each one a story there, he thought. Stories everywhere. In Shelley's eyes a story. And in his mind, a story, unfolding like an old map, rumbling-unfurling, like a river-flowing, along the riverrun, past.

Crossing the river --

"That's the mighty Missouri," Ryan had said, crying out and pointing. He was always crying out and pointing, anxious that he not miss anything. A cow, a house, a broken fence. A sign announcing the JESUS SAVES. A broken rusty car, its metal skeleton sun-gleamed and wet with dew. Sheep mewling in a mist-filled field of alfalfa. Pointing, pointing until his arm must have hurt. Crying out until he was hoarse, but happy, his voice light and full of laughter. Until the night-descending blotted out his view, like ink spilled across a photograph, covering it all up.

Crossing the river, it had been dark by then, half-past nine, but clear. The headlights ripped the darkness open, tunneling through it, like miners in a coal mine, their heads emblazoned with stars a-helmet, tunneling with straight-forward passion, digging deep-deep-deep. James didn't mind the driving; it calmed him, staring straight ahead, heading forward, but not to any place in particular. Or it seemed, like progress by a different name. To wander, and wonder where.

Pulling off I-90, Exit 260, following the short looping exit road, up the gentle-sloping hill to the Oasis Inn, 85 rooms with scenic views, whirlpool, free movies, deluxe suites, just $79, Gazebo with family picnic area and fishing pond. (Rods to rent, $5 an hour; no charge for kids under 7.) Overlooking the beautiful Missouri river. Conveniently located near great hunting and fishing. New cabins just up the road at River Ranch resort. Chamberlain, South Dakota, with the Badlands 18 miles beyond, heading East, and Mount Rushmore, West, behind.

"That's what I call giving head," Ryan had laughed, looking up at Lincoln's flat unaffected mien. "Carving that thing."

Not amused, the woman standing in front of them that day had spun around and glared. "That's our president," she barked. "Show some respect."

"For what?" Ryan said. "I was talking about carving a face--a head--in a hill."

"It's still our president" The woman insisted, stomping her foot. "It's..."

"It's what?" Ryan said, practically screaming now, despite the gentle tugs James hung on his arm, like clothes-pins on clothesline. "A monument to a dead man."

"President--"

"I'll tell you something," Ryan said, his cheeks sagging and his breath painful to hear. But it was plain Ryan was sorry that he had started this. He came to regret many things he said, especially those that made James cringe. But this was not one of them.

"I am a monument to a dead man," Ryan hissed. "Take a picture if you will, or tear some fucking piece of cloth from my shirt. But don't pretend that death changes anything at all, because it doesn't. You're just gone."

"Except for that there," Ryan hiss-whispered, pointing. "Which is stone, and more than dead."

`That..." Ryan tried to go on, but he had lost track of what he was saying. He was like this more and more. It was like some part of him had wandered off, leaving him to stand there and wait for its return, like an empty suit waiting to be worn again.

James took Ryan's arm, demonstratively, kissing him on the cheek. It was a wet and sloppy kiss, designed to offend.

"I'm sorry M'am, truly," he said, staring at the woman, and her wan skinny troop of fellow family members. "My lover here is feeling peevish and sad because I have AIDS, you see. So, please don't mind him...'

But she was gone, of course, by then, before he could finish his assault on her sensibilities. She had gathered her children like an animated Disney hen might, sweeping them beneath her stumpy arms and waddling stomach, and running away. Then Ryan enraptured his cheek with laugh-filled kisses. "What a scamp you are," he whispered, breathless, laughing, alive.

Three days on the road, taking it slow. Ryan wanted to see things, to stop, sometimes to wander. The grass, he loved the grass. To walk in it, barefoot, his eyes smiling and bright, like candle-flickers, but brownish green, not brackish -- bright. And he stripped off his clothes sometimes too, wearing boxers only, and sometimes not those, for the joy of rolling in the grass, the fresh alive feeling of it on his skin. This was Ryan's favorite part, and James' favorite part to watch it. Not to see him naked, his limbs and skin-skimmed joints and that, prattling, lolling, exposed. He never thought, I can see you naked, nude, undressed. Oh, and there are your private parts. No, he thought: You are so beautiful, and so alive. Dance my friend! Dance! Take all the time you want. Dance!

When night would come, and Ryan was not pointing at things, or cajoling another stop from James, he would read out loud to him. Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Rilke, Keats, Byron, Tennyson, Swinburne, Browning, Shelley -- all recently discovered, except for Whitman, which was the one book that Ryan had brought along. The backseat was piled high with books they'd bought at Pomes, A Penny-Each, a used-book store in Missoula they'd stopped at before getting gas. Foraging through the stacks like giddy-kids hunting the beach for seashells and shiny stones, they shouted Eureka! when a good one was undug from amid the chaos leaning wooden shelves, and dusty cardboard boxes. Then their arms full, giggling back to the car, they clatter-piled the backseat full with their harvest of books, like too-fresh fruit, ripe-bright, and ready-to-eat, each poem like the plums that Williams poemed, delicious/so sweet/and so cold. Reading, you could feel the teeth pierce the plum's taut skin, and taste drip of its juice a sticky trace across your chin. We're free, each poem seemed to say. Free, free, free.

"We're a rolling library," Ryan said, the giddy-kid-giggle caught in his throat like the sweet taste of a candy-cane, and his lips red from it too. "That's what we are. The great library of Alexandria, on wheels!"

"It burnt, you know."

"What?"

"Alexandria," James said. "The library in Alexandria."

"Think of the words you'd breathe in that smoke."

"Burnt words."

"Weird to think really."

"Julius Ceasar did it, in 48 BC."

"Yeah," Ryan said. "I know. Burning the boats in the harbor, half the city too."

"Oops."

"I'll say."

Last night, holding the short red flashlight he paid $14 for, its beam pointed shining against the yellowed page, illuminating it and him too, the soft underbelly of his throat and chin, and up his cheeks a little. Glancing right, James could see Ryan's face reflected in the windshield, glowing there, just his face, nearly beatific. It was at times like this that he loved him more than he had ever loved anyone, or anything, then or since, and that he wanted to hold him and fill his sickly lungs with the clean clear air of youth, restoring him. He still did not know where they were going, but he knew where he would end. How he would end. The road could not remain ever-open, the journey unending. Unless, unless, unless, a miracle and then.

His voice last night was soft, transcending. He knew the verse by heart. (And what a phrase is that? To know a verse by heart? Or anything by heart? Is it because you loved it so that you learned it, your heart learned it? Perhaps that was why he had come to know Ryan so well, by heart.)

Ryan did not need to read the verse to say it. He could recite it, with his eyes closed, without looking. But this would have betrayed the page, the pact he'd made with this volume he held. So Ryan's eyes danced across the page, like licking at it, like a tongue-tip touched to confection. Tasting.

WHEN lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd, And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd--and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring; Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, And thought of him I love.

On and on he went, Ryan, singing it (almost), finding cadences unknown until then to him, stirring cadences and rhythms, illuminating more than mere light could. He is free now, he had thought, listening as they pushed along into the night. Together.

In the swamp, in secluded recesses, A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.

Solitary, the thrush, The hermit, withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements, Sings by himself a song.

Song of the bleeding throat! Death's outlet song of life--(for well, dear brother, I know If thou wast not gifted to sing, thou would'st surely die.)

Tears finally made it hard to see. The bridge blurred ahead, like a dirt-smudge on the windshield. Then there it was, the Oasis Inn, there beyond the bridge, on the other side of the river, the mighty Missouri river, which was what Ryan had cried out.

Yes, crossing the river, dark by then, half-past nine, but clear.

Shelley had watched James lean back and look around the room, staring finally at a place that seemed far away. His eyes glazed wet, reflecting the blue neon glow that fell from behind the bar. She heard him sigh, and then the nervous scratch-scratch tap-tap-tapping of his fingernails on the table. Waiting, she blinked and wondered where he'd gone to, this her friend whose mind seemed so to wander.

"Are you there," she finally said.

"Oh," James said, after a pause in which his eyes had searched her face. "Sure. Right here. Part of me at least."

"So tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"What you were thinking about. Was it Stephen calling?"

"Stephen called?"

"James--you know he did."

"Okay," he said, pulling his hands under the table and into his lap. "I know. You told me. But, no, I wasn't thinking about Stephen."

"I take it you're not going to call him back," Shelley said, looking at James over the top of her beer glass, which she'd been inspecting for several seconds.

"To say what?"

"I don't know," Shelley shrugged. "Is he still trying to get you back?"

"Until he gets his next new boyfriend," James said, looking vaguely disgusted, but in what Shelley could not clearly tell.

"I fell for that last summer," he said. "Oh please, I've learned my lesson, then voila--I know I should have told you, but I met this guy at the gym, and we sort have been seeing each other and...anyway, that's a story for another, drunker time."

"That man has a very short attention span."

"Among other things," James said, smirking, and taking another drink of beer. "He thinks David is a phase."

"He's jealous."

"And projecting."

"Where is David by the way?"

"He's teaching class."

"Astronomy 101?"

"Stars and planet for the blind, as he likes to call it."

"So is Stephen still married?"

"Who knows?" James said, rolling his eyes and slumping back into the booth. "Why are you on Stephen all of a sudden?"

"I don't know," Shelley said, pouring more beer. "A taste for the freakishly perverse perhaps."

"Oh great, now I'm a character in an Edgar Allan Poe story."

"No," Shelley frowned. "But you have to admit it is both freaky and perverse."

"I admit to no such thing," James said. "It was really sad. And I feel bad for him. But that's all past now, and I want it to stay there."

"Okay, new subject."

"I just hate re-hashing it is all."

"Hello, new subject," Shelley half-laughed. "How about that movie today? I can't believe I'd never seen it."

"My Own Private Idaho."

"Yeah."

"My friend Ryan took me to see it," James said, staring blankly past Shelley, as if looking at someone standing right behind. "Or I took him. But it was his pick."

"Ryan?"

"Ryan Gosling," James said, still staring. "He was an actor once. And my best friend. He's dead now."

"I don't think you've ever mentioned him before."

"Oh, I have," James said. "Maybe not loudly, or by name. Not in a way that you might notice. But I mention him all the time, like a kind of silent prayer, I guess."

"You're crying."

"No, no--it's..."

"What?"

"It's such a long story."

"So tell me."

A sere horizon, a curtained sky, the Black Hills both distant and close, glaciated jagged-sharp in places spiked, then smooth-rolling, like breaker-waves against a stone-strewn shore. Cretaceous rocks, pegmatite minerals, ubiquitous flecks of dehydrated green, as if tossed there as an after-thought. The hilled horizon shoulders the sky like a haphazard crowd of strangers, loitering, leaning in, wondering what was going on.

What was going on? James wonders, blinking.

Breath billows before him, huffing, tasting last night's cigarettes, smoked one after the other, greedy for diversion, giving hands something to do but sit there. The two Styrofoam cups he held, startling white, glowing almost, like about to melt, and hot. The matte-white lids, dull like the sky, and not quite secure, letting coffee leak-lap through the pin-holes in the middle, step-slopped coffee, bump-schlupped, pooling quick-cooled, tobacco-juice brown, and stale-smelling. Coffee. He smelled it pour, and heard it, a violent plop in each cup, a trail of coffee left on the counter between. Folgers, Maxwell House, Chock-Full-of-Nuts, Savarin -- some banal brand he would not, did not, know.

The gravel schrunk-crunked beneath his unlaced running-shoes, the laces whip-slap forward, daring him to stumble-trip. I should have tied those, he thinks. And put on socks. It's cold for June. Real cold.

A scud of clouds scrape the hilltops, crawl-craggling over like, he thinks, like a big dog, old, slow-crawling out of bed, whimper-moaning furry dirty white and lumbering, scraggled-fur, once-white, but dirt-stained now, smudged, like dirty chalk. Distant thunder like a growl, the dog's growl, low and rumbling, phlegmatic, portentous, warning. Rain soon. Better hurry. Better hurry up.

The air is cold and has the taste of tin. He breathes in slow. Maybe snow, he thinks. Bizzare. April makes snow, but June? June snow? Rebuking the expectations of summer, like a person on their birthday to the present-giver, saying, `Lovely thought to give me this, but I already have one.' Cruelest month for sure, if snow now, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing...what? What's the rest?

Oh, memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. It really does look like rain, not snow. All those clouds rush-moving in. Better hurry up. Ryan will be awake and wonder where I am. Getting coffee, he'd say with a smile, replying to his sullen stare. I knew you'd want some.

Two cups of coffee, a dollar eighty-nine. The lady behind the counter with the green apron, lips-smudged orange-red, cackle-coughing as she winked at him and smiled, flirting. Welcome to Al's Oasis,' she'd said. What'll it be for you hon?' Feeling lost, he shrugged. `Two cups of coffee, and that roll there.' He had pointed and felt his face redden. It's not a roll, you idiot.

`The cruller?' she asked. Not sure that was what he meant, but not minding.

With the white frosting,' he said. And sprinkles.'

That'd be the cruller,' she corrected. Twenty-five cents each.'

What costs twenty-five cents still, he'd wondered, nodding, then paying the lady, and nodding again, conscious of it this second time. Stop nodding, he thought.

--Fuck! He stumbles. Coffee sloshed and burned his thumb. He sets one coffee cup down, clearing the gravel with the back of his hand to make a flat spot. Don't topple, he thinks, licking the coffee from his thumb, and blowing on it.

Eyeing the stairs to the second-tier of rooms, he finds himself counting the doors, one, two, three, four. But wait. He turns and looks across the parking lot. The car is still there, right where he left it, with the bridge filling the view behind it. They had crossed last night, right before stopping. The Oasis Inn. Pick up the coffee, let's go.

He'd left the door open just a crack and pushes it open with his right foot. Ryan's breath rattles the room, worrying him. Better to let him sleep, he thinks. There's more coffee if this gets cold. He can drink it in the car. Or maybe a hot breakfast. Some oatmeal, and fruit. Something healthful for a change. Healthful, not healthy. He hated when people got that wrong. Stupid things you cling to. The reassurance of grammar.

Inside the room the door clicked closed behind him. He sits the white wax-paper sack on the table next to the door. Ryan stirs and rolls over, coughing before his eyes are even open, then wide-eyed, saucer-eyed, staring as he gasps and then recovers, the red-stain of his coughing fit draining slowly from his face, back to ashen.

--I got you coffee. Two sugars, no cream. And a cruller.

--A what? He coughs, and worries the blanket with the tips of his fingers.

--A cruller. It's South Dakota for donut.

--Here, James says, struggling the lid off the Styrofoam cup and handing it to Ryan, who is sitting up now, one hand pressed against his cough-bellowing chest.

--Cigarettes?

--Have your coffee first, James says. I have to go to the gas station for those.

--In my coat.

--We smoked all those last night.

--Fuck!

--Besides...

--Don't say it, he says, holding his hand up.

--Yeah-okay. James says this like it's one word. He says this a lot.

--Thanks for the coffee.

--And the cruller.

--Spare me the cruller. You eat it.

--Here's half then.

--Just set it there, Ryan says, pointing at the dirty ashtray.

--It's not so bad. James smacka-smacks his lips and brushes a crumb from his chin. Maple-nut frosting. A little sweet though.

--We should have some real breakfast once you're up, James says. He watches Ryan blowing on his coffee and take small test-sips.

--Yeah. Okay. He pauses notably between each word, teasing James for how he says it. He knows he has no interest in food, but James still prods him enough to eat from time to time, and so it was okay. What was okay?

--How'd you sleep?

--Pretty well. Good enough.

--Did you have that dream again?

--No. Just blank white sleep. Like a smothering pillow, he thinks.

--I'm going to shower. James pulls his sweatshirt over his head and shucks his shoes into the corner near his backpack. His t-shirt off, he knows that Ryan watches him, the hair that traced his stomach lightly, like a shadow there. Not once had he tried to touch him, or have him, not there or there.

I wouldn't mind, James thinks. For him, for him.

--Make sure the spunk gets down the drain, Ryan laughs. I hate stepping in that shit. What a waste.

--You are so amusing Mr. Gosling.

James struggles his jeans down his legs and steps out of them. Ryan smiles and stares openly at the smooth nearly hairless skin of James' short legs, which are much like Ryan's own, but younger, and more alive. His white briefs hang loose and low, revealing the curlicues of pubic hair above the band, the contours of his penis adumbrated through cotton pale, revealed like pentimento. James smiles at Ryan, acknowledging his attention.

--I'd let you watch, you know.

--Watch what?

--You know.

--Actually, I don't.

--I don't mind undressing, or even whatever. I don't have to do it in the bathroom. I'm not that shy.

--Are you propositioning me? Ryan laughs. Like a common stripper?

--No, James says, his face blush-burning. I'm just, I don't know, trying to find ways to maybe make you feel better.

--Oh, Ryan says, his eyebrows slowly raising, like a draw-bridge opening. And you figure that watching you jerk off would probably make my day.

--Well, I didn't mean it like that.

--What did you mean then?

--I just meant that...never mind. Fuck. I'm sorry I said anything.

James spins angrily around and is nearly in the bathroom, with the door nearly closed, when he hears Ryan say, Wait. Come here. And so James does. He pushes the door to the bathroom back open and reenters the room.

--Come here, Ryan says, patting the bed.

--Yeah-okay. One word again.

Ryan pats the bed, and looks at James before him. Sit, he says. And James does. The mattress lets out a small complaint, then the room is silent.

--You feel like your failing me, don't you?

James' head nods yes and his hair falls into his eyes. Ryan's fingers rush-brush to his forehead, pushing the fallen hair to one side, then sliding down the slope of his cheek. That feels good, he thinks, James does.

--We know how this story ends. There is no pretending otherwise.

--No we don't, James says, his voice sharp, insisting.

--But we do, Ryan says, without a note of sadness, but gentle, like the touch of his fingers still on James' face. And it's okay. I will have had my lark. We'll have had it together, come what may. Come what may.

James silent, thinks. Winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow, feeding a little life with dried tubers. Every month can be cruel, not just April or June. Where is my second spring now?

--There must be more I can do. James can hardly say this, and barely does. The words are brittle and he imagines them as glass breaking, falling, breaking, shattering, into tiny worthless pieces.

--More than stealing Stephen's car? Ryan grabs James' hand and holds it. More than listening to my ridiculous cough? More than taking on faith this journey here, traveling to where with me, on a lark? No James, there is nothing more to do than what you are doing now. Be my friend and then...

--Come what may, James whispers.

--Yes, come what may. Yes.

Ryan's eyes are wide, emphatic, staring at James, reassuring, then quickly heavy-lidded, his eyes slide slowly closed. He drifts off, or so it seems to James, like a rowboat river-eddied, water-lapped and peaceful, floating away. Ryan opens his mouth and a strange soft sigh emits, not a yawn, but something else.

--Tell you what, he whispers. His head falls back into the pillow with a poof. You want another story?

--I wouldn't mind, James says. How about Jeremy and Frank, you never finished that one.

--No. Ryan sighs, and sighs again. I want to tell you about someone else tonight.

--All right. James rubs Ryan's shoulder and smiles.

--You see, there once, is and was, a lovely young man named James.

--Stop, James whispers, with a gentle-jostle, and a blush.

--James had a heart so big it hurt his chest to hold it. Ryan shakes his head. The pillow moves. James joins him there, beside him.

--And in that heart was a room he built for his friend. A little room, but big enough for him, him who was so small.

--You're not small, James says, sidling into Ryan's embrace. You're as big as all life, to me you are, and more.

--The room was warm, and dry. And his friend was safe there, and not alone.

--Not alone.

--For he had the heart of his friend around him, holding him.

--Just like this he held him, James says.

--Yes, Ryan says. Like you hold me now.

--Why don't we rest for awhile, James says, his mouth near Ryan's ear. It's early yet. And I could use a little more sleep before driving more.

--I'll always be in your heart, you know. You let me in, and now I think I'll stay, on my lark never ending, there where it is always warm with spring.

--Whatever you want, James says, resting his head on his arm, holding Ryan and staring at the wall opposite them. There was there a picture of Lewis and Clark, in a long canoe, floating down the Missouri River. They were on there way to look for the Northwest Passage. Comrades on a quest to find a passage connecting one half of a country to the other, and to discover what lay beyond that which had been already explored. From this point, near where he and Ryan were, the journey of Lewis and Clark would become difficult and deadly. James imagined that perhaps, those two like the two them, had maybe somewhere here among the Black Hills, rested a little longer, before setting off again, to find what they did not know.

Ryan's hand finds James' hip beneath the blanket and rests there. James inches closer to him, raising his shoulders so that Ryan can lean closer to him still. And he does. He feels Ryan's breath, steady and warm, like a long spring breeze, not rattling, nor stormy, brushing air on his arm there, there where Ryan's head lay, his facing pressing against him, and he holding him up.

--Thank you, Ryan whispers, then he falls asleep.

"That was nice of you to hold him like that," Shelley said, pushing the empty pitcher to the edge of the table. They were done with drinking, and about to leave. "Did you always after? I expect you did."

"Yeah," James said, nodding slowly, almost imperceptibly. "We slept like that every night after that. He'd read to me. Or I'd read to him. Until one of us got too tired to stay awake. Then we'd turn out the light, and go to sleep."

"You always holding him."

"Usually," James said, smiling at the memory of it. "Unless his back really hurt, and then I'd rub it and hold his hand."

"I'm sure that meant a lot to him." Shelley said this while reaching out across the table to take James' hand. His eyes filled with tears. She met his gaze and tried to smile, a small reassuring smile, full of affection and esteem. "All you did for him."

"Maybe." A tear overflowed his right eye, and Shelley watched it crawl across the scar that creased his cheekbone, like a cracked plate. She wondered what the scar was from, and almost asked.

"But it meant even more to me," James said. "To have had a chance to love like that, so completely, someone."

"Beyond regret," James said, as if unable to stop speaking. And it felt to Shelley like a prayer of some kind, or a profession of faith.

"With only hope to hold us," he says. And it did. Then I was young, and he was still alive with me."

"These, lost to hope, in memory yet," Shelley says softly. "Do you know it?"

"No," he said, and shakes his head.

"Around the hearts that lov'd thee cling," she says. "Shadowing with long and vain regret. The too fair promise of thy Spring."

"That's beautiful."

"Thomas Love Peacock, a verse he wrote for his wife's grave."

"Was he a romantic?"

"And a Victorian one at that."

"What is it about Spring that so obsesses poets?"

"I'm not sure," Shelley says, scrunching her brow. "It's death and resurrection, I suppose. And nature over-flowing, both beautiful and wild. All the contradictions."

"That's what I think too."

"Shall we go?" Shelley asked, thinking for a moment more, then standing slowly up, her hand outstretched. "It's getting late."

"Yeah," James said, standing up. His face looked tired, and a little older. "What time is it?"

"Almost seven bar-time."

"David will be home soon."

Unless he has office hours."

"He said he didn't tonight."

"Great," Shelley said, following James across the bar, then outside. "You going to cook then?"

"I was thinking maybe," James said, blinking as he slid his glass back on.

"You like to cook."

"I do," James said. "Unless it's just for me. I'd rather just eat take-out then."

"A burrito as big as your head."

"Exactly."

"It's a nice night, don't you think."

"Full of stars," James said.

"Voir les etoiles est de savoir que vous etes vivant."

"C'est vrai."

They had spent three days in Madison, Wisconsin, while the car was repaired. It had taken all but $300 of the money that Toni had given him to pay for the repair. While there, Ryan's coughing fits had gotten worse, lasting up to five and ten minutes, doubling over, deflating him, leaving his face scarlet-blue, the color of an angry bruise. James had suggested that maybe going to the doctor was a good idea, but Ryan had refused. Now they sat with a large shared bowl of frozen custard melting in the sun between them. Micheal's Frozen Custard, 2531 Monroe Street. This is their second trip today.

--I know all I need to know about my condition, Ryan says. And once known, I see no reason to be told about it again, especially by some idiot doctor.

--Well maybe you can let me in on this condition of yours then, because it sure as hell doesn't appear to be improving, far from it.

--I have a fatal disease, Ryan says, bluntly. It's called life. Okay? You die from it. Everyone does. So make a note of it, then eat your frigging ice-cream.

--I care about you Ryan, James says, his face filled with an admixture of anger and love, his arms crossed on his chest. I worry. That's all.

--That's all, you say? Ryan says, putting on a face of mock-surprise. Even though it isn't all, your worry.

--What do you mean?

--There's more to you than worry, Ryan says, putting down his spoon and then taking James' hand. You have a warrior's heart. So don't underestimate yourself.

Refusing to meet Ryan's gaze, James watches the spoon that sticks from the bowl of custard. It tip-topples over and flips-flops to the metal tabletop, clink-clink. The dollop of custard in the spoon's ladle melts a creamy peach-pink. Fresh peach custard, Ryan's favorite flavor. Something he likes to eat. Eat more, he thinks. Eat more.

--You don't think I'm strong enough to know the truth.

--You know the truth. Four squeezes of his hands tell James this, the hand that Ryan holds. His blurring eyes tell him this. And the tremble of his lip and chin.

--Please look at me, Ryan says. What did you say about courage that time?

--Il vient du Coeur, James says. It comes from heart.

--Yes. Ryan nods, smiles, reaches for James' other hand, and holds it too. Ryan's hands feel cold on his, and then slowly warm. The custard melts, and long slow minutes pass. Other people come and go, but neither notices. The world is terrible and small, and it encircles them in the truth of it. Yes I know, James thinks. I know the truth. But damn the truth. Damn it all to hell.

After a while Ryan picks up his spoon again and licks it. James smiles as Ryan starts to eat again, smiles and counts the spoonfuls like each one eaten added a year to his friend's life. It felt like that for him right then, and he willed himself to believe it. I will save you after all, he thinks. I will.

--There, Ryan says, putting down the spoon. Where to now?

--Back to the hotel? James says and admires the empty bowl. It's past time for us to check-out.

--Let's stay another night, Ryan says and stands up. No reason to leave with the day here half-done. We can start early tomorrow, brand new.

--Get a jump on the day.

--Yes. Exactly.

--The Terrace maybe then?

--You read my mind.

Standing up, Ryan stops and looks at James, waiting for him. I love you, he says. You know that don't you? Because you should. That's the truth to know.

--Yes, James says, almost sadly. I love you too.

--I was never much for saying that, Ryan says. I love you. Brendan and I made a joke about it at first, with a stupid rule against.

--You told me.

--But it wasn't funny really, a rule like that.

--No, not if you really loved him.

--For a while maybe I did, Ryan says. Or thought I did, when I first said it.

--So you did say it?

--Oh sure, we both did. Not that it mattered in the end.

--But with JC?

--With him, it might have mattered.

--Had you said it.

--Had I said it.

"It was the one thing he had left unsaid that he truly regretted," James said, letting Shelley take his hand as they walked back to the apartment they rented not far from the law school on West Washington drive. It was the middle floor of a three-story flat, and they were nearly there. A light was on in the front bedroom, and the glow from it spilled onto the open porch. It was there James had coffee in the morning, waking up before his shower and short walk to the law school. "Left unsaid until sometime later."

"And did it matter then?" Shelley asked, turning to look at James, and stopping. "When he finally said it, or tried to?"

"I assume it did," James said, shrugging. "But I can't say for sure, because we never talked about it again. We had our own things to talk about, to say and get said."

"And did you?"

"Get everything said?"

"Yeah."

"I'd like to think so," James said. "But I really don't know. When the end came, it came so fast, I barely had time to say good-bye."

"But you did."

James nodded slowly yes.

"Let's go in," Shelley said, gently taking James by the arm.

James nodded again, looking at Shelley, and then he followed her in.

An hour passed unnoticed, except for the young man who stared across the patio at Ryan sitting there, his legs stretched out, ankles crossed, arms at his side. The lake lapped at the dock that stretched like Ryan's legs, straight out. The metal chair hurt his back but he didn't seem to mind. He liked the view from here, across the lake, the sun dripping red-orange light like wax melting from the end of a burning candle.

The beer had made James drowsy-eyed, droopy-lidded, calm. He sighs and looks at Ryan, smiling. This will be okay, he thinks. It is times like this that work so well, easy times. He hears a cello play far off. Or just imagines. The music building is nearby, or he imagines. I'd like to play for you Ryan, and will. Someday, yes I will.

The future feels like this, he thinks. Stretching forward, through it. Through what? What we'll get through, come what may. Yes.

The young man watching, but still unnoticed, is twenty-three or -four. He stands and walks, nervous-scowling his way towards them. James notices first, and watches. The young man smiles and winks at him. He looks like Stephen for a moment, waning sun glinting in the mussed forelock of his hair. But then, in an instant, he looks like himself, whoever he is, and not like Stephen at all. Ryan stirs, glances, and glances again. He has assumed that the young man is not approaching the two of them, then realizes he is wrong. The young man smiles, crouches down.

--You're Ryan Gosling, he says. Aren't you? From the Star Wars movie.

--No, Ryan says. I'm not. Not anymore.

The young man laughs, asks to join them. Pretty bold, James thinks. But Ryan nods his assent, smiling. James pulls his chair around the table to make room, thinking, Ryan's going to flirt with him. He loves to flirt, and act the dirty-old man, even though, except for being ill, he looked hardly thirty, and was only forty-one.

--My name's David, the young man says. David Partir.

--Partir, James laughs, pronouncing the name as David had, with a slight French accent. Pas un nom tres plein d'espoir.

--C'est vrai, David says, smiling at James.

His eyes are gentle, James thinks, listening to David continue.

--Mais quand meme, peut-etre je suis a la place de laquelle on peut commencer a partir. Et cela vous donne de l'espoir, n'est ce pas?

--Pour commencer a partir de, oui, un commencement.

--Voulez-vous shut the fuck up, Ryan says, strumming the metal-mesh table-top with his fingernails.

--Sorry, David says, blushing, shrugging, arching his eyebrows.

--Yes, this is supposed to be about Ryan, James laughs.

--It is, Ryan says, managing a short laugh himself. It is all about me.

--Thank you for letting me say hello, David says, looking like he was making to leave. And sit here.

--Stop, Ryan says, waving his hand up and down, signaling for David to stay sat down. I'm the one intruding here, grumpy moldering me, a dried-up thing among the fresh young flesh of youth.

--He gives this speech twice a day, James says, pointing at Ryan with his thumb, like he was hitchhiking. He's being sarcastic. Don't let it scare you.

--Sarcastic my ass, Ryan says. Sarcasm is the...

--The protest of the weak, James says. See, now you're stealing my material.

--John Knowles, David says, brightly, like he'd scored a point.

--You know it?

--For sure.

--C'est cool.

--Hey, Ryan says, pointing. No more fucking French.

--Sorry, James says, shrugging and laughs.

Minutes pass, elapse, slip-sliding breeze-wafting, like smoke curls caught in wind, unspooling, spilling, spun-turned, aloft, floating, like haze, dander, scurf from coat or feather. This is the day unwinding into evening, an hour then two, with walks between, and food between, talk unending, and laughter. How do moments happen? Last then end? Like the end is always there, waiting, watching, unnoticed. But still there is a magic to it, a kind of fable-conjuration, with words, spill-spinning, like water pitcher-poured upon us, soothing, bathing, kiss-kept, lapping, like on lake-shore, ocean shore, any shore, until night, when no one notices, or listens, brings silence, and the day is over.

--Go find him, Ryan says, about to crawl in bed.

--No, James whispers. His fingers fidget the top button of his shirt. When Ryan is asleep, he thinks, but no, not now. I'm tired, James says, hoping Ryan believes him.

--No you're not. It's barely nine.

--And anyway, Ryan says, now in bed. I want to be by myself for a little while.

--You're just saying that.

--So what if I am? Go. He's in Memorial Library, seventh floor, in the study cubicle next to the men's bathroom, Southwest corner. No one gives you that much information unless he's hoping you'll stop by.

--He's probably not even there by now.

--You won't know unless you go see, will you?

--Go, Ryan says. And do something shocking.

--Are you sure you'll be all right?

--Grrrrrr...

--Okay, James smiles. But I won't be long.

--Be as long as you want.

--I love you.

--So I've heard. Now go.

"And so that's how you met Monsieur Duh-veed," Shelley said, looking at James on the end of the couch, and then at David stretched out on the floor.

"I kissed him before he had a chance to say no," David said, sitting up and putting his hand on James' knee.

"Juicy fruit," James said, taking David's hand and holding it.

Shelley and David exchanged puzzled looks. David shrugged at her and said, "You got me," laughing as he said it.

"Juicy fruit?"

"His kiss," James said. "That was what it tasted like. He was chewing gum."

"That's right," David said. "You never mentioned that before. How come?"

"I don't know," James said, a little sadly. "Ryan told me once, not to give all my memories away, to keep some for myself. I guess maybe that was why. Are you mad?"

"Of course not."

"I wish I'd known him," Shelley said, watching James' eyes as he stared straight ahead, studying his reflection in the bay window across the room. "But in a way I feel like I do, listening to you talk about him. Like he's still alive in a way. In you."

"Yeah," David said, softly.

"He, uh--he changed me," James said. "He changed how I thought of myself, and looked at the world. He seemed so sarcastic at first, and angry. But he wasn't really like that at all. He was a romantic, in the truest sense of the word. He believed in individual goodness, in heart, and in the power of imagining, of creativity, and love. That was why he so adored Whitman. Always Whitman,' he would say. There is no answer, no consolation not to be found there.' He gave me his copy of Leaves of Grass, just before he died. It had been a gift to him, I found out. But that's another story."

Two figures slouch at the end of a dock, cross-legged side-by-side and holding hands. Seen from shore they look like shadows, two dark shapes blocking a view to a small piece of sky. One arm extends, pointing up, skyward. The other's gaze follows, looking up, skyward. Water when it ripples, wind-pushed, makes a noise. They can hear it even without listening, above their whispered exchange.

--So you leave tomorrow. David says this without making it a question.

--Yes, James says. Probably early. Ryan never sleeps too late.

--Where to next?

--South. We should make it as far as Springfield, with stops and all. He likes to stop and look at stuff. And so do I, with him.

--It's a good thing you're doing.

--I wish I knew what it was I'm doing, James says. But I don't. It's something I just do, like a voice inside told me to.

--Like Abraham.

--Well, I'm not about to slay someone, but yeah. I guess. Are you Jewish?

--Yes.

--Lapsed Catholic here, James laughs. My grandmother snuck me off and had me baptized on the sly.

--What about your parents?

--It was just my mom and me. I didn't know my dad.

--You speak French beautifully. Did you grow up there?

--In a matter of speaking. But not literally.

--What do you mean?

--I spent several summers there with a close friend of mine. Stephane Rideau.

--Not the...

--That'd be the one.

--Wow. You know quite the galaxy of stars.

--Pun intended.

--Yes.

--I worked on the Star Wars movie with a friend of mine, a guy I went to school with. That's how I met Ryan, and the rest.

--Who was your friend? Not Aaron Fatone.

--Now Aaron Bass. But I'd rather not talk about him, s'il vous plait?

--No that's fine, David says. I just never met anyone famous before.

--I'm not famous.

--I meant Ryan.

--Well, as Ryan likes to say, be careful what you're famous for.

--I guess that's right.

--Speaking of Ryan, I should probably get back. James says this and turns to look at David. He notes the marked curve of his jaw-line, the smoothness of his skin. He realizes that it's not Stephen he looked like, not at all. It was Stephane, especially around the mouth, the pillow of his lips, frowning and serious, the flat wide knob of his nose, and dark-charcoal slash of his eyebrows. Startling beauty. Distant, moody, and obscure.

--I'll walk with you. David stands up, not releasing James' hand, helping him up. With you back to the hotel.

--You don't need to do that.

--I know I don't. But I want to. If you don't mind.

--I have a boyfriend, so you know.

--It's just a walk.

--And you're hand?

--You're keeping it warm for me. Simple, isn't it?

--Well, let's let it be.

--Good.

From the dock to shore and gravel, past stone-paved terrace sloping, past poplars, oak, and sycamore, through Memorial square, dancing round the edge of it, watching the octagonal-fountain splatter shallow-water, tinkling like ice falling into a tall glass. His hand held his, holding. Around the corner, the square behind the two of them turning, the library on the left, the bookstore on the right, hemmed in, shadowed, warm. His hand, holding. State street ahead, with the sound of the street-cleaner rumble-lumbering like some iron-cragged beast, the spinning broom sweeping up debris, drowning out all other sounds, the night-sounds.

But five minutes it takes, walking slowly, up the street, until turning on West Johnson. The blue and orange glow of the Howard Johnson motor-lodge is just ahead, and the two of them slow, then stop. Turning James looks at David, knowing. He kisses him, knowing, and feels a different kind of want.

--Until our paths cross again, David says.

--Do you think they will?

--Rapele! Peut-etre je suis a la place de laquelle on peut commencer a partir.

--Je me. Au revoir.

--Non. Ce n'est pas au revoir.

--Thank you David. James kisses him again. For tonight. And everything.

--Yeah, well I'm usually a jerk. David grins in a cockeyed way that makes James laugh and grab his arm. You must inspire me.

--Another time, another place.

--You read my mind.

"Hey there handsome," David says, coming up behind James in the kitchen and slipping his arms around him. James is half-bent over the sink rinsing a wine glass. "That was an awesome dinner earlier. Thank you."

"You're welcome," James said, craning his neck back to accept David's kiss.

"You want some help with the wine glasses?"

"Nope. Almost done."

"Let me dry at least. Give me that."

David takes the glass from James, kissing him again, and smiling.

"Is talking about Ryan making you sad?"

"A little," James said, shrugging. "But it's good to let it out. I've hardly ever said anything to anyone about it."

"Why now?"

"I don't know," James said, pulling a fork from soapy water and rubbing it with a sponge. "The movie we saw today sort of took me back. Then Shelley asked about it, and out it started to come. It still feels weird a little."

"Well share what you want or need to. You needn't tell it all at once. You'll find a time and way to do that. I'm sure of it."

"I hope," James said. "I hope."

A life full of hotel rooms, and the things that happened in them. James knew this, and thinks, staring out the window at the bay, I have to stop traveling. I travel too much, on the road too much, away from home too much, away from David too much, too much, too much. This is going to kill me if I keep this up.

In San Diego, three days, back in sunny San Diego. Two years, or three, it's been.

His navy-blue suit lay on the bed behind him, waiting. One room with two beds, one bed to sleep in, one bed for his suit lay on. Always a room with two beds. And his shoes, shined and shiny, waiting at the door.

He'd built an odd collection of habits, yes he had, over the years, in travel.

James heard a ping and turned around. The computer. Bending toward it, over the desk, leaning, he peered at the screen. Shelley had instant-messaged him.

shelley49@hotmail.com says: Ok, can you instant-message or not from your laptop? (I'm such a novice!) J says: Yes, I can. J says: lol J says: Well, this laptop, at least, which is in my hotel room hooked up to wi-fi connection at $14.95 per day shelley49 @hotmail.com says: Although even if you can IM, I'm realizing that you probably have to prepare for the mediation. Mediations. EEKS. And to think I had at one time thought of becoming a Magistrate because I thought that people who were looking to settle would be less confrontational than those "going the whole way." ppshelley 49@hotmail.com says: LOL J says: Everyone's looking to settle, it's just a matter of for how much. And when. J says: It's 6:55 Am here, and I don't have any prep today. Should have gone to work out, but I was good yesterday so I'll do it tonight shelley49@hotmail.com says: About the question in your email. I'm trying to think of what I said about the Orpheum theater. . . J says: They have a nice workout room here, it's open to the outside, near the pool, so you can look at real sky while you're on the leg-climber thing or whatever it's called. Torture, I guess. J says: Oh, the Orpheum...I was trying to remember, because what you said struck me, in a good way though. No bruise. shelley49@hotmail.com says: I'm laughing as I recall that I might have said that the fact that the Majestic theater closed down was prophetic . . . LOL J says: So, yeah, it was a kind of quick aside, your comment, that I didn't fully get. I think you were interrupted by screaming kids. LOL. And then when we picked up the conversation we went in a different direction and I forgot to ask J says: We were trying to remember the name of the theater, and you remembered it was the Orpheum, and then you said something like, that's appropriate or cool or something because the name has a meaning. Maybe I'm misremembering, which is VERY possible. shelley49@hotmail.com says: Let's see. I don't think I went into this in an instant-message to you, but one thing VERY interesting about Orpheus is that he's of course the guy who played the lyre . . . And I believe (back in the days when I was really into Mythology -- back in the days when the Greek gods were my contemporaries . . . LOL) . . . shelley49@hotmail.com says: Anyway, I believe that he was the one who tried to rescue his wife from Hades by playing his lyre. J says: Does it come from Orpheus, Orpheum, I assumed it did. But all I could think of that, at first, was Tennessee Williams play, Orpheus Descending shelley49@hotmail.com says: I think he tried to hypnotize, or entrance some god . . . But whom, I can't recall. shelley49@hotmail.com says: Who guarded the entrance to Hades? J says: I'll have to Google it. J says: Oh, ooh! J says: I know J says: Cereus, the three headed dog. He played the lyre and made him fall asleep shelley49@hotmail.com says: No, that's Harry Potter. LOL LOL L OL J says: Didn't she steal it? I assumed. J says: LOL shelley49@hotmail.com says: LOL Besides, cereus is a cactus, I think. J says: Well, there's still something guarding Hades, isn't there? J says: Okay, it says the wife was Eurydice. (I'm reading about it online.) shelley49@hotmail.com says: Yes, there is something guarding Hades, and you are right that it's a chien de trois tetes, I believe. But I think he somehow got into Hades (past the dog) and tried to trick a god or two (fallen god or two -- LOL) J says: Son of Apollo and the Muse Calliope. That's some lineage. J says: See, that Harry Potter bitch DID steal the 3-headed dog. LOL J says: I tried reading those books, but couldn't do it. shelley49@hotmail.com says: OK. Yes, and I'm reading now that Orpheus played the lyre for Pluto and Persephone? How nice for them. Shelley49@hotmail.com says: Persephone is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, who was abducted by Pluto to reign with him in the underworld. OOOOOO! J says: Right, and Orpheus got his wife back, but OF COURSE disobeyed the god's instructions and lost her again, and of course his lyre ended up as a constellation. Those Greeks loved their constellations. LOL shelley49@hotmail.com says: As do you, if I recall. How's David by the way? J says: He's really great. Called me this morning. He misses me, and I him. shelley49@hotmail.com says: I didn't see that part about Orpheus getting instructions. How did he disobey? Let me guess: he didn't have enough seating capacity in the . . . ORPHEUM theatre the gods told him to build. So back went the wife, and now the theatre is being used by Justin Timberlake in Vegas. LOL J says: So I guess The Orpheum would be named after Orpheus because he was an "entertainer"? Kind of a stretch, but I can see it. LOL (BTW, Justin is playing Vegas. I read it in the Times.) shelley49@hotmail.com says: He probably owes back taxes. J says: EXACTLY J says: But, if Justin had been married to Eurydice, he'd have probably left her there. shelley49@hotmail.com says: Ouch. LOL shelley49@hotmail.com says: I think Orpheus was more than an entertainer -- he's listed as a poet and musician. J says: He was told, after making everyone cry with his sad song of lament, that he could take Eurydice back to the world of the living, but he could not look back over his shoulder at her until he was entirely out of Hades. (Not sure why about that.) But, anyway, guess what? He stole a peak to make sure she was still there. Typical male, you say you'll do something, but they don't believe you really will. LOL J says: I mean, geeez, have a little faith, she's escaping from Hades, you think she's going to change her mind and stay after all? shelley49@hotmail.com says: Hey, here's a weird thing. I just read that "Orphism" is a mystic Greek religion offering initiates purification of the soul from innate evil and release from the cycle of reincarnation" Strange. Is reincarnation so bad? J says: It depends on what you come back as. shelley49@hotmail.com says: Why is that "Now, don't look back" theme in every culture? (Think pillars of salt, etc.) LOL J says: Digression: I'm at the W hotel here in San Diego, and they plainly hire people on looks. All the guys are over 6 feet, tanned, gorgeous, great hair, sleepy-eyed, laid-back surfer types. Way too beautiful, but, hey, nice to stare at. shelley49@hotmail.com says: That look. Who does that remind me of? Starts with an A... J says: Stop. shelley49@hotmail.com says: He's married now you know. J says: Stop! I know. Invited, I was. Now back to Hades with you. shelley49@hotmail.com says: Okay. But is there something taboo about "looking back"? OOOO! And I agree -- it's always the male who can't seem to follow orders. . . . Oops. I just remembered Pandora. Scratch that previous comment. J says: Yeah, that don't look back thing. Not clear what that's about. Hmmmm? Maybe like what's past is past, always look ahead, something like that. J says: And what about Persephone, or whoever -- don't eat that pommegranite (sp?), right? J says: And EVE!!!!!! J says: Oooh, women eating fruit they were told not too...another theme. shelley49@hotmail.com says: OK, fuck you. My take on that was and will forever be that Eve was the smart one. If that makes me evil, so be it. LOL J says: Here's another Madison question. The really good gyros were at Parthenon, right? But the second-rates one, across the street, what was that place called J says: Eve gets a bad rap, no doubt about it shelley49@hotmail.com says: Notice that when a woman disobeys, there's an improvement to culture. When a male disobeys, it's just pillars of salt, my friend. LOL LOL LOL J says: Not all people would agree that exile from the Garden of Eden is an improvement, but I'm with you, no doubt about it shelley49@hotmail.com says: I mean, so what if Pandora opened a box of evil? It made the world more interesting, didn't it? LOL J says: Totally shelley49@hotmail.com says: Evil schmevil. LOL J says: LOL J says: Did I lose you? J says: Shelley? shelley49@hotmail.com says: Just momentarily -- poopy diaper. LOL J says: lol J says: I'm about to jump into the shower, so it's my turn to sign off now. J says: It was fun chatting shelley49@hotmail.com says: What does the Greek root "orph" mean? . . Oh, you're going to shower. Not the best question to ask when someone has to sign off. LOL. I'll look into that. . . . So quickly, what do you make of the Orpheum stuff? Is it useable? For whatever you're up to. J says: I'm thinking of writing a story. Maybe I'll have us have an inane conversation about it, while eating bad tempura, -- that is, if I ever get the courage to write it, rather than endlessly thinking about. shelley49@hotmail.com says: Are you okay? J says: I'm fine. Just a little stressed. And yes the Orpheum stuff is useful, that is, if the is about death and loss -- you know, a musical. shelley49@hotmail.com says: Well, there's Orpheus to play his lyre. J says: And the muses as back-up singers. shelley49@hotmail.com says: Wait. The root is "or" and it combines with "pheum" Why not have our (so-called) inane conversation at the Parthenon, to stay on the Greek theme. Anyway, I will search my computer chips in my brain to come up with the other second-rate gyros place. Talk to you later! J says: Bye shelley49@hotmail.com says: All I can hear is the drunken slur "gyro-fry-pepsi" right now. LOL shelley49@hotmail.com says: Why aren't' you my next-door neighbor? Oh, that's right. Then you would live in Milwaukee, and . . . NEVER MIND! Miss you. J says: Sorry to run. I'll call you when I get back to Seattle. shelley49@hotmail.com says: OK. Talk to you later. I hate people who say, "Ok, I've gotta go," on the phone, and just continue chatting. Now I'm becoming the IM version! LOL. Take care. Bye!

James clicked closed the lid to his lap-top, leaving his hand sitting on top of it. He and Shelley had only lately starting staying close in touch again. There was all of his travel, on his side, and her family on hers. Still, there was never any doubt that they were friends. And when they found the time, they reconnected, and found it as it had always been. That was the essence of friendship he had found: it survived dormancy well, ready always to bloom again.

Sighing he stood up. This day just started already was eating at him. He could feel the sharp-tense pain of anxiety clenched in his abdomen, and throbbing like a bruise. Too many things to think about. Too many thoughts to think. And here back in San Diego, where it had all begun. And also ended. Or had seemed once. But now he wasn't so sure.

They made it to New Orleans just past midnight, and quickly found a hotel in the French Quarter, one block from Jackson Square. James paid for the room with a credit card that he knew was already close to its limits. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and stared absently out the window at the wooden sign that hung above it, swaying slowly back and forth, pushed by the sour breeze blowing in across the Mississippi river.

--There you are sir, she says. Will one key be enough?

--You better give me two, James says, turning around to take the keys. I have a friend with me. He's waiting in car.

--Do you wish to have the bellman park it for you?

--No thank you. I can manage.

--The lot is around the corner, on Decatur. Show the attendant your key, and he will let you in.

--Thank you.

--Enjoy your stay sir.

James looks at the two brass keys in his hand, as if he is not sure how they had got there. Then he looks back at the woman who had handed the keys to him. Her hair is limp and long, the color of brackish water, and hooked behind her ears, as if in an after-thought. She smiles vaguely, even uneasily, as James looking at her turns into a stare.

--Will there be anything else? she asks.

--No, James says, mumbling. No. Thank you.

He looks at the keys again, turning around. They are the old-fashioned kind, heavy brass, worn and dented, with the room number engraved on a flat knob at the end of each. Room 7. Lucky seven, he thinks, gripping the keys in the ball of his fist, and heads for the door. Pushing with his shoulder, the door groans open. The smell of the air is still a shock, rotting and pungent, like something dead or dying, moldering, decay.

Decay, he thinks. This is the smell of decay.

Ryan is leaning against the car when James gets back to him. Grim-faced, he looks like he's in a bad mood. Still. His back has been hurting him. He grimaces with each small move, unable to get comfortable, to sit in any way that feels right. He won't take anything for it, even aspirin. James has stopped saying anything about it, stopped asking him to at least take some aspirin. He rubs his back at night, until Ryan falls asleep.

--A hot bath will do you good, James says, taking Ryan's arm. A good long soak. And then some rest. Are you hungry?

No, Ryan says, and then says nothing more.

Soon they are in their room, the door soft-thudded closed behind them. The two keys rattle on the bedside table where James tosses them. They glint in the weak light cast by lamp there. James goes to fill the bathtub while Ryan undresses. It is a grand white-enameled cast-iron monstrosity of a tub that sits on four silvered legs, its yawning mouth open, waiting. Two people could easily fit, side-by-side, or opposite each other. The water gush glurg-glurgles and the bathroom fills full with sweet-lavender scented steam. James trails his fingers through the water, tra-la-la-ing the surface, and frothing soap-foam like that that gathers on ocean shore, or at the edge of park fountains.

Fifteen minutes pass, mostly unnoticed. Clothes are removed. A suitcase is opened. A jazz channel is found on the radio. The bathtub full, Ryan naked sits in it. And his heat-pinked toes peak from the steaming soapy water and wiggle. James sits on the toilet, smiles, idles the time, suppresses a yawn, then takes inventory of his friend. The sunken sallow chest, the inelastic sagging skin, the scuffed red knees, two islands above the archipelago of his ten toes. The floating almond-shaped tip of his penis below the dark submerged tangle of his pubic hair, like a black coral reef. His head turban-wrapped in a white bath towel, resting on another towel still. Ryan hums quietly, to himself, and his eyes open and close, slowly, steadily, like he is practicing how to do this.

--Do you know the story of this place? Ryan asks, and turns his head to look at James. One corner of the towel his head rests against slips into the water with a soft slapping splash. James watches small lapping water-ripples crawl across Ryan's lightly freckled right shoulder and then retreat to surface, smoothing out.

--A place this old must have lots of stories.

--Every place is a story, Ryan says. Every house is. Don't you think?

--I suppose so. Yes.

--There's a book in the other room. Look in there.

James had not seen the book, but he goes and looks and finds it. He is back right away and the book opens on his lap. The cover is cold on his legs. He pulls the bathrobe closed, resettling the book on white terry cloth. That's better, he thinks. His index finger traces down a row of words and page numbers, the index, his eyes scanning behind his finger tries to keep up with his eyes, and not miss anything.

Is that why it's called an index finger, he wonders.

He finds an entry on the French Market Inn. It was built in 1769 as a residence for Don Joseph Xavier Delfau de Pontalba. Flipping forward several pages, he looks for Pantalba, and finds it. Pantalba, Joseph Xavier Delfau de (Don); Junior Judge; elected January 1, 1795. See also Building of the Place d'Arms and the Pantalba Apartments (nee French Market Inn), pp. 112-129; and, The Story of the Baroness, pp. 167-181. Closing and opening the book, James looks for page 112.

--Here, he says, looking at Ryan who is smiling at him. It says on February 20, 1795, Governor Carondelet, head of the municipal government in New Orleans, granted to Don Joseph Xavier Delfau de Pontalba the right to open a street through the land he owned in front of the levee into Chartres street. But only on the condition all of the houses built thereon be of brick with flat roofs, and that on the extreme end of each house, two doors shall be built with a balcony over each door, in order that the symmetry of the city will not be disregarded.

--How gay, Ryan says, and laughs.

--Or French.

--I think it was still Spanish then. James stands up and helps Ryan adjust the towel behind his head, moving it so that it is more behind his back and neck too.

--Is that better? James asks.

--Yeah, thanks.

--Here's a drawing of the place back then. And a photo from later.

Ryan looks at the charcoal drawing, then the photograph, his eyes moving back and forth, darting, lively, comparing. He is in pain. James can tell, and wants to ask him what to do, to help, to make him feel better, to salve or save.

--Is the water warm enough?

--Read more, Ryan says, not wanting to be babied. What happened here?

--There was a wedding, James says, then starts to paraphrase the text he reads.

--Young Baron Joseph Xavier Celestin (Tin-Tin) Delfau de Pontalba is married to his cousin Micaela Leonarda Antonia Almonester y Roxas the daughter of the Spanish AlfÈrez Real (Royal Standard Bearer), Don Andres Almonester y Roxas, and Louise de la Ronde. The match was made between the young baron, who had served in the French Army, and his New Orleans cousin when she was only fifteen. An early developer and philanthropist, her father, Don Andres, died in 1798, when she was only three years old, leaving his extensive income and property to be administered by his wife and daughter.

--Was he handsome?

--Who?

--Our young baron.

--It doesn't say, James shrugs. But I imagine so.

--Yes, Ryan says. Let's imagine he looks like whom? Stephen. Let's imagine that. Because I'll bet he'll be a scoundrel.

--Stop. James smiles at Ryan. It is a wry smile, gentle, not scolding. You are a lovely man he thinks. Please don't die. I love you.

--So go on.

--Since her father was thirteen years passed away and dead, Bernard Marigny gives away the bride at the wedding. The groom, the young baron...

--Our scoundrel.

--We don't know that yet, James laughs.

--Our scoundrel, Ryan says again.

--Our scoundrel is the son of Bernard's godfather, Joseph Xavier Delfau de Pontalba, the builder of this house. Bernard is at the wedding representing Marshal Ney a distinguished friend of the Pontalbas, and one of Napoleon's closest advisors.

--Ah, Napoleon. I dated him once I think. What a lousy fuck.

--So it isn't true what they say about short guys? James says, and laughs.

--You tell me.

--Stephen's not short.

--But you are.

James blushes, looks down at the book, and begins to read again.

--The young couple sails...

--The scoundrel and his bride.

--Yes, the scoundrel and his bride sail to Paris after the wedding accompanied by their mothers.

--That can't be good.

--Probably not.

--So go on.

--Back in New Orleans, Micaela's father-in-law, Baron Joseph Pontalba is dissatisfied with having not received the entire Almonester fortune.

--Ah, the scoundrel's father is also a scoundrel. That figures.

--You like that word, don't you.

--Scoundrel.

--Yes, Ryan says, making a comically serious face. Scoundrel, meaning rogue, or villain. From the Latin for James' boyfriend Stephen.

--Who's being the scoundrel now, James says, rolling his eyes.

--Anyway, James continues. After no doubt grumbling around his mansion for a bit, the Baron soon after sets about acquiring control of Micaela and her mother's vast holdings. By the time she turns seventeen, two years later, Micaela has reluctantly relinquished all control over her properties and possessions to the Pontalba men, her husband and his father having united against her.

--Men are pigs. Ryan slaps the water with his right hand and manages a giggle. He looks at James, who looks at him.

--A motto to live by, James says.

--Precisely. So make a note.

--Upon Micaela's mother's death in 1825, Louise willed all of her property in France and Louisiana to Micaela alone. But the enraged Pontalba men, once more out-foxed by a woman, insists she immediately sign over all rights in exchange for Micaela being allowed control of her mother's houses in Paris. Feeling she really has no choice, Micaela relents and then moves to Paris to administer her properties there, away from the Pontalba men, and thus allowed more freedom in business and personal matters. But she soon discovers that to make the repairs needed on her mother's house, she needed loans, something she could not obtain them without her husband's signature.

--Do you want to get in? Ryan looks concerned asking this. You look cold.

--I'm okay. Is the water still warm enough?

--It's fine.

James thinks a moment then sets the book on the floor next to the bathtub and slips his robe off. It falls lazily, slumping mounded into a fluffed-up pile on the floor. He is wearing boxer-shorts and slip these off too. Naked, he steps carefully into the tub opposite Ryan, facing him from across the not small expanse of water between them.

--There. That is nice.

--See.

--Okay, where were we, James says, retrieving the book.

--Poor Micaela, near destitute in her crumbling Parisienne manse.

--Right.

--Is my leg all right there?

--It's fine.

--In 1830, her funds depleted, Micaela boards a ship for New Orleans. There she successfully reclaims her rightful inheritance in an American court.

--Hurray America!

--Soon after, under order of a French court, she is remanded to France upon Baron Pontalba's request. On the morning of October 19, 1834, the day before she is set to depart, the Baron enters her bedroom and shoots her four times in the chest.

--Here? Ryan pressed his hand to his chest, which was as pink as his toes had been before. In this hotel?

--Somewhere here, yes.

--What if it was here in this room?

--I don't know. But it's kind of ghoulish to think so.

--No it's not.

--All right, James smiles. Later that same day, after amending his will to exclude Micaela's two daughters, he turns the gun on himself. But --ah-hah!

--Tell me, tell me!

--Micaela lost most of her left hand and lung in the attack. But she survived.

--Hurray! Ryan slaps the water with both hands twice, and the book James holds is splashed a little.

--Several years later, after a long recuperation in Paris, Micaela returns to New Orleans to realize a project that she had been planning: the rebuilding of the Pontalba Apartments (1849-51) and the renovation of the dilapidated Place d'Armes, soon re-dedicated as Jackson Square. Her intention was to revitalize the decaying French part of the city in the glorious Parisian style. She died in Paris in 1874. Formally separated from Pontalba, she was never able to legally divorce him.

--At least he was dead.

--Yes, James laughed. There's that.

The next twenty minutes were spent with James helping Ryan to finish his bath, help him from the tub, dry and dress him in the sweatpants that he liked, and lay him down on the bed. Gently James rubbed Ryan's troubled back, up and down his spine, between his hips where it was most tender, and at the corners of his shoulder blades. Ryan was soon asleep, quickly, scaring James. He wondered if this was how his death would come. Quickly, a surprise.

Tears filled his eyes.

--Pal o' me heart, he whispered. Pal o' me heart.

"That's what he called me -- Pal o' me heart."

"Pal o' me heart," Shelley said, her eyes wide and tearful. "It's beautiful. Sounds Irish. Pal o' me heart."

"Yes, Irish. From a book we read together. At Swim, Two Boys."

"Oh my gawd," Shelley said, sitting up, the comforter slipping from around her shoulders. "I've read that. I love that book."

"I've read it too," David said. "Required reading. James 101. He gave it to me after our first date."

"We read it together," James said, wiping his eyes with a pillow from the couch. "Ryan and I. Twice together. And then David and I too."

"This man is nothing," David said, his arm slipped behind James, holding him. "But he's about books."

"Shelley's read as much as me," James said. "Do you remember the epigraph Shells? The one O'Neill used for Part One of the book."

"Not exactly," Shelley said. "But it's Whitman I know."

"I will make inseparable cities, with their arms about each other's necks."

"By the love of comrades."

"Now I remember," Shelley says.

"It's not his best poem," James says. "But a beautiful thought."

"What happened next," David said, his face nuzzled in James' neck. "With you and Ryan, where'd you go?"

"Every journey ends," James said, sitting silent first for several minutes, his hand held now by Shelley, who had seen him start to cry, and had her arm around him too. David held James as well, kissing gently his neck, and rocking him.

"Except for its telling," David whispered.

"Yes," Shelley said, leaning her head on James' shoulder, staring at the window, and their reflections there.

"Come what may," James softly repeated. "Come what may."

The house was hardly standing. But that was not the worst of it. The fact that it was still there at all was what had torn his breath and sweated the back of his neck. Ryan had vomited five times that day and it was not yet one o'clock in the afternoon. His eyes were pale, glazed over, their usual icy blue now dull like an old nickel. James was afraid for him. He thought he might be dying.

--It's still there. Ryan manages to say this while suppressing a gag. He takes a small sip of water from the bottle that James hands to him.

--Just barely.

One half the house is charred burnt-black, like it had been doused with kerosene, or set ablaze somehow, on accident or purpose. But whatever the cause, the fire had failed to take, leaving black lick-marks along the roofline, and black-cracked wood along the front and one side. There was no door, nor window glass. A tattering of curtain-cloth whispered in one window like a memory of what had once hung there. The fence lay flat and broken across the front yard, mere debris. Ryan stared then vomited, holding his chest and bending over, as yellow-green liquid splash-slosh-dribbled from his mouth and lips. His retching sounded like fabric ripping. James smoothed Ryan's shirt, rubbing his back, waiting. And then it ended.

--Help me across the yard, Ryan says, holding out his hand. James takes it, and follows next to him, not leading. They step carefully around broken glass, rusty cans, and the cracked pickets of the fallen fence. At the doorway, both smell piss and dust and something else, something antique and rare, like mildewing books, scriptures, scrolls, wet tarnished copper, verdigris, and something else.

Through the front door they step and find bare wood floors, cracked, scraped, sun-bleached, the color of bone. The back of the house is gone. There is no wall, but sky alone, a bleak non-beckoning bird-less horizon. Ryan gasps to see it, and begins to crumple, fold. James moves to face him, and slips his hands beneath his arms, holding him up. Ryan's eyes are wide and round, terrified. His lips tremble and he drools. James wipes Ryan's lips and chin with the tail of his shirt, raised up to his face, like a napkin at dinner.

--Can you stand? James whispers.

Ryan nods and steadies himself.

--I didn't expect it to be here, Ryan whispers. But this?

--We might still find them, James says, surprised at how heavy Ryan feels, his lean on him, afraid to let go. You said there was a closet, like the one over there.

James nods at what is left of a small room, the closet, and one wall winging from it, the only thing in that area still standing. It could be a bedroom, and there is the door that could be a closet. Ryan follows the direction of James' nod. His head moves slowly, like he doubts that he has much energy left, and so only a few more moves.

--Maybe, Ryan says. It's so hard to remember. It didn't look like this then.

--Let's look, James says, holding harder to Ryan's arm. Can you make it?

--I think, Ryan says.

"How long had it been by then?" David asked, yawning. It was just past midnight now, and he and James and Shelley all sat huddled together on the couch, covered by the comforter, listening to James tell his story.

"Nearly four weeks I think."

"What I don't get," David said, "is why he thought the boxes might still be there. Had the house been vacant all that time?"

"He paid rent on it for years," James said. "It was the place he thought of as his home. The placed he had started from."

"Pour commencer a partir de," Shelley said, nudging David, who grinned at her, a little sadly. "Yes," he said.

"He had no close family," James continued. "None that he ever spoke of."

"But you were family to him."

"Yes," James nodded. "And he to me."

"So he had lived there for a while with JC?"

"For six months, yeah."

"Do you think that's why he kept the place?" David asks. "Unfinished business."

"I'm not entirely sure," James said. "But I know he owned the house his whole life. He bought it after making his first bigger commercial film."

"I can't imagine it cost him much," Shelley said.

"Not then it didn't," James said, frowning. "Not in money. But owning it all those years, thinking about it, that cost him a hell of a lot later. That much I know."

"So what was in the closet?" David asked, watching James' eyes for tears.

"Nothing but more sky," James said, staring straight ahead. "Endless empty sky."

Walking back to the hotel, nearly noon now and late, James absentmindedly, as if by instinct, loosens his tie. Then, staring at it, James stops in the middle of crossing the street. He has stopped to stare at his tie. Why had he worn it, this tie today? This tie today. The tie he had worn to the baptism, blue and gold. He'll turn twelve next week. Did I? Yes. The birthday card and present already sent. David reminded him. How long ago was that? A week? No the baptism. Ten years? Do I still believe? Credo?

Did I ever believe? Credo?

In what did I believe? Credo?

Nothing.

Now on the corner crying, on his knees, cars unnoticed, people unnoticed. A woman leaning down to help. Are you all right? Sir, are you all right.

I'm falling apart. Apart, apart. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Fuck poetry. Fuck you Keats, you and all your anarchy loosed upon the world, upon me. I just want to go home, back to my room, back to the room in my heart.

It can be cold in Boise, even in summer, when icy air pushes down from the Sawtooth Mountains. Driving on northwest on I-84 there is nothing to do but stare straight ahead and try to pay attention, trying not to let the mind wander.

One more day, then we'll be back in Seattle. That was what James thought on this cold but sunny Sunday driving into Boise, Ryan asleep beside him. But what he did not think, or imagine, was that less than ten minutes later Ryan would begin to have trouble breathing, turning purple-red then blue.

The car was nearly rear-ended pulling over on the freeway. Gravel shoot-scattered from beneath the tires as James frantic-pumped the brakes. The back-end of the car swung back and forth on its own, sashay, sashay, and barely stopping by the time James is out of the car and dragging Ryan from it. The sound of Ryan's heels dragging is the loudest thing that James has ever heard, except for Ryan's desperate gasps, which will resound in his ears for the rest of his life.

--Don't die, he screams. Don't die.

His lips are sharply crackled, sharded, and dry. James breathes for him, forcing air into his paper-bag lungs, his cheeks tear-scalded, his heart crooked in his chest. For hours and hours this moment lasts. Or so it seems. Until the ambulance ride to the hospital lasts longer still, an eternity of breathing. Then watching Ryan wheeled away and waiting on hold for someone to find Toni, please find Toni, yes I know, she's somewhere on the set, but find her.

--Hello? Hello?

He could not speak, only gag and cry. He's not dead, is all he manages, then he hands the phone to the nurse. James watches the nurse's cheeks redden, and her lips purse. He can hear Toni screaming. The nurse starts to cry. Not knowing what else to do, James takes her hand. Thank you, he whispers. She looks at him, shakes her head at him, expecting something, he thinks, expecting him to speak. Toni is telling her what to do, he think-hopes. But then the nurse's eyes got widen, and she hands back the phone. --Something is wrong, she whispers. With Toni? he wonders, terrified.

But then he hears banging-buzz. And then he hears the page, Code Blue, Room 311. I have to go, the nurse says, running away.

The light tunneled, with him pushed to the back of it, to darkness. To come all this way, he thinks. Almost, almost, so close. His knees release him. There is a cold slap of linoleum and darkness pushing in, like water, drowning him.

The end, he thinks. The end. This is how the story ends.

He had on purpose turned the color from the television, preferring to watch it in black-and-white. Shelley slept curled on the couch, the blanket she'd pulled over her on the floor now. Dust motes lingered at the edge of the couch, just beneath, in the fringe of the dark there, like silver-gray mice waiting to have the house back for their own. It felt strange for him to watch these talking-heads again, each one like a papier-mache mask, dancing mouth agape, lips-smacking, there in the flickering hoar-frost that was their garage-sale television's picture, grainy-gray, faded photographs, but moving, refusing to be mute-pasted or secured, like in a photo-album that might try to hold them, and failing, become a documentary unfolding like a badly-dubbed film, the spoken words not quite matching up with the movement of lips, Conrad's journey-weary listeners, snuggling up close in the fading light to hear the tale, the tale of a journey too long, without destination, except, except, it was him there too. There I am now, he thinks.

"He couldn't fold the map right, but it didn't seem to bother him. He'd try and try again it finally it was this strange flat shape that it wasn't meant to be but was. Then he'd slide it under the sun-visor, which was where he said all maps belonged, and he'd laugh a little, like he knew he'd wrestled the map into submission again, and point and say, "This is it, the way." I'm not sure he knew whether it was, or not, or whether he even cared. It was just his way of saying that he was glad he was on the move again. And he was.

"When I first met Ryan, he scared me. He'd shaved his head. For the part I think. But that was not what scared me. What scared me is how small he seemed. He wasn't tall. I mean. Stephane wasn't tall either. But Ryan -- not that he was short, he was slight. I don't know. I was hardly thirteen. Twelve. But I seemed bigger than him. It was like he didn't want to take up much space. Sometimes you wouldn't notice he was there. And when you did, it was like, Ryan--where'd you come from. He'd just say. `Oh, I was here all along. What's wrong?'

"I don't think he expected to act again. In a way he despised acting. He thought it was untruthful somehow. I'd argue with him that it was only untruthful when it was done badly, or when the performance failed. But he disagreed. And with that he was with Stephane, because he thought the same thing. That was how I got the idea to put him in the film. It was a small role, but it was key. And his performance, what can I say? If it was a lie, it was a brilliant one."

"With his assured good looks and his role as the son of Zeus on television's popular Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, it may seem ironic that as a scrawny six-year-old Ryan Gosling used to get chuckles by donning a speedo and flexing like a professional weightlifter. Born in London, Ontario, Canada, in November of 1980, and raised in nearby Cornwall, Gosling was withdrawn for private schooling early on due to harassment by his classmates. Quickly learning the value of confidence, the bright youngster focused his energy into acting and landed a two-year role on The Mickey Mouse Club at age 12. Moving on to television commercials and roles in such films as Disney's...

"Hey babe." It was David, standing in the doorway to there room. "Come to bed. Don't watch that anymore."

"It's what got me to thinking about him again today," James said, looking up at David standing there, in his boxers, leaning against the doorframe. "I saw it was going to be on again. The Biography channel. It all seems wrong somehow."

"Come on." David held out his hand. "Turn it off and come to bed."

"I don't know why I watch it," James said, standing up. He looked at Shelley on the couch, sleeping, and reached to shake her, but decided to leave her be. "It's like I'm punishing myself."

"For what?"

"I don't know." James turned off the television and walked to where David stood, taking his hand. "For not figuring out a way to save him somehow. That's all I wanted to do. To save him."

"Those weeks on the road with him. That must have felt like a lifetime to him, and salvation. You gave him that. And more. So much more. I'm sure of it."

"You sound like him, when you talk like that."

"Is that why you love me?"

"It's one reason. Not the only one."

"Let me get you undressed."

"I can do it."

"No I want to," David said, kissing James softly on the neck. "I like to."

"I wish he'd lived to see us together. He hated Stephen."

"What's not to hate."

"Stop," James said, pressing his hand against David's lips. "There's no points to be had for that. Stephen's past now."

"I know."

"Ryan always remembered you. Did I ever tell you that?"

"In ways," David said, pulling James now gently into bed with him, one arm out, receiving him, then pulling the blanket upon them, covering, warm. "Here and there."

"All the way to Memphis, and then beyond, it was you he seemed to talk about. I thought he was smitten."

"Smitten?"

"That's what I thought at first," James said, settling into David's arms. "It was a game we'd played, boy-watching. When I was in Seattle, I'd take him to the park, and we'd sit and ogle. Harmless fun. And he seemed to like it. He laughed and looked happy, not sick. We had some great times together there."

"I can see that, see you and him, doing that."

"I'd read Socrates to him," James said, his nose nestling in the nest of David's hair, his voice a low whisper in David's ear. "Half the time I thought he was asleep. He loved to sleep in the park. `Let the grass cradle me,' he'd say."

"But later, when we were on the road, on our journey, he told me that he'd heard every word I'd read to him. I was mad for the Greeks back then. I read the Iliad to him too. That was his favorite. And mine. The story of Achilles, his deadly pride, his love for Patroclus, his shame, and then his tragic revenge."

"Will you read it to me sometime? The Iliad?"

"If you want."

"I do."

"I think he knew I'd find my way back to you."

"I'm glad you did."

"In the car, on the way to Memphis, he was matchmaking even then, like he saw something that I had not seen, not fully. Ryan saw something in you, something good and true, and he wanted me to have it, or share it, too."

"And for what it's worth," David said, cupping James' face in his hand, staring in and at his eyes. "You do have it. And I give it gladly."

"And gladly I accept it. Yes I do."

"I love you James. I really do."

"Merci mon ami et mon amour. Je t'aime aussi."

He wore his hair short now, cut close to his head. His hair was mostly gray. JC looked older but not old. James thought him more handsome than before, more handsome than he remembered. It had been years since he'd seen him, or been to the house where he had spent the majority of his childhood, growing up, and then one long year later, wishing against a hardening heart, and becoming a man. They stood together in the back yard now, JC's hand resting softly on his shoulder. James could feel its slight pressure through the near-damp fabric of his dress-shirt.

--It bloomed not two days ago, JC says. Or started to.

--I'm always surprised at how glowing white the flowers are. The heart-shaped leaves. And the fragrance.

--When the breeze is blowing inland, I can smell the flowers from kitchen with the windows open.

--Can I take a sprig?

--Of course.

--For my room, at the hotel. And to take home.

--You should have stayed with us. You know you're always welcome here.

--It seemed kind of awkward really. I don't know why. But I wanted to see you, and the lilacs again, how lovely they are, and apt.

--Apt. JC rolls the word across his lips, like a songwriter would, testing its fit and feel, the lilt of it. I never thought of it like that. But you're right.

--Syringa reticulata, James thinks, watching JC reach up and take a sprig from the tree for him, lightly twisting it free with a quick-gentle snap. The genus or Latin name for lilacs is Syringa, which is derived from the Greek word "syrinx" meaning "hollow stem". Ancient Greek doctors used the stems to inject medications into their patients, or bleed them, trying to save their lives.

--These were like medicine for him, James says, almost to himself. These and all the flowers you filled his room with.

--Do you miss him? JC looks at James bluntly.

--Every minute, of every hour, of every day, James says. He never leaves me yet seems always gone. It's a strange feeling.

--I imagine.

--Do you miss him?

--I do, JC says. Even though it seems I hardly knew him.

--Oh, you knew him, James says, surprised. And he knew you.

JC only nods at this, handing the sprig of lilac to James, who sniffs it, blinking.

--He'd be proud you, you know. I am.

--You are?

--Of course I am, JC says, his hand back on James' shoulder, there with a light-tap and caress. Look at you.

--Thanks, James shrugs.

--Will you stay for lunch?

--I'm going to see my mom. Then I have another mediation set for two.

--Dinner then?

--How's Aaron, James asks, the lilac to his nose again, sniffing. He does not want to stay. It hurts to be in the house. I heard he had a second little boy.

--Yes, JC smiles. Frank James. Lance is there visiting now.

--Will you give him my best when you see him, Lance, and Aaron too?

--James, JC says. And then he says something more, something that James does not hear because he's not listening. James' sees JC's hand, for but a moment, then feels it lands on his shoulder, tap-rub, tap-rub. James smiles and looks at it, this hand on him. The fingers are wrinkled and rough, with the nails brittle-cracked and worn. All the dirt, he thought. Always planting, always spring. How did you do it JC? James wonders. Keeping him alive like that? And risking losing Lance for that? Why did you do it? Not out of guilt. I know that.

--What? James says, not hearing what JC said. I'm sorry.

--Another time maybe, JC smiles.

--Yes, James nods. I'll call you. But he knows he won't.

--I'm glad you came, JC says. Don't be such a stranger. We fixed the old stone house up as an apartment. Aaron lived there for awhile, the first year of his residency. You're welcome to use it any time, to get away, or what you like.

James glances up across the yard, a practiced glance. He knew the grounds here well. His eyes light upon the simple roof that caps the small stone house; it peaks from behind a stand of dogwoods, and a rose-bush that JC has let grow wild. He easily recalls the smell of the place, or how it once smelled, when he was young, and he would hide there among the lawn-mower, rakes, and stacked bags of lawn-fertilizer and peat moss, playing hide-and-seek with Aaron. A game we're still playing, James thinks.

--Maybe I will, James says, his turn to touch JC, there on the crook of his arm, where the skin is soft and fleshy. Once my travel lets up a little.

--You're on the road a lot.

--Yes. David hates it. But...

--He understands?

--I'd like to think he does. No, he does.

JC's head tips in appraisal, looking at James, studying his eyes.

--I should go, James says. My mom will be waiting. Thank you for the lilac.

--They're as much yours as mine, JC says. More I'd say.

--Ours then.

--Perfect.

James turns to walk away but stops. JC watches and steps after him, knowing. He has seen James do this before--stop, wordlessly turn, stare, then nod, then leave. But this time he is not wordless, this time he stares and says, You know, I spent the happiest and saddest times of my life here, both. It makes it hard to come back. I'm sorry.

--Don't be, JC says, his fingers playing up James' arm, to his shoulder, his neck, and then his tear-wetted face. You'll find your way back in time.

--It still hurts an awful lot, James says, crying. He meant so much to me. But I never thought it would hurt for so long.

--Maybe it's not just missing him that hurts. Maybe it's something else.

--I don't know. I really don't.

--You're welcome to sit out here, by yourself if you want. I have some errands to run anyway. You know your way out.

I do, James thinks. Always ready with an exit plan, that's me.

--You know, James says. I think I will. Sit here for a while. If you don't mind.

--No, JC said. Stay as long as you want. I'll call your mom for you.

--Would you?

--It'll give me a chance to say hello.

--Thank you JC.

Smiling, JC kisses James palm, then his cheek.

--Come back to the house when you're ready.

James nods and watches JC go. The yard seems smaller now, and the time for JC to get to house seems shorter. In a blink, he disappears, as if his presence had been imagined, and James had blinked, and he'd gone away. Two butterflies duel a few feet beyond, flashing shiny blue like lapis lazuli. The fragrance of the lilac tree, which has grown to be twenty feet at least and bushy, embraces him, like a hug that holds him from behind. Remembering Ryan dance in the grass, naked and free, James slowly undresses and crawls beneath the lilac tree, wearing only his t-shirt and briefs, to curl around its trunk. The bark is brown and shiny, smooth where it springs from the ground, mounding the grass there into a gentle small slope. Ryan's ashes were buried here the day of his wake, and then the lilac planted.

--Forgive me if I get your story wrong, in a hundred ways I probably will. But I'm about to burst for the not telling of it. And you told me always that it was what was unsaid that will undo you in the end, that it always will. So I'm going to try to say it, say it true, for you, Ryan. Pal o' me heart, pal o' me heart.

II. The Christening.

"Twas a lad once who on a day long in gray flew his kite so high it seemed he be holding on to not a thing but long yards of string. And the other fellas in the park kept be saying to him, `Hey there laddie, what ya be doing holding that string like that? Merely tangled in the tree it is.'"

"But the lad just smiled, staring straight up to where the string be stretching, through the tree, and surely past it. That twas what he thought. He did for sure."

The boy in his lap was staring up, watching his father's eyes.

"The hour unfurled, like that string must have done, and the lad's papa came round for him. Twas dinner time it was, and he knew where his son was to find him."

The boy nods, listens. His two small pink hands wrapped around his father's two-most fingers. The boy is by two days four years old.

"The other fellas had long since left the lad alone, and so his papa and him had the park to their own selves, just the two of them. What got you there,' the papa asked. Tis my kite,' the lad said, in hardly but a whisper. Got it tangled in the tree looks like,' the papa said. No, papa, it flies yet, just beyond there. See.'"

"Night was close to coming, and the lad's father shuffled his feet like he didn't know what to be doing. The lad was still staring up, hurting his neck it must. The father rubbed it there, on his neck, thinking that same thing. And sitting down beside him too. Perhaps we let this one go,' he said. Let it fly away free. What do ya say `bout that?'"

"What happened da?" asked the boy in the lap, squeezing his father's fingers, and watching his father's eyes. "Tell me true."

"The lad loosed his fingers from that string, and the wind took it."

"It flew away? With the kite it did?"

"True it did, son. True it did."

He lifted the fell-plume of red hair from off her shoulders where it draped like curtains cascading between window and floor. The pink of her neck exposed, he kissed it, then smiled. Morning-whiskers tick-tickled her skin. A soft laugh gurgled in her throat like a sweet lozenge. He smiled and kissed again, letting her hair fall against his face, like curtains-closed, so he was in the darkened room made by the crook of her neck and shoulder, and the arm come-up to embrace and pull him front-wise around to her.

--Hey there, Toni says, her eyes still languid of sleep, and happy.

--There's neither sweeter smell nor taste than a kiss of your skin, he says, inhaling. It's all I can do but to eat you up.

She kissed him light and quick, coaxing a grin from him. His hands moved to her robe and opened it. The velvet of the robe whispered against her night-dress, which was white with small blue flowers upon it. Forget-me-nots.

--Do you want some coffee Colley? It's almost ready.

--Fecking decaf, he growls. But no complaints. None at all. Me here with you.

His turn, he kisses her, and winks. His hand on her neck inventories the bones there. They all be there, his fingers seem to say.

--You slept well last night, she says, turning back to the coffee brewing. Hardly a kick or grumble, from the either of you.

--Had me wife beside me, is what it was, Colin says, his hand on her back, like not wanting to let go. Plenty of reason in that, I'd say, to sleep as well as dream. I'm glad to be back to you.

--As are we, she smiles, turning round, rubbing her swollen belly.

--Do you mind, he says, almost shy.

--Go ahead, she laughs, her eyes smile-twinkling.

--Hey there, lil fella, Collin says crouching down. Did you miss your Da?

--He did, Toni says, smoothing Colin's bed-ruffled hair. I'm sure of it.

--Yeah? he says, looking up at her. This you can tell?

--He's kicking just now. Toni winces. Always when you're about it seems. Like he's in a hurry to get out and meet you.

--Aye, and I to meet him. But are you in any pain? What can I do?

--I'm all right, she says, watching Colin slip-slide the front of her night-dress up, like to peak under the skirt of a bed, at someone hiding there. He soft-kisses the taut-warm mounded skin of her abdomen. His lips murmur there and she shudders, her fingertips knitting his hair, and playing down the back of his neck. Rising slow, he smiles, eyes wide and wet, brow furrowed then smooth. She regards him kindly, head-tilted, her mouth an open bud.

-- As well as can be expected for an old broad like me, about to give birth at an age over forty we won't speak about.

Behind them the coffee-makers hisses like a cat, the coffee done brewing, shoot-spewing steam. The early hour in the kitchen might well have passed unnoticed as little as two years ago, but no longer, not now. The window shone shiny-bright with a breeze just beyond awaiting to come in. There was a dance in their embrace, rocking back and forth, as if to cradle one to the other.

--Two years next week it'll be, he says. Our anniversary.

--And as unlikely as we are, even apart, now together.

--Tis not unlikely at all, he says and smiles. Perhaps unseen by most, me self included, sure. But not unlikely at all. Now let me make you some food. What'll it be? A soft-boiled egg and a bit of toast? You like that.

She kisses him, plain on the lips, through a laugh they quickly share. Who knew, she thinks. Who knew?

--You're very kind, she says.

--A love like this, he whispers. And a baby boy soon too. There's the kindness.

--I only wish, she says, and leans back. That...no.

She shakes her head, and her hand flies to her throat. Like spring, she thinks. And a baby blooming in me. All because of him, or part.

--You're my gift, you know. She says this with eyes so shiny bright it startles him. And my strength. He said you'd be, Ryan did.

--You're me gift as well, he smiles, his hands on the front of her again, rubbing. And this one here too, you're gift to me as well. To both us.

--I'll always love you Colley, and never stop.

--Me as well you, my love. Me as well you.

The scent of fresh-cut rosemary wafts a sting to the nose. Aaron elbows the grass, leans into his hands, and stretches out, bare toes bent and planted. His gaze sweeps the tidy fenced yard like a net cast out and hauled-back in, catching. Was I ever so small, he wonders, watching. The little boy near-two trots toward him, the green-blue ball held high above his thrown-back head. It's mine, of the ball, the boy seems to say.

--He's beautiful Da, Aaron says, turning to look at Colin, who sits next to him. My eyes be lying as to how he's grown. He'll be a striker, that one will.

--Wouldn't seem half so grown to you what we maybe saw you more. Been ages, it has. Not since the wedding nearly.

--Da, it ain't half-true what you be saying so. Aaron says this, and reddens. Was here not one month after the boy was born, for the soccer tourney too. And I saw you at the aul man's house last September one. For three days long I was there about, a proper visit it there was too.

--I'd say there's a calendar in your head, counting it out like that, like chips in a feckin' poker game. No need for such defenses. I know you see us when you can.

--I just don't want you thinking I be wanting not to see you more. I do Da, I do. It's just with school, and it all else, another film coming up.

--For Jake, I'd be guessing. Directing.

--You'd be guessing right.

--Lucky break for him, meeting you, I'd say. Colin says this unsmiling. A nice career move too, getting to you. Ambitious that one always was.

--Nice weather we're having here, don't you think?

--Yeah well, I was wanting to drop that subject anyway. How's school?

--Nearly done, Aaron nods. I graduate the fourth of June. Will you be there?

--Now what sort of question is that?

The boy toddles over and almost falls before settling into Colin's lap. He nuzzles his father's chest, where his shirt hangs part way open, and he yawns.

--He loves his naps, Colin says softly, cooing the boy's forehead with a kiss. This one does. Half asleep here already.

--Is...uh, well, I had a wonder about whether James would be staying here.

--O' course he bloody is, Colin glares. What are you about wondering that?

--Just inquiring, Aaron says, looking away. Simple question.

--You're both to be standing godfather, as right it should be. So I don't want no long-suffering glares exchanged between the twos of you, you understand?

--Da, okay.

--Toni `ill be bringing him from the airport in an hour, all right? And I want you acting peaceable, not like the feckin' wounded corner-boy what you was acting before.

--Jaysus Da, Aaron says, reddening. Ya want a feckin' blood-oath from me I'll be on me Sunday-best behaviors, is that what ya be jawin' on about?

--Saying what needs be said, is all that was.

--And so it's said. Be done.

--When'd you last see him? Colin shifts the boy so that he lies in his lap, holding his father's finger, staring up at sky. Or speak a moment to him?

--You know when.

--Guess I was hoping there might have been a bit of mending since. Should have been, if you ask me.

--I didn't hear no asking.

Silence simmered, and minutes passed. Aaron glared at a rose bush near to bloom, as if daring it to wilt. James will be polite, he thinks. Polite and diplomatic. Saying how nice it is to see him again, and how he's sorry he has not written or called, like it was his own fault, laying it at his own feet, instead of where it belonged, on me own feckin' head. What a shame, he'll say, how their paths don't seem to cross anymore. And how is Jake, by the way? He seemed very nice.

--bout time for this wee one's nap, Colin says, noting the sudden start and jump of Aaron's face. Lost in thought, he thinks. That one was. And bout James, for sure. A sad case, the two of them. But no room for further commenting there. He'll have me head off for saying, and I'd be lucky for it being only me head.

--Will you be wanting to help me lay him down, Colin asks, standing up. He usually fancies a story first. You can do the honors if you wish.

--I think I'll stay out here a bit, Aaron says. I like the air and all.

--Suit yourself, Colin says. But don't be minding what I said `bout Jake. Was just stickin' me bloody nose where it surely don't belong.

--Yeah, Aaron nods, looking up. But you weren't saying nothing that I haven't given a thought or two `bout me self.

--And I'll be at the graduation. Of course I will.

--My ears are glad to be hearing that, Aaron says, and smiles. Wouldn't be the same without you, truth be told, it wouldn't. A year late graduation, sure. But now it's done and the aul man be `bout bursting, he is.

--And medical school next, too.

--Aye, Aaron nods, blinking, looking askance, then back at Colin. Except for the movie, then...another year to wait perhaps. We'll see.

--See when?

--I don't know, to tell you true.

--Well maybe a trip to the pub later, and we can have a chat. How about that?

--I'd like that Da, I would.

--Good then, Colin says, giving his foot a little stomp. As soon as Toni be back, off we'll go. Like old times it'll be.

--Like old times, true.

Splay-legged and seat-slumped, Toni surveys the haphazard collection of people waiting, like her, for a flight to come in, and some friend or family-member to finally arrive. Drowsy-eyed, she wags a magazine in front of her face, trying conjure a breeze out of the still, stale, somnolent air that hung heavy all around her. Giving up on the magazine, she slips it into the bag by her side and closes her eyes. She could not recall the last time that she had sat in an airport waiting for someone. For years and years, it had always been her bundling off a plane somewhere, met or escorted, then rushed away from the bustling masses, to a hotel. Or that once, to a hospital. Boise. Pushing her way past dawdlers, half-running, then running. Without bags to pick up, because there was no time to pack. Just grab her purse and go.

She had found a taxi fast, and screamed at the man to drive faster. "Speed, I don't care," she screamed. "I'll pay the fucking ticket."

It had seemed to take hours to get to the hospital. How long it actually took, she had no real way of knowing. Outside of time, she rushed through emergency room doors, frantic. "Where is he? Ryan, where is he?" she screamed.

A red-faced receptionist mumbling something, but nothing that she remembered, or probably even heard.

"Ryan Gosling, where is he?" No longer screaming. Eyes tear-blurring, searching the young woman's face. "I'm his mother," she had lied, remembering what James had said. "I have to see him. He's not dead yet, is he? Tell me he's not dead. Dying only. Please tell me. I have to know right now."

Speaking, she felt each word like a stone she was trying to spit out. A mouth full of stones, cracking her teeth with worries, bereft, terrified, alone.

"His brother is with him, James, James...what's his fucking last name. Duke. James Duke. Drake. Douglas. I don't know. I'm too upset."

Like the hours before, and everything that happened after, how long this took, forever or a minute, she could not remember. It was a single moment stretched across time. Blink now and it is gone, but then never-ending, and trapped in it, like the feeling felt of quick-walking down the long bile-green hallway to where? Where had they been going? She had not known for sure, not then. The morgue, his room, where? Do they give dead people rooms? She had wondered. But then there it was, a white door with a number and a letter on it. Room 4-G. They don't give dead people rooms, she had thought, so he must be alive, not dead.

But finding him, she found he was hardly either. Unconscious, but alive, not dead. A coma, not dead. The heartbeat proved it. The click-hiss of the oxygen machine proved it. And the deadly-sad tear-filled face of James falling into her arms proved it.

Startled up and standing, then there he was: James.

--My God it's good to see you, James says, setting his suitcase down. You look beautiful, you're glowing.

--It's the heat in here, Toni says, shaking away the memories that a drowse had pulled from deep within her, from where they were buried, like shriveled bulbs in winter earth. I must have nodded off. How was your flight?

--Fine, James says. Great in fact. You didn't have to put me in first class.

--Oh puh-leez, Toni says, taking James by the arm. No godfather of my child is flying cattle-class. Now let's go.

--Is he as beautiful as ever? James says, picking up his suitcase, then hurrying to catch up. I bet he is. He has to be.

--The very vision of lovely, as Colley says. And it's true.

--Is Aaron...?

--He arrived last night, Toni says. All very polite, as you'd expect. Are you sure you will you be all right with this?

--Of course, James says. It's all water under the bridge by now.

--Good then, Toni says. Are you hungry? I thought we'd have some lunch. Or drinks. You drink don't you? I have a terrible thirst.

--Like a fish, James laughs. Just like you taught me.

--Now there's my boy. Toni pats his arm and lets loose a long loud laugh. It's just so good to see you, she says, and he knows she means it.

--You too Toni, James says. You too.

She would never know why she knew what to do. But known she had, then done it. Sitting across the table from him, JC, Toni blurt it out.

--Ryan is dying, she says. Nearly already dead. A body with a heartbeat, and barely a flicker in his eyes. Two months in a coma now, and no clear end in sight.

JC sits stunned, silent, face drained of color, like he'd seen a ghost. And he had, of course. Ryan had come back to haunt him, even before he was dead.

--I thought you should know, Toni says. James tells me he talked of you, told him of some past you shared. I didn't know. But as I thought about it, well, it seemed like you should know what's happened. If only just to know.

--It was like he'd disappeared, JC whispers. Lance said so once, a while back. I can't remember what we were talking about but...

His voice trails off, and with it the thought, dropped like a rock in a pond. Gone.

--James didn't tell me what he said. About you, that is. And, of course, I didn't inquire, or nose about. But he said, James did, that Ryan had spoke with great kindness of you, and with a touch of regret.

--I see.

--In any case, I thought you should know. He's been sick for a very long time.

--With AIDS.

--Yes, Toni nods. Up in Seattle, at a marvelous facility, Duncan-Doulay House.

--I think Lance and I may have donated money there once. JC says this in a way that seems distracted, as if it was hard for him to find the words. His finger fidget at the edge of the table, unsure whether to remain there. Toni can see outside from where she sits, through the glass double-doors that lead to the deck. The sky winks and glistens, crystalline-blue, and cloudless.

--You did, Toni says, looking back to JC, who is frowning, unsure. There's a plaque with your names on it. Very nice.

--Will he...

The words trail off again. It is like he lacks the air to speak them, or the energy. This is my fault, he thinks. Somehow this is my fault.

--Die? Yes. It's not a matter of whether, just a matter of when.

--But whether he wakes up?

--I don't know. And I can hardly bring myself to hope. Wake up to what, I keep thinking. Maybe it's better not to.

--I want to bring him here.

(What? he thinks. What did I just say?)

Toni looks surprised, and is.

--I'm sorry, she says, a question. I'm not sure I heard you.

--I want to bring Ryan here. To stay.

--But...

Now it is Toni's turn to struggle speaking.

--Is he very sick? JC asks. I mean, does he need a lot of care.

--His lungs have cleared again. Some.

--His lungs?

--Pneumonia, she says. There's a long name for it, but...

--It doesn't matter.

--No it doesn't.

--There are a lot of medications to keep track of. But otherwise he seems stable.

--I'll have to tell Lance, JC says. That's Ryan is coming here to live.

--Joshua? To live?

--To live, he says, eyes wide, hands shaking.

--So you're serious about this.

--Yes, JC nods. He shouldn't die in a place with strangers around him, in the other rooms. He can have a room here, and it can be his home. I'll take care of him.

--I'm not sure what to say, Toni says, confused. That was not my reason for coming here. I thought you should know is all.

--And now I do, JC says, nods twice and closes his eyes.

(What will Lance say? Will he leave me? Not again.)

--Are you going back to Seattle? JC asks.

--Tomorrow, she says. Early afternoon. The flight at one o'clock.

--Lance is back tonight, JC says, blinking his eyes open. Back from Lyon, in France. Have you ever been?

--Lyon? Several times. To visit Stephane.

--Lance says it's beautiful. I've not been yet.

--It is beautiful.

--I was planning on returning with him next month, but...

--Stephane's film?

--Yes. He's...yes.

JC stares at Toni, and she stares back. Their eyes are frankly fearful, admitting to a shared and desperate sense of fear and futility.

--I've never really known you, Toni finally says, her hand inching across the table, offering itself to JC to hold. Idle chat, now and again. Lance I know a little, but not you. Are you all right? You look...

--It's just a shock is all.

--Yes. It was to me too. When James called.

--How is he? James?

--I can hardly tell. Toni shakes her head. He rarely leaves him. I have to drag him from the room. He's convinced it's his fault, that if he hadn't agreed to drive him...

--Where?

--Orlando, Toni shakes her head.. To some house. I'm not sure of the story, and I've not pressed James to tell me. He's too upset.

--By the airport, JC whispers. With the field behind, and the small front door.

--What is?

--The house.

--I don't know, Toni says. But something like that, maybe. Are you all right?

--I'll meet you at the airport tomorrow. JC stands up. His hands find his hips. He stares at Toni but doesn't seem to see. Her hand remains stranded in the middle of the table. She pulls it slowly back and then into her lap.

--I'm sorry I didn't offer you lunch, he says. I...I haven't been to the store, with Lance gone. It's been two weeks, and Aaron...

--Why don't we go somewhere, Toni says, standing too. You and I, for a bit to eat, and maybe a drink. Or some wine. It'll do us both some good.

--Where are you staying?

--At the W.

--It's nice there.

--Nice enough, she says. So lunch?

--I...uh, I have some things to do. He looks around the room like he's misplaced something, and is looking for it, like lost keys.

--Well, she says, then stops, unsure what next to say.

Gardening, JC says. I've been bad about the weeds lately, and I don't want things overgrown. No...but, yes. I'll go. Of course I'll go. Why not? I want to hear about him, Ryan. But can you drive?

--Of course, she nods. But are you all right?

--You keep asking that, JC says, blushing. I'm not all right. I'm not all right at all. How could I be?

--Then that makes two of us, she smiles.

--Yes, he says. Yes.

It had taken Colin's very considerable powers of persuasion to finally convince Toni that their child should be properly baptized into the Catholic Church.

"If he wants to join a bloody church," she had more than once said. "Or a cult, or whatever. He can join when he's old enough to decide for himself. But I'll be damned if I'm having him dunked before then."

"Damned you will be," Colin had retorted. "And our boy too, lolling in limbo with all the other unbaptized children."

"Oh, spare me," she had said. "Next you'll be wanting a voodoo ritual."

"And there's no dunking," Colin had thrown, trying for the last word, even while knowing he'd not get it. "Jaysus, woman, that's only for the feckin' prods."

"Is this where I shout `Erin go bragh'?" Toni had replied, giving Colin the look that signaled he best be changing the subject.

Still, Colin had persisted, and Toni had at last relented. Then all it took was a sizeable donation to the archbishop's personal charitable-alms fund to pave the way for the baptism to not only occur in Saint Mary's Pro-Cathedral, but with two male god parents as well. "Venio Deo," the archbishop had whispered, accepting Colin's check.

The day of the baptism started silently, near-sullenly, nervous. Aaron and James did their best to avoid each other, with Colin worrying after Aaron, and Toni after James. Dressing silently, after breakfast, Aaron worried his tie into place while casting glances at James who shared the mirror. He had always thought James beautiful, but now he seemed even more so. Poised, serious, there was nothing of the old nervousness about him. He seemed bigger too, as if filled out, not by muscle, but something else, something less tangible, but no less real. Aaron had not seen him in nearly two years, and had not spoken to him either. Not since the wedding, and then the funeral before then.

--That's a nice tie, Aaron says, nodding at James' reflection in the mirror.

--Thank you, James says. Yours is nice too.

--The two of you ready to go? It was Colin, his head hanging into the bathroom, bobbing through the open door.

Two silent nods, then they were off.

To Saint Mary's Pro Cathedral, a forty-minute drive away, which was as silent as the morning that had come before it. Time elapsed, unwrapped, like the scenery flowing past the car, noted by the two young men in the back seat, staring out. A near two year-old boy holding a ball, strapped in his safety-seat, sat between them. He smelled of powder, and his voice said, la-la-la.

--You two remember your parts, Colin says, looking quickly back, at one, then back again at the other. There'll be no mistake, if I have me wish, today.

Two more silent nods.

Down Parnell Street and past Parnell Square, then right on O'Connell Street, one block to Marlborough, and then the cathedral arrives sudden on the horizon. James stares, admiring. The facade is based on the Temple of Theseus in Athens, and believed to have been designed by Napoleon's architect, Louis Hippolyte leBas, a fact that had to be kept secret as Britain was then at war with France. James smiles and leans his head against the coolness of the window. Ryan would have loved to have seen this, he thinks.

--Everyone straight to go in, Colin says, looking at Aaron, then James, in turn.

--As straight as I'll ever be, James says smiling. Toni hears and laughs.

--Now Jaysus, Colin says. You know that's not what I was meaning.

--It's all right dear, Toni says, patting his arm.

Aaron smiles at the back of Colin's head long enough to catch him turn around and toss him an easy smile. Winking, Aaron smiles back. Da's happy today, he thinks. And well he might be. His world and life is right as right can be.

Out of the car and up the church stairs to the priest who waits, hands a-flutter, for the boy to be slipped into his christening gown and all to gather in the entrance of the cathedral. And so it is, like in a theater-play, they gather like actors, ready for their parts, heads bowed in obeisance to their soon sacred roles, Toni and Colin holding their child, the priest in front, and Aaron and James on either side of him, waiting. This is all there is, just them, Easter two days away. When all is settled, all pay attention, the priest begins to speak, in tones as hushed as hush can be.

Are you ready, the priest's eyes seem to ask, and everyone nods their heads.

PRIEST: Orion James Farrell, what do you ask of the Church of God?

(Quid petis ab Ecclesia Dei? James remembers.)

AARON: Faith.

JAMES (whispering to himself): Fides.

PRIEST: What does Faith offer you?

(Fides, quid tibi praestat? This was asked once of me, James thinks. But who answered for me?)

JAMES: Life everlasting.

PRIEST: If then you desire to enter into life, keep the commandments. `Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.

Tears fill Colin's eyes. His hand searches for Toni's hand, and he finds it. Aaron stares at James who stares at the priest watching as the priest blows gently into Orion's face, and says: Go forth from him, unclean spirit, and give place to the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.

The priest traces the sign of the cross with his thumb upon Orion's forehead and breast, saying: Receive the sign of the cross upon your forehead and upon your heart. Know that you are bound now by a heavenly rule of life, and let your conduct henceforth prove you fit to be a living temple of God. Let us pray.

ALL (reciting): Hear our prayer, Lord God, and guard this chosen servant Orion. May thy strength never fail him now, for we have traced upon him the sign of Christ's cross. May he always remember what he learns of thy greatness, and thy glory. May he keep thy commandments and be worthy, he too, to have glory, the glory of new life in thee. Through Christ our Lord.

ALL (except the priest): Amen

PRIEST: Let us pray.

ALL: Almighty, everlasting God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, look upon this thy servant Orion, whom thou hast called to the first lessons of the Faith. Drive out of him all blindness of heart...

(The blindness of the heart, Aaron thinks. This I know.)

PRIEST: Break the bonds of Satan which have bound him. Open to him, O Lord, the door of thy mercy. Steeped in this symbol of thy wisdom, may he no longer be tainted with evil desires, but rather spread about him the fragrance of thy commandments...

(Fragrance, James thinks. Flower-fragrances, peony, hyacinth, and lilac.)

PRIEST: As he serves thee happily in thy Church and grow holier with each passing day. Through the same Christ our Lord.

ALL: Amen.

Colin looks nervously at Toni, then Aaron, and at the priest. He has forgotten about the salt. Deep-sighing, he watches the priest bless the salt.

PRIEST: I adjure thee in the name of God the Father almighty, in the love of Jesus Christ our Lord, in the power of the Holy Spirit. I adjure thee through the living true and holy God, the God who made thee for the well-being of the human race, and commanded thee to be hallowed by his servants for the use of those who come to the knowledge of her by faith. In the name of the Holy Trinity, through thee may Satan be put to flight. Wherefore, O lord our God, we beseech thee, sanctify this salt and bless it; and make of it a sovereign remedy to linger within the inmost being of all who partake of it. In the name of that same Lord Jesus Christ, who is to come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire.

ALL: Amen

The priest puts a little of the blessed salt into Orion's mouth, and says: Orion, receive this salt, learning from it how to relish what is right and good. May it make your way easy to eternal life.

(What is right and good, Toni thinks. And Colin, James, and Aaron too.)

Amen, they all say.

PRIEST: Peace be with you.

ALL (except the priest): And with you.

PRIEST: Let us pray.God of our fathers, O God with whom all truth begins, look upon thy servant Orion who now has tasted salt as the first nourishment at thy table. Do not leave him hungry. Give to his soul food in abundance,

(And love, Toni thinks. And love.)

PRIEST: That he may be eager, hopeful and lighthearted in the service of thy Name. Lead him we pray thee, to the waters of new Life, that, with all who are faithful to thee, he may merit the eternal rewards thou hast promised. Through Christ our Lord.

ALL: Amen.

PRIEST: I adjure thee, unclean spirit, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost to depart and remain far away from this servant of God Orion. He commands thee now who walked dry-shod upon the waters, and when Peter would have perished in the sea stretched out to him his saving hand. And so, accursed spirit, give heed to the sentence passed upon thee. Give honour to the living and true God, give honour to Jesus Christ his son, and to the Holy Ghost; for God and our Lord Jesus Christ in his goodness has called her to his holy grace and blessing and to the waters of baptism.

The priest traces the sign of the cross with his thumb upon Orion's forehead and breast, saying: And this sign of the holy Cross, which we put upon his forehead, do thou, foul spirit, never dare to violate. Through the same Christ our Lord.

ALL: Amen.

PRIEST: Let us pray. Holy Lord and Father, almighty and eternal God, author of light and of truth, we ask thy never-failing and kind fatherly love for this thy servant Orion. Enlighten him in thy goodness with the light of thy own understanding.

(And his too, James thinks, glancing at Toni, who meets his gaze, nodding and smiling. There are tears in her eyes, and in his as well.)

PRIEST: Cleanse him and sanctify him, give him true knowledge; that made worthy by the grace of Baptism, he may be endowed with unwavering hope,

(Yes, James thinks, unwavering hope, like your namesake had. Teneat firmam spem. Yes.)

PRIEST: Sound judgment and a firm grasp of holy doctrine. Through Christ our Lord.

ALL: Amen

The priest places the left-hand end of his stole upon Orion and leads him into the church, saying: Orion, come into the temple of God, that your lot may be with Christ in life eternal.

ALL: Amen

When they have entered the church, the priest leads the way to the font, saying aloud meanwhile, with the godparents, Aaron and James:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived of the Virgin Mary; suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; he ascended into heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence shall he come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses

(Yes, Aaron thinks. Forgive me Lord. Forgive me.)

...as we forgive them that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation: but deliver us from evil.

ALL: Amen.

Before entering the Baptistery the priest stands with his back to the baptistery gates and says: I adjure you, each and every unclean spirit, in the name of God the Father almighty,

(Exorcimus.Exorcizo te omnis spiritus immunde, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis, James thinks.)

Colin and Toni, lifting, hand Orion to James who, lifting, holds him. Then Aaron holds him too, looking James in the eye and smiling. Colin pats both of them softly on the shoulder. His eyes brim over with tears.

PRIEST: In the name of Jesus Christ his Son, our Lord and our Judge, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, to be gone from this image of God Orion, whom our Lord in his goodness has called to be his holy temple that he himself may become a temple of the living God, and the Holy Ghost may dwell in him. Through the same Christ our Lord, who will come to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire.

ALL: Amen.

The priest touches Orion's ears and nostrils with his thumb (moistened with saliva). And as he touches first the right and then the left ear he says: Epheta, which is...

(Be thou open, James thinks, and Aaron too. I know this)

Be thou open, the priest says. To the sweet fragrance about you.

(Like lilacs, James thinks. And hyacinths.)

As for thee, the priest says, evil spirit, get thee gone; for God's judgment is upon thee. Orion, do you renounce Satan?

AARON: I do renounce him.

PRIEST: And all his works?

JAMES: I do renounce them.

PRIEST: And all his pomps?

JAMES AND AARON (together speaking): I do renounce them.

The priest dips his thumb into the oil of catechumens and anoints Orion upon the breast and between the shoulders in the form of a cross, saying: I anoint you with this saving oil in Christ Jesus our Lord, that you may have eternal life.

ALL: Amen.

With cotton wool the priest wipes his thumb and the places anointed. He lays aside the purple stole and takes a white one. Then he enters the baptistery followed by Aaron and James holding Orion, who is silent, and watching.

There at the font, the priest addresses Orion by name: Orion James Farrell, do you believe in God the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth?

JAMES: I do believe. Credo.

The priest notices the Latin and smiles.

(But do I? James wonders. In what do I believe? In the power of words, these words.)

PRIEST: Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was born into this world and who suffered for us?

AARON: I do believe. Credo.

(I know the Latin too, Aaron thinks. Another thing we share.)

PRIEST: Do you believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life everlasting?

JAMES: I do believe. Credo.

(In these words, I do. Oh Ryan--)

Aaron whispers to himself: Credo.

PRIEST: Orion, are you willing to be baptised?

AARON: I am. Volo.

While James and Aaron hold Orion the priest takes baptismal water and pours it thrice over his head in the form of a cross, at the same time saying once only, distinctly and with attention: Orion James Farrell, I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

The priest dips his thumb into the sacred Chrism and anoints Orion on the crown of the head in the form of a cross saying: May Almighty God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has given you new life through water and the Holy Ghost, and forgiven you all your sins (here he anoints the child) himself anoint you with saving Chrism in the same Jesus Christ our Lord, that you may have eternal life.

ALL: Amen.

PRIEST: Peace be with you.

ALL (except the priest): And with you.

With the cotton wool he wipes his thumb and the place anointed. He places upon Orion's head the white linen cloth representing a white garment, saying: Take this white garment, and see that you carry it without stain before the judgment seat of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you may have eternal life.

ALL: Amen

The priest gives a lighted candle to Aaron, signaling James to hold it too, saying: Take this burning light and keep true to your baptism throughout a blameless life. Keep the commandments of God; that when the Lord shall come like a bridegroom to his marriage feast you, in company with all the Saints, may meet him in the heavenly courts, and there live for ever.

ALL: Amen.

Go in peace, Orion and the Lord be with you.

ALL: Amen.

No longer boys, and hardly friends, they lay side-by-side in the yard together. The sky is as vast as sky can be, and they both look up at it.

--Can I hold your hand, Aaron finally says. I'd like to.

--I'd like it as well, James says, letting his hand be found and held.

--And if you share your bed with me, Aaron thinks but does not say. I would be the happiest man alive.

--Strange how these things line up, Aaron says.

--The stars?

--That too, Aaron says, turning his head to see James, who is still looking up.

--Remember the stars on your ceiling?

--They're still there you know. Waiting.

--I imagined so.

--But I meant the child, you see, Aaron says. When I said about things lining up. His name and all.

--You sound like Colin, James says. When you talk.

--Me da.

--No one's had more fathers than you.

--Tis true, Aaron nods, still watching James and his face. And I be well for that, save the one true thing I never had, which is you.

--What about how things line up? James says, blushing.

--You with a fella now who studies the stars is one.

--That occurred to me when I met him.

--And me guiding star being right always Orion.

--O Ryan, James whispers.

--There be me thoughts exact, Aaron says. And me da's boy called Orion, a true Irish name if there was one, with your name right proper after it.

--Oh-ree-ahn, James says, recalling how to say it.

--See, there you have it. Aaron soft-touches James shoulder, and risks his fingers staying there. James looks at him, unsmiling first, then smiling. You say it well. Like a poem it is when you say it. Oh-ree-ahn. Tis lovely.

--Did you like your summers here?

--Adored `em, Aaron says, smiling fierce, his fingers happy-touching the smooth feel of the shirt James wore. Felt free, I did, with da me fast-friend letting me gad about, swearing like a sailor, and having a pint when I was just a lad still. It was a lark it was.

--A lark?

--Sure, Aaron said propping up on his shoulder a bit, and smiling. Every body be needing a lark or two in there lives.

--I guess that's true.

--Feels though like I've had me share of larks, to tell you the truth. Three or four already, me tempting the fates with that.

--I was on a lark once.

--Tis true, I hear, Aaron says. From what Toni told me.

Silence returned like sea to shore, washing over them. The stars were bright above them as they lay in the grass staring up. By habit and more, Aaron searched out the North Star, Orion, and found it, easy and quick. James then found it too.

--You miss him awful don't you? Aaron says.

--More than I thought I could ever miss anyone, James said, a gentle choke in his voice. And here it is, near four years out.

--I'll hold you if it'd help. True I would.

--No, James says, standing up sudden, leaving Aaron's hand a victim of his nigh-abandonment. I think I'll go to bed now.

--In a rush you are to leave me, seems.

--I just need to be alone.

--To cry your tears unseen? Aaron is up beside James now, his hand back on his shoulder. There's no victory in that, being a martyr for your pal, heave-holding your grief like a suitcase full of stones you're forced to carry-round.

--You've changed. James says this to Aaron clear-eyed, looking at him.

--Well, we do that. Aaron reddens. Surely we do, in time.

--I've lost too much it seems, James says. Feels at times like I deserve it.

--Now see, Aaron says, near-angry. And at the same time, near crying too. That be how you always were. Taking it all on your shoulders, like the sun wouldn't be rising in the mornin' but for you getting up to attend to it.

James kisses him then, and Aaron kisses back, a big and sudden kiss exploding. Is this a lark, he thinks. My own lark a minute long, or more, if only, no.

The kiss soft-dwindles, then is over, replaced by an awkward silence that sneaks like a bad stink into a room. Eyes locked, staring, each one dares the other to speak. But neither one does. Aaron's fist finds James' chin, chucks it soft, to coax a smile from.

--A chuck on the chin is worth two kisses, James whispers, eyelids tear-brimmed, and wet. That's what they say.

--Who would that be, saying that?

--It's a line from a book, James says. There's a character in it reminds me of you.

--Perhaps I'll read it then, if I ain't already.

--At Swim, Two Boys.

--Nope, Aaron shrugs. Not heard of it. Would have liked to though, your regard of it, and there was two boys at swim. We was once two boys at swim once, remember?

--We were, James nods. Once.

--I'll buy the book tomorrow, Aaron says, not sure what else to say. For the plane ride home, I will.

--No, I'll send it to you, James says. Then it will be from me to you.

--I'm glad we're right again, Aaron says, after pausing, thinking.

--You think we are? James says, asking. Because I wasn't sure.

--Me heart says we are, Aaron says. On me oath to God today, it's true.

--Many an oath we had today.

--And many an oath to keep. Me to you, indeed.

--But what you said. James takes Aaron's hand and holds it. We are right. I think so too. Right again.

--Does he love you well, Aaron asks. More than that Stephen ever did?

--He does Aaron.

--Good then, Aaron says, and takes a deep breath not to cry. For me heart wants nothing but you to be happy, not sad. Truth of my heart that is, and friend of me heart you'll always be. As long as I have the breath in me.

--Do you want to go inside now? James sniffs, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

--After I kiss you one last time, Aaron says. If you will.

--I will, James whispers. And then he does.

To see the stars is to know that you're alive.

It's true.

Partir (to leave). Not a name very full with hope.

That's true. But then, perhaps I am also the place from which one can start. And that can give you hope, does it not?

[A place] to start from, yes, a beginning.

Remember. Perhaps I am a place to start from too, not just to leave.

I will (remember). Good bye.

No. This is not good-bye.