Page 49

FIFTEEN

E ddie hangs his head, ashamed as he replays the last twenty-four hours. How unfair he was to Cookie. How unkind he was to Theo. And what’s happened to Francis? Did he fuck that up, too? Maybe this is just who he is—a terrible person, someone who takes people for granted, someone who says cruel things, someone unreliable and ugly who trashes everything good. There’s hardly anything left to destroy now.

He should be more tired than he is. He hasn’t slept. He walked through the night and the day, up to Central Park, back down to the Battery, and now to the Christopher Street pier. It’s dark again. It feels like days since he’s been to bed. Years, centuries. Too many to count, too many to contain. He can’t hold it all, can’t control it, and he’s never been out of control before. Not since he learned what control means. Not since he learned how important it is, to enter a moment on your own terms, to exit whenever you wish. Maybe he was bored in Mesa Springs, but he had control. Nothing happened that he didn’t ask for. No surprises. Even his dull clothes, his dull job, his low expectations—all just expressions of control, nothing more. Even the fantasies, the illusions. He directed them, like movies, taking them where he wanted them to go, and no further.

But that’s all gone now, and he can’t predict from breath to breath what’s happening, what might happen, what will happen. It’s like he’s being knocked around like a steel marble in a pinball machine, bouncing from the past to today and back again, from exhilaration to despair and back again, from belonging to not belonging and back again. He can’t even retreat to his imaginary worlds inside. He barely recognizes them anymore. Foreign lands, created by someone else. Only strangers there now.

Now.

He scoffs at the word. What does now even mean? Is it the opposite of then ? Is it the end of then ? The beginning? He always thought that time is meant to move in one direction, a steady tick-tock from early to late, from before to after, from yesterday to today to tomorrow. Then is then, now is now. Simple. But now, nothing about time makes sense. It slips. It stalls. It sprints, stumbles, stops. It falls away, doubles back, burrows, hibernates, deceives, dissolves, explodes, fades. We pretend we can measure it, but we can’t, not really. Clocks tick and turn, measuring minutes and hours. But minutes and hours are not time. They are just words, invented ideas, clumsy attempts to suggest structure, false promises claiming to be truth. But they are not time. Time can’t be captured by a clock. Or a person.

Eddie stares across the black river as the questions he’s faced over the last few days speed through his mind. What are you afraid of, Eddie? Why are you here, Eddie? Who are you, Eddie? What do you want, Eddie?

What do you want?

The question echoes inside, over and over, a rhythm, a chant, an insistent, demanding beat.

“Shut up!” he shouts, to no one.

He kicks a rock off the edge of the pier, because nothing makes sense. And then another rock, and another, but the splashes they make in the thick, slow-moving Hudson don’t satisfy him at all. They just tuck themselves into the inky waves and disappear. Unfelt, unheard, unseen, unimportant. Inconspicuous. These rocks mean nothing to this river. He kicks another one. It is absorbed into the black.

It was so easy to be with the boys at the speakeasy, at the beach, at the ball. It was so easy to be with Francis. Eddie was comfortable there. He could breathe. No bile, no fear. He was where he belonged, for the first time in his life, even though he’d never been further from home.

Is that the answer to the question, Eddie? To belong?

He opens the camera and points it aimlessly across the river, at nothing. He snaps, and when the camera whirrs, it sounds like more words: Let me find you .

Eddie rips the photograph from the camera and stares at it. But it is a dud, blank, just a black square. This stupid camera, he thinks. This stupid piece of junk. He believed it was special, but it is not. He throws it to the ground in anger, instantly regretting it as he hears it scrape against the cement. He steps forward to pick it up.

And just then, a voice.

“Hiya.”

Eddie spins to see Francis, arms wide open.

For a moment he freezes, stunned to see the boy he’s been so desperate to find. His presence shocks Eddie, sparking adrenaline. He throws himself against Francis with all his weight and strength, nearly knocking the boy over.

“Whoa!” Francis laughs, struggling to stay upright against the force of Eddie’s lunge. “Easy!”

But Eddie doesn’t ease up. He drives into the boy, gripping his waist tighter, tighter, a frantic clutch. Oh, this urgent impulse to grasp, to hold, to squeeze, to possess… how close it feels to violence. Nothing matters but contact. Eddie pushes deeper into Francis, fusing them together.

Francis squares his feet to stop his backward momentum, steady now. He wraps his arms around Eddie’s back. “Hey,” he says softly, taming the beast. He reaches up to cradle the back of Eddie’s neck with one hand. “It’s okay. It’s only me.”

Only you? Eddie thinks. Only you? He looks down at the ground, at Francis’s Nike sneakers. “Where did you—”

“Shh,” Francis says, caressing Eddie’s nape. “You’re all right.”

Eddie burrows closer, pressing his face against Francis’s chest, fighting tears, gasping like a little boy trying not to cry. “I didn’t know how to find—”

“Shh,” Francis repeats. He rests his chin on Eddie’s head. “Everything’s okay. I’m here, you’re here. We’re here. We’re okay.”

After Eddie finds his breath again, he exhales and relaxes his grip. But he doesn’t let go. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. Fuck.”

Francis draws his head back and raises an eyebrow. He smiles, eyes shining. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

Eddie looks back, feeling a sense of comfort wash over him. That now-familiar feeling of belonging that seems to come when Francis is around. “I guess I do,” he says.

“Lucky mother,” Francis says, pulling him close again.

Eddie closes his eyes and they stay there for a few minutes, or maybe longer (what is time?), before Francis speaks.

“Let’s go,” he says. He turns and starts across the West Side Highway. As he walks, he kicks up a cloud of dust, and through it, Eddie sees his sneakers morph into scuffed work boots, his jeans into nubby gray trousers. The trees along the pier-path fold into themselves, disappearing. The skyline draws downward, sinking into towers of stone, not glass. The cars spin from SUVs into sedans. Even the distant music changes into a wistful crooner’s love song. It’s all a peaceful transition, nothing more than a breeze, but in it, everything changes. Everything except Francis himself.

Francis turns back and beckons Eddie. “Come on,” he says, and without asking where, or why, Eddie follows.