Alone Together

Autumn.

At long last, chapter 43 is here. I apologize for the delay, but it was mostly unavoidable. When I launched into this chapter my plan was to complete the James/Ryan/JC story, and then in the next chapter focus on Aaron and what's going on in his life. But when my draft of this chapter topped 100 pages, and was still only half done, I faced facts and accepted that it was going to take more than one chapter, and I needed a revised plan. Chapter 43 now tells the first part of the story of Ryan's effect on James and JC's lives. The next chapter will focus on Aaron and the making of his next movie. Then I'll return to this part of the story again. That's as far as my plan goes now, so we'll just have to see what happens.

Thanks to all who voted for me at the Boy Band Story Awards, winning Reader's Choice was definitely an honor that means a lot to me. And having James and Stephen win "worst couple" - well, it doesn't get much better than that! LOL Finally, I must say that the feedback has become almost non-existent. I know there must be folks out there reading, so drop me a line. You can write to me at denis141@hotmail.com. I always write back, usually promptly.

REMINDER TO NIFTY READERS: Join my yahoo group if you'd like to get the story earlier and fully formatted. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/alone_together-novella/.

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: In the last chapter there was an inadvertent, but important error that needs correcting. When James asks JC about Aaron, and mentions that he'd heard that Aaron had had second boy, JC's reply should be as follows: "Yes, JC smiles. Blair James. Lance is there visiting now."

DEDICATION: To all those who have lost someone to HIV and AIDS.

DISCLAIMER: I don't know NSYNC, and this story is purely a work of fiction. This story also contains male/male love, so if that's not your thing, or if you aren't old enough to read this, you should stop reading now. Duh.

ALONE/TOGETHER

CHAPTER 43: OF LOVE ALONE: Part Four: In Light of Autumn.

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all-

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how shall I presume?

~The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, T. S. Eliot (1917).

The light has changed;

Middle C is tuned darker now.

And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed.

The light of autumn, not the light of spring.

The light of autumn: you will not be spared.

The songs have changed; the unspeakable

has entered them.

This is the light of autumn, not the light that says

I am reborn.

Nor the spring dawn: I strained, I suffered, I was delivered.

This is the present, an allegory of waste.

So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate:

the ideal burns in you like a fever.

Or not like a fever, like a second heart.

The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful.

They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space

of the mind.

They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish.

And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly

in anticipation of silence.

The ear gets used to them.

The eye gets used to disappearances.

You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared.

A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind;

it has left in its wake a strange lucidity.

How privileged you are, to be still passionately

clinging to what you love;

the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.

Maestoso, dolorosa:

This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us.

Surely it is a privilege to approach the end

still believing in something.

~ October (section IV), Louise Gluck (2003).

I. At the Violet Hour.

It was that time of night when thought descended unbidden, and with it, memory. A shadowy transparent night, with a vault of stars above, and a shivering wind telling him, Joshua, go in, go in, leave this night to us alone. Absent-mindedly, his left cheek finds his shoulder and rests. His eyes stare out, unseeing. His hands in his lap, fingers interlaced, are still. The old gazebo and its odors hold him, the fragrance overripe and cloying. The hanging cedar swing he sits in slowly sways, to and fro, pushed by nothing, except the wind. He used to rock the baby here, rock Aaron to sleep, on night's alone, when Lance was gone, holding Aaron to his chest, watching the sun descend, listening to the sweet gurgle of Aaron's breathing, and the beat of his heart in his arms so strong that it seemed still to echo in him.

For over an hour he's been out here, in the cold, time lagging behind the pace of his thoughts, which he has tried but failed to still, like his fingers are still. His thoughts are like an unruly crowd that refuse to pause their frantic muttering; the mutters collect and grow louder, like the sound of water boiling, like the mad clattering of a lid on a pot about to boil over, in one moment more, unless he manages-Wait, what is this?

-an Easter egg. JC sees it, caught there in the drying vines, a flash of blue, not a bloom, not wisteria reasserting its will one last time before dying off for winter. A smooth purple-blue Easter egg, plastic; it feels shiny on his fingers, and cold. The surface of the egg gives a little as he squeezes it. I wonder what's inside, he wonders. Probably jelly-beans, and a tiny action-figure. The egg doesn't rattle though. The jelly beans have probably melted, globbing everything inside together. He could try to force the egg open, but doesn't; he holds it in his lap, his fingers wrapped around it.

How long had it been since last on hands and knees, the night before Easter, that he and Lance had hidden eggs, so many eggs that they inevitably despaired finding places for all of them, the innumerable innumerably colored eggs-robin's egg blue, bright pink with red dots, golden-yellow like butterscotch, grass-green, orange with crooked purple stripes, and spirals hand-drawn with those strange magic crayons. Silver and gold stars stuck to some with glue-sticky fingers, fumbling, Dad, can you do it? The stars won't stay on.

And peel-off cartoon stickers stuck easily to other eggs, with James laughing, You can't put Wolverine on the same egg with Pyro, they hate each other, they'll fight. Well, maybe they made up. Well maybe they didn't. Well maybe you should shut up. Well maybe... Boys!

Eight dozen hard-boiled eggs, and at least three dozen multi-colored plastic eggs, each containing candy, toys, coins, keys to twelve treasure chests, Lance's idea. Beneath the azaleas they hid the eggs. In the low boughs of trees they hid the eggs. It looks like an egg-tree now, not an avocado. Tucked under the gazebo stairs, nested in just-bloomed wisteria, behind potted geraniums, amidst the hyacinth-You gave me hyacinth first a year ago. No, when the house was first built. You said they were the color of my eyes. Crouching down to slip egg after egg into the gaps between the flowers, into the interstices of their lives, treasures carefully hidden, all in spots easy-enough-to-find, they hid all of the eggs, until finally done, Lance would kiss him on the lips. Do you want to? I do.

He always did, didn't he? Say yes, and then make love with him, in the dew-damp grass, naked and writhing, like larvae, beneath the canopy of the trees and night sky.

And that's what he'd be thinking, the morning before, while James and Aaron colored the eggs, Lance asking, Do you want to Josh, and of course already wanting to, guilty thinking about it while the boys took turns dropping the fizzing dye-tablets into clear glass bowls, each one becoming a small lagoon of artificial color; except for the year they used natural dyes, and made the dyes themselves, from red and yellow onion skins, espresso beans we crushed and brewed, red cabbage we chopped and stewed, marigolds, smashed spinach leaves, red rose petals, dried chamomile buds, cranberries pulped, slices of beets, dried orange peels, lily pollen-that's the stamen, dad- and blueberries. The kitchen had smelled like a garden that year, instead of like vinegar, and that tinny chemical smell of food-coloring.

Look at this one, Aaron said as JC turned from the steaming pot he hovered over, turned around and looked at Aaron, with James looking at him too.

It's brown, James said, frowning. An Easter egg can't be brown.

It can if I make it brown, Aaron laughed, eyes bright-wide, alive. Can't I dad?

You can make it any color you want Aaron, JC said, using a slotted spoon to retrieve boiled eggs and placing them one by one in a bowl of ice-water, where they blurrily floated, like an egg's ghost. But, as a rule, it's better if an Easter egg is a pretty color.

Brown is a pretty color, Aaron insisted. He was seven then.

Turds are brown, James said, matter-of-factly. He was eight. Did you ever see a pretty turd?

Ever look in the mirror, Aaron smirked, then loud-laughed and slapped the table. Turd face.

Look who's talking, James said, unbothered. Diarrhea breath.

Hey you two, JC said turning around again, his hands finding his hips, until conscious of his motherly stance, he let his hands slip to his sides. No fighting. This is supposed to be fun. Remember?

We are having fun Mr. Chasez, James said, in that shy polite way he had.

Josh please, JC said, reminding him. Call me Josh.

Josh, James said. But we are having fun.

And not fighting, Aaron said. James is my best friend. And it was just a joke. Couldn't you tell Dad? Couldn't you tell?

Yes I could tell, JC thinks now, remembering. I know a joke when I see one.

Looking back across the yard from the gazebo, from where he sat waiting, holding the plastic egg he'd found all these years later, he wondered again what was inside, what prize. And he wondered if there were any other eggs out there not found, whether one or two eggs might have been missed each year, moldering unfound, moldy and foul, turning blue green brown gray white, a gradation of colors, the degradation of color, eggs dissolving into earth, the reverse of a seed, the reverse of an ovum, the reverse of something from which something might grow. But this was a plastic egg, was there life in that? Of course not, no.

Closing his eyes, JC could see Aaron chasing James around the pool, around the avocado tree, to the safety fence Lance had built at the edge of the yard, no longer there, except in memory. The boys were never still back then, always running, always moving, hardly ever quiet. Theirs the biggest yard that JC had ever seen, and still it barely contained them, the boys and their frantic manic energy-youth.

Back around the tree they ran in mad and aimless circles, laughing and squealing, for silly sake of it, for the raucous joy-filled sound of it. Out of breath they rested, not weary, only waiting, waiting to catch their breath again, to revive and run again; or waiting for James to say, Okay, let's go, and flatten himself on the grass, while Aaron grabbed him by the ankles and lifted, wheel-barrowing James forward, listening to his giggles as James frantically slapped at the grass, holding himself up against the force of forward motion, his toes wiggling as Aaron held firm to his friend, pushing him two laps around the yard-how far that must have seemed, until finally falling, Aaron upon James, a mad tangle of arms and legs, rolling and giggling, innocent of being watched, a world of play their own, without invitation or entree to others, a clique of their own regarding, a credo of faithful friendship, of love.

Where had that gone, JC wondered, looking across the vacant yard, there to where the shadows started, and the eight-year-old standing there, at the edge of the yard, wondering too, as he stood alone, far and away, there where the shadows started, there where the grass became the trees, and laughter's echo dissipated ,died, except as a memory, an echo in his mind, of all the play he was not part of, except to watch, from far and away. JC sees the boy, sees his watching, sees his disappointment, sees that he is ready to leave. I know who you are, JC thinks. Did you think I wouldn't recognize you, even after all these years? Smokey-boy, there in the shadows lurking, always ready to drift away, always ready to leave. Better to leave than to be left.

The boy looks up, like he has heard JC thinking, and is bothered by it. He glares at JC, mouthing words that JC cannot make out, except their anger. Unlike the laughing-boys, unlike the tumbling boys, unlike the happy-playing-boys, the eight-year-old at the edge of the yard, smokey-boy, is not smiling, is not playing, is not wearing a tank-top or surfer shorts, is not barefoot or tan. He is wearing long pants, battered boots, a tattered coat, scratchy woolen gloves, bundled up, like snow was coming, or already there, there where he stood, in a cold-cold past, with a black scarf wrapped around his face, nearly obscuring his blackened eyes.

He shivers.

Yes snow, JC thinks, closing his eyes. Tromping through it, heavy-footed, small and alone, to the library and later back. School closed today, because of snow. But the library will still be open. And Ms. Madge there to greet him, with her welcoming smile, lipstick-stained teeth, and violets pinned to the collar of her starched white blouse. Hey-ho Joshua, how are you today? Fine Ms. Madge. Thank you for asking. And how are you? Well, I'm splendid Joshua. As splendid as can be, on a snowy poem of a day like this. O winter shall not freeze you, delicate leaves...

-Every year you shall bloom again, JC whispers quietly to himself, opening his eyes slowly to find that he is alone, reciting the poem Ms. Madge had showed him that day, taught him to say, a mantra for a boy learning not to be so shy. Look me right in the eye and say it, like you're singing, there you are.

-Out from where you retired, you shall emerge again.

Minutes pass, a few at a time. The poem echoes in his head, a few words at a time. Then he hears a car door slam. Lance is home. JC knows and listens, stills and waits, eyes closed again, not seeing Lance burst through the quick-opened front-door, trip over the suitcase in middle of the foyer, and fall.

-Fuck, Lance says, knowing as he stands up that something is wrong.

Looking, Lance finds that JC is not upstairs, not downstairs, and not in the basement or planting room. He knows this means that JC is outside, sitting in the backyard, probably in the gazebo. And that is where Lance finds him, looking out at the ocean, his hands folded in his lap, as still as a statue, as still as a stone.

There is not much moon, nor light from the house. Shadows appear to dominate, and do. The details of JC's face are not visible as Lance, looking, climbs three stairs up into the gazebo. He crouches before JC, painfully. His knees are stiff from sitting on the plane so long. He winces and steadies himself, grabbing the swing, stopping its swaying. JC watches as Lance's hand reaches up and finds a startling wetness on JC's face, a wetness grown sticky-cold. He almost pulls his hand away, but doesn't. He rubs JC's cheek and neck instead.

-You're crying, Lance says, not half-surprised; this is not a place that JC would come to sit alone if he was not sad.

-Yes, JC says, letting Lance stand him up. He feels a kiss beneath each eye, then on each eyelid too. Fingers in his hair, a warm hand flat on the small of his back, just under his untucked shirt, knees touching knees, Lance's gaze upon him, patient and waiting, not prying, not stern. You have a gentle face, JC thinks. You always have, gentle and open.

-Tell me why you're crying?

-I'm sorry, JC says. I have to go to Seattle. It's sudden I know.

-Seattle?

-Yes. Seattle.

-I see, Lance says, uncertain whether to ask or wait. JC remains silent, and Lance decides to ask.

-Is it an emergency or what?

-Yes, JC says. An emergency, something like that.

-What is it?

-I don't know, JC says, his eyes closed again.

-A death about to happen, waiting to happen, happening. Something like that. I don't know. It's complicated. I hate it.

-Josh, you're scaring me now, Lance says, impatient.

-You need to talk to me, to tell me what's going on, to let me help, if I can help.

-Tell you what? JC snaps. That I fucked up, that I'm a fraud, that I...

-Now stop it, Lance interrupts, trying for anger, but failing to muster it. What he feels is panic, a dull insistent dread, that is thick like fog, obfuscating, and cold.

-This is not the way to do this, Lance says, shaking JC's arm.

-Whatever it is that's wrong, don't pull away from me Josh. Just don't.

But twice more JC tugs against Lance's hand on his arm, twice more he leans like he is about to walk away.

-No, Lance says.

-Look at me Josh.

JC stills and looks at Lance, through what light there is, between them there, enough to see, for Lance to see, and JC to see, thinking, How many times have I looked in those eyes, only to see myself magnified, to see my better self, my greater self, reflected back? Too many times to even count, to even know, except by faith.

-You have the greenest eyes, JC whispers.

-I thought they might be contacts at first, when we first met. I used to stare at them, whenever I thought you might not notice. I'd lose myself wondering whether the color was real or not. It seemed impossible somehow, for eyes to be that green. But so much seemed impossible to me then, before I met you.

-Why are you thinking about that? Lance asks, bewildered. About my eyes, and how you felt, so long ago? Twenty five years, nearly twenty six.

-Yes, twenty six, JC says, his voice vague and fading. Imagine that.

-Let's go inside, Lance says, gentle-tugging JC's arm. It's dark out, and you're cold.

-I am cold, JC says, his voice now surprisingly loud and insistent whisper. But not in the way you mean, not shiver-cold, not winter-cold, just cold.

-Josh you're talking stupid now. Lance tugs JC's arm again, as gently as he can.

-Come on now, come inside with me.

But JC does not move. His feet are planted. He leans away, still resisting.

-Please let go of me, JC says, tired. I'm not worth it.

-Now stop! Lance snaps, angry, letting his hand fall to his side, releasing JC's arm, which swings away.

-I mean it, Lance says, pointing at him, mad.

-You're being melodramatic, and trying to make things worse than are.

-Oh, JC says, his eyes open, staring at Lance as if he is seeing him for the first time again. Lance stares back, his anger ebbing, seeing JC and his clear blue eyes, bright like the plastic egg that JC clutches. Where did that come from? Lance all of a sudden wonders. An Easter egg? One we hid? For Aaron and James, all of the kids in the neighborhood, their friends from school? And me in that damn bunny suit. I wonder where that is?

-You want melodrama, JC says.

-You want things worse than they need to be?

But Lance is hardly hearing him, paying no attention. He has drifted off into an eddy of thought, a momentary diversion of memory, remembering himself standing in the middle of the yard in a bunny suit, Aaron laughing and tugging on his tail, sweat pooling in the small of his back as the white faux fur soaks up the sun. What would he not do for his family? There was nothing he would not do for his family. JC was his family.

-Fine, JC says, his voice a quick slap, a finger-snap, pay attention it said.

-I slept with Ryan. There's your melodrama. Ryan Gosling, you remember him.

-What? Lance says, shaking his head. What did you say?

-Ryan Gosling, JC says, without emotion. You know who that is.

-Of course I do, Lance stammers. Ryan, yes. Sure. But you what?

-He fucked me, JC says. He asked, and I let him. I'm not sure why, but I did.

-But Josh, I...uh, I don't think that's like you.

-Maybe not, JC says. I don't know. But that's what I did. I admit it. I was unfaithful. I was once too. So there it is.

-When? Lance asks, wondering why he hadn't asked why instead.

-April fourteenth, JC says, staring at Lance's fallen face.

-In 2000. At a Wyndham hotel, the one in Orlando, the one out by the airport. Room 906, I think. The bedspread was purple, and kind of shiny, like those cheap polyester ones are.

-I remember that Ryan pulled it off and folded it. He put it on the floor at the end of the bed. 'Hotel bedspreads creep me out,' he said. 'Who knows what kind of germs, and other shit, are soaked into them.' He'd always had a thing about germs, which is pretty ironic, I'd say. Wouldn't you? Him dying now of AIDS, in a coma, near dead.

Lance says nothing. He nods and looks exhausted. It had been a long flight, with two plane-changes. Lyon to Paris, Paris to Chicago, Chicago to San Diego. Hurrying home to see JC, to share the news of his and Stephane's film, when production was set to start, where and how and when and why. All the things that Lance had thought would be important, as news and otherwise, to share. But now there was this.

-Funny how you can remember things, when you think hard enough, isn't it? JC manages this statement with a bitter laugh at the end, and then he starts to cry.

Grabbing his shoulders, Lance holds JC up, guiding him back to the house, inside, past the tipped-over suitcase, and up the stairs. Their bedroom is dark and Lance leaves the lights off. Together they crawl onto the bed, not bothering to undress, or even kick off their shoes. Lance lies beside JC, holding him from behind. JC's head is plunged into a pillow, muffling his sobs, sobs which puzzle Lance, and pain him, each one more than the one before. He waits for the crying to subside, and wonders if it will. There is nothing he can think to say, and so he says nothing. He holds JC and soft-kisses the back of his neck, nuzzling it.

He had known that JC was once involved with Ryan. JC had inventoried his past to him, one night a long time ago, after a few too many beers, a rambling monologue of confession. Ten men he had been with by then, beginning with Tony Lucca. Lance remembers that he had listened quietly, shocked at first, but not mad.

When he was done, JC stared silently, waiting for him to say something. But he had been embarrassed that he had nothing then himself to confess, and remembers blushing, and feeling young, like a little kid having sex explained to him for the first time, intimidated and scared. He had not known what to say, except I love you Josh. None of what you said changes how I feel. You are my future. Those others are your past. I don't care about them. I only care about you.

He had held him then, for a long time, held him like he held him now, his Josh, held him tight, and kissed him, until finally they had made love, as intensely as they ever had, as intensely as when barely a month before, when the first tour had ended, January 17, to be exact. (Yes, Lance thinks, it is funny what you can remember when you think hard enough about it.) The two of them had rented a car and driven from Biloxi to Orlando, through the blank night, dead-tired, but needing to escape, to be away from performing, off the glaring stage, out of the bright lights, in the dark, alone together, really alone, really together.

A three-week-rental arranged by Lou, cackling when he told them, I spoil you boys, don't I? That was where he and JC had headed, to an anonymous rented house, with Joey supposed to go along, to share the place, and keep an eye on them, suspicions already gathering like clouds before a storm, the two of them oblivious, caring less and less what people thought, it was only what the other thought that mattered, more and more.

But Joey found some girl to stay with, leaving the drive and the house to the two of them alone. Through the front-door they had burst when finally there, the sun just beginning to rise. They tumbled to the floor, just a few feet inside, the door half-ajar, undressing as they fell. The floor caught them unawares; nothing else existed but them. Kissing, naked, nothing else, two minutes there, hardly longer, he shuddered with him, felt him shudder, and came together, from a kiss that he could in memory summon still, and nearly shudder, like before. I didn't know a kiss could do that, JC had whispered. Neither did I, was his whispered reply.

And so he and JC had stayed in bed for days on end that first week-finally free, hardly bothering to dress, pulling on pants to get the door when food was delivered. How many times had they made love? What piece of furniture had not held their coupling? Greedy to make the other feel good, what would you call it but play? Countless times, never really stopping, which would make it one time really, one very long time, endless almost, and still so.

They had never had such time together, not of nature or duration. Their love before had come in moments, quick-stolen gulps, side-long glimpses, in gaps, in ellipses-what had JC said? There is no music but for the silence between the notes. That was what it was like for them, before they had their own place to be alone; it was in the gaps their love lived, in the ellipses - stares across a morning table, with others guys around, but only Joey seeing, knowing; in a corner just offstage, when no one was looking, finding each other, then a thieving swift caress, and a soft-whispered I-love-you; on stage, one singing to the other, without the world knowing, just part of the act, but a moment theirs alone, which no one else could enter; at night, when everyone else was asleep, a gentle knock on a hotel room door that would open a vista they could find each other in, to finally fill in the gaps, to be complete.

Those weeks between the first and second tour, they had gorged on each other, mapping routes across each other's skin like the most earnest of cartographers, discovering new territory, building a country, their country, together. Hardly had there existed a moment when one was not touching the other; but not to claim, only to retrieve, retrieve the prize of flesh's gift, gladly given. Had JC and Ryan ever had such a moment, even briefly? Perhaps, once long ago. But it did not matter. We are still complete, he thinks, Josh and I, together so.

Twenty-five years together, and all the things they had been through. His own infidelity like a fire that had run through the home they'd built together, scorching feelings like burning through walls, charring and scarring, throwing trust in disarray. Wouldn't it have been better if he'd slept with Brendan that once and then just forgot about it, left it alone, treated it as a single stupid mistake and moved on? There was no way of knowing.

At the time it had seemed like such a monumental transgression, a sullying of something sacred, pissing in a baptismal font. And him thinking, perhaps like JC thinks now, for each sin a punishment, and a necessary fall from grace, a fall ordained, which is to say, deserved. But why must it be so? We are human, and so we fail. It is only in the power to forgive that we are finally saved. To not judge, to only love, that is what we must do to stay together. For look at us here, look at us now, look at the way we care and hold, care and hold on so. You love me, love me for sure. Do I doubt it? No, I don't.

-Josh, Lance whispers. I'm not angry with you.

Lance crawls over JC, who struggles for a moment and then lays still. Lance lifts JC's face with one hand, then two, raising it from the pillow. Lance looks at JC, barely sees him, except in the heart of his imagining, there where JC's face is always clear to him. The room is dark, but that is all right, he thinks; with a light on now JC's eyes will be confused, blink and murmur; and his face will pucker and look defeated. He does not want to see that.

-Stop crying now, Lance says, whispering against JC's lips, tasting thick clear fluid from his nose there. He hears him sniff.

-Enough of this, Lance says. Enough now. Stop.

JC's face feels melted in his hands, like it is threatening to lose its form, and it is only his hands that hold it together. Please don't dissolve, Lance thinks, imagining that JC's eyes red and swollen, and the irises, black dots, dart back and forth like flies in a glass jar, panicked.

-Stop, Lance says again. Enough.

-You can't do this, JC says. Not like that just forgive me. It's not fair.

-What's not fair, Lance says. To want you not torn apart like this, to want you not in pain like this, tearing at your hair for something that happened decades ago.

-But I lied, JC says, his voice desperate and choked. I let you think I was the faithful one, even when I wasn't. I let you think...

His voice slows, trails off, like a water tap being slowly shut, the water trickling to a thin stream, a drip, then stopping. The silence is slim and momentary. Lance kisses JC beneath each eye. An automatic hand smoothes Lance's hair as he finishes JC's unfinished sentence.

-That you love me, he says. That's what you let me think. Was that a lie?

-No, JC says, kissing Lance gently back. No, that's true.

-And so there it is, Lance says. There's the truth I care about, that you love me, Josh. And that I love you. That's all I need. That's all I'll ever need.

-I don't know why I did what I did, JC says. With Ryan that night, letting him have me that way, giving myself to him.

-But what did you give him really?

-What did you leave that room without?

-Faith in myself, JC says, speaking the words with so little force they scarcely leave his mouth. The faith that you had given me, that I deserved to be loved.

Lance is stunned. He had not thought of this. His ragged breath stops and starts. There are tears in his eyes now, and he feels a fierce blush overtake him, scalding.

-And so when I fucked around, after...

JC shakes his head yes.

-You thought I knew somehow, Lance says. That I had found out, and I was paying you back.

-Yes, JC says.

-But I didn't.

-It was as if you had, JC said. That was how it felt.

-Because it was the story you told yourself, to explain what had happened.

-It made too much sense to think it was not true.

-But it wasn't.

-I know that now, JC says. But I didn't then.

-Sweetie, Lance says, kissing JC's lips, speaking into them again.

-What I did was my mistake alone, not yours. Brendan, and what I did after - I was a fool, stupid and immature. You did not do that, to me or us.

-You have to believe me. Tell me you do.

-I do, JC says. I believe you.

-Thank you, Lance whispers, his lips pressed to JC's mouth still, tasting the breath he finds there, and breathing it, revived.

-But it was our mistake too, JC says. One we made together.

-And fixed together, Lance says.

-Yes we did, JC says, him kissing Lance this time.

-And pretty well I think.

-Which is why this doesn't matter now, Lance says. I know who you are Josh, I know the kind of man you are, and I trust you.

-I have never not loved you, JC says. Not even when I asked you to leave that time.

-Which is why I left.

-And why I came back.

-So much we've been through Josh, you and me. Lance says this smiling, his hands fingering through JC's hair, toying with his ears, his thumbs gentle-rubbing his chin, like his touch is trying to memorize his face.

-And all of it great and good in the end. You and me, Josh, this home, Aaron our son, all of it, what I love and need and cherish.

-You and me most of all, JC says.

-Us, yes.

-Together.

JC unbuttons the front of Lance's shirt and slowly opens it, like curtains in the morning. Pressing his lips to Lance's chest, he kisses there, and feels the pulse of blood beneath. Silence defines the room now, and this kiss, which lingers.

-Ryan loved you too I think, Lance finally says. I'm sure he must have.

-Yes, JC says. And I probably loved him too. Not that time at the hotel, but before. I just didn't realize. I didn't know what love was then.

-Does that make you mad? Do you feel like you missed a chance?

-I didn't miss it when mattered, with you I didn't. That's what matters.

-No you didn't, Lance says. And neither did I.

-We were lucky I think.

-Maybe, but...

-Will you kiss me, JC says, out of nowhere, interrupting. Lance smiles and kisses him.

-Twice lucky, really, Lance says after the kiss. And both times with you.

-I don't believe in luck, JC says. But I believe in you.

-Well, funny how that works out, Lance says. Because I believe in you too.

-You're my love you know.

-And you're mine.

-Sappy us, huh?

-Yes, Lance laughs and kisses JC again. Sappy us. But that's okay. I like sappy.

Lance feel JC's turn and tilt from him, only slightly, but enough so that he no longer feels the pressure of his cheek against his chin. He imagines that JC's eyes have drifted from looking at him, to looking away, at the ceiling if he could see it, or maybe closed, and thinking. He waits for JC to speak, knowing that he will, and that he has something further to say.

-I'm going to bring Ryan here, JC says. I need to.

-I know you do, Lance says. When you told me about him, I knew that was what you were thinking, why you needed to go to Seattle, to get him and bring him here.

-I owe him that much at least, JC says. To bring him here.

-That's fine, Lance says, finding JC's hand beside him, and taking hold of it. And I'll help if I can, anything you want, I will.

-How did you know I wanted to bring him here though?

-I know you.

-Yes, says JC softly. By heart you do.

Many more minutes pass, silent. JC feels Lance gentle-rubbing the side of his neck again, back and forth his fingers go, the slightest motion, accompanied by the soft breathing hum of Lance beside him. JC fascinated, listens, counting each breath without meaning to do so. By eleven Lance's mouth kiss-whispers at his ear, I love you so much, and I won't ever stop.

-How do you do it, JC says, moving closer, finally asking, giving words to his sudden thought, his head tilting again, at the slightest of angles, leaning back, looking at Lance, whose eyes he knows behold him gently.

-How do you rise above things like this?

-Rise?

-Yes rise.

-I rise with you, Lance says.

-I was so sure you'd be angry, really angry, JC says.

-That you'd yell and scream, so hurt you'd want to hit me, hate me, I don't know. I imagined the worst. I'm sorry for that, for not believing in you, in us, not like I should have.

-Stop, Lance says, quietly, strongly. We're over that now.

-Yes, JC says. I just wasn't sure before. And I wanted you to know.

-And so now I do, Lance says, nose-nuzzling JC's chin then cheek. I laid here doing my best to be pissed off, but it just didn't take.

-Thank you, JC says, crawling on top of Lance, stretching the length of him, his arms around his neck, his face pressed up close to him. For everything you are, and everything you do, thank you.

-You're welcome, Lance says, kissing him. Now what say we get undressed?

JC says nothing more, silent-sliding off Lance and the bed. Lance listens to fabric rustle, a zipper, shoes kicked-off, the soft thud of a belt hitting the carpet, a sweater, a t-shirt, boxer-briefs. Then he undresses too, on the bed, shucking off his clothes and tossing them on the floor. In the bathroom JC pisses, and Lance listens again. Such small sounds, intimate noises, water flush-gurgling, tissue torn-rasping, a nose being blown, footsteps back to bed, and JC's body at rest next to him again, home to him, warm and held, the two of them together.

-Is he very sick? Lance asks. Ryan?

-In a coma, JC says. He almost died in Boise.

-Boise?

-He was with James, JC says. On a road-trip or something, Toni wasn't sure what that was about. She said James saved him, saved Ryan. Gave him mouth-to-mouth, kept him breathing until an ambulance could come and get him to the hospital.

-Wow, Lance says, pulling JC closer to him, holding him tighter, feeling him tremble. That's awful. Poor James.

JC nods slowly. Lance hears him snuffle, then kisses his cheek, his temple, his ear. The sheet is light upon them, and air beneath it warm. JC begins to cry again.

-It's just so sad, he says.

-I wish I'd known, he says.

-I wish I could have done something to have it not be like this, he says.

-My heart hurts from how sorry I feel, he says.

-I'm sorry I'm crying again, he says.

-You didn't make Ryan sick, Lance says, stroking JC's hair.

-I feel like I did. That's exactly how I feel, like I poisoned him somehow, that whatever is killing him now is something that I did to him, festering.

-Come here to me, Lance says, pulling JC's face to his chest, the comfort to be found there. This isn't going to work if it's about guilt.

-I know, JC says. And it won't be, I promise.

-Tell me then, Lance says. Because I don't want you hurt. If you're hurt, I'm hurt...we're hurt. I want you to remember that, and promise me.

-I will, I promise.

-Good, Lance says, his fingers tracing JC's breastbone. Good.

-Ryan was my friend, JC says, taking Lance's hand and kissing the tip or each finger, as if counting them, one, two, three, four, five, then done, and speaking again. A friend I took for granted because he was kind to me and easy to ignore, easy to forget.

-You were young, Lance says. Just as I was young once - we make mistakes. That's what being young is about.

-I'm not young anymore though.

-And so you'll act differently now.

-Yes, JC says. I'll be his friend, and this time not let him down.

-And if he doesn't recover? Lance asks, worrying the words. If he slips away without...

-He'll still know, in a way he will.

-And you will too.

Lance feels the nod of JC's head, he feels it in the hand that holds the side of his face, and he feels it in his heart. JC moves closer now, as close as he can be. His arms surround Lance, his hands join behind Lance's back. They kiss and Lance's tongue finds the small chip in JC's tooth that he knows is there, like a landmark, the point where a journey begins, the journey of this kiss, and the ones that follow, each with a sigh, a sigh that contains them.

II. Unreal City.

James had flown back to San Diego the day before, and now the next evening he waits. The front door stood open and on the top step he stood, looking down the long drive, waiting. The smell of eucalyptus was strong in the air, pungent and clean. Anti-septic, he thinks, Latin for against-infection.

He watches a squirrel dart across the gray drive, then beyond into the stand of trees on the other side, a willow, two purple-leaf plums, and a magnolia. Magnolia grandiflora, he can hear Aaron say. Also known as the Southern Magnolia, this kind called Saint Mary, named for the glowing white flowers, and its sweet-potent fragrance, like the lure of grace.

But Aaron is not there, except in memory, and James waits alone for the car to arrive, shifting his weight from foot to foot, running his hand again and again through his short-cut hair. The September sky is tinged darker now, streaked with clouds like skeins of fuzzed yarn, no trace of summer anywhere. Shadows hold the world in place. Everything has a darkening look to it, the acuity of day-bright giving lee to a vague lack of light, tree shadows falling mauve across the gravel path leads from the front door to where an ambulance suddenly stands, behind the Volvo that had pulled in ahead of it, just like that, and they are there.

The dust thrown up by the arrival swiftly settles as Lance is out of the Volvo first. He opens the back passenger door for Toni, who struggles out, her purse nearly tipping until Lance steadies her. JC climbs out slowly from the other side of the car, pushing the door open with both feet, like it weighs too much for him to move with his arms alone. The three of them look at James, each managing the facsimile of a smile.

Their movements are then both fast-and-slow, barely controlled, jerking, and stutter-stepped, like a film played at an uneven speed. James thinks of the Keystone cops and wonders if what he sees is actually actually happening. He can hear the clacking of the squirrel somewhere in the magnolia tree, which sheltering hangs over the ambulance, a canopy of leaves and faded flowers. There are bird-songs too, but they are unfamiliar and far away; a shy hidden bird, a keening call, from deep secluded recesses, shadowy cedars, and ghostly pines so still.

JC rushes past the nurse-attendant to the ambulance's back door, and pulls it opens. The ambulance is dull-white with a purple cross painted on the side-door. To James it looks too much like a hearse. He crosses his arms against his chest. His frantic breathing scares him. He can't seem to calm or catch it. He didn't think he'd feel such fear, not after all he'd been through.

I will show you fear in a handful of dust, he thinks.

Bringing home the dead, he thinks.

You order the body mister? Sign here, and then it's all yours.

But no. You don't bring home the dead. The dead you have taken away, to bury.

Toni looks at James, and waves him over. He stares at her eyes, searching for a way to describe them. Doleful maybe. But more than that. What is it about eyes that are so important in describing how someone looks or feels? He did not know. All he knew was that seeing Toni's eyes made him want to cry. He can't move, and stares past her. Where is that bird, he wonders. And why is its song so sad?

The gurney caught lingering light and sparkles as it appears, pulled from the back of the ambulance like some sort of morbid magic trick. Abracadabra! Alla-shazam! And then-Ta-duh! Now presenting Ryan Gosling! He is draped in a white sheet that James half-expects someone to suddenly snap off, snap up into the air with a flourish and a flash of trick-smoke, which the crowd oohs-and-ahhs, and then some magic glitter, fairy dust, to make a fairy appear. Ryan would think that funny-fairy-dust, har-de-har-har! And now for his next trick, he'll make himself disappear, completing the act a lifetime ago started. The master of escape, that's what you are Ryan. But you escaped without me.

The gurney-legs noisily unfold, click-clack, into place. Ryan's body - for that is all it seems to James - jostles back and forth, miming vital motion, fooling no one, not even he who wanted so badly to believe in that motion. Look, he's alive, he's moving. But the noise the wheels made in gravel make him shudder, wobbling like wheels on a grocery cart, one wheel stuck, whining its protest into the dust. Doesn't anyone else notice how loud that is?

-James, says JC gently, still startling him. You'll need to move out of the way.

-Yes, James says, his arms even tighter now across his chest, like he was holding onto something, something that was not himself, something for safekeeping, not himself, but what?

-Yes, James says again, or so he thinks, his feet not moving, still blocking the door.

-I'm sorry, he says.

-It's all right, Lance says, his hand on James' arm, three squeezes left there, then a gentle push to move him out of the way. This will only take a minute. Hang in there.

-Sweetheart, Toni whispers, kissing his cheek. Come now, don't cry.

Am I crying James wonders? I must be. Why else would she say that, why else would she be holding me like this? Her hand on the back of my neck, patting. Everyone keeps patting me, touching me, like they're not sure I'm really here. Of course I'm here. Can't you see me?

James read the ambulance attendant's name-tag and winces. Stephen it says. Great, thanks for that, he thinks. The gods always playing jokes, not content to let a scene unfold on its own. No, got to get a comic dig in, irony making the tragic sting that much more.

The attendant is past him now, followed by a nurse holding an IV bag in the air, strangely translucent, catching the light like frozen water might, or clear quartz, distorting the light that shines through it, prizming-light, keening curving color that James cannot stop staring at until,

-Can you get the door, James hears someone say.

Yes, he thinks and he shuts it.

The noise the door makes is loud, too loud, and it seems to echo, in the foyer, and then in his head, it echoes. Remember Echo, a nymph condemned by Hera to speak only when echoing the words of others. She fell hopelessly in love with Narcissus and pined away in unrequited passion until only her voice was left, echoing other people's words, none left of her own.

I will become an echo, James thinks. I will Ryan, if you don't come back to me.

III. Your Shadow at Morning.

The morning bath. At seven o'clock each morning, James rose to bathe Ryan. Sponge or cloth, James would say, asking. How about the sponge today, softer I think, and your skin has been dry. The water warm and soapy, in the basin, waiting table-side. There, that feels good, doesn't it? Rub-a-dub, me and Ryan in the tub. And look, your lad at stand again. I'll get to that. Let's take your catheter off. How's that? Better? A little red there, but still okay, not infected like before, good.

Can you lift your arm for me? All right, I'll help. First your right one, under your arm, dab-dab-dab, the soft tufting hair smoothing there. Does that tickle? Sniff to check, yes clean. Chin still smooth from yesterday's shave, smooth for a kiss, there you go. Now the other arm, and the pale hair there. Another sniff to check, yes clean.

I'll brush your teeth in just a bit. And balm for the lips. But first your other arm, then your feet, slender and smooth, deep-arched, like an athlete's. You were a runner once, in school before you quit, quit school that is, since you never quit running.

Tickle-tickle-tickle, why won't you wiggle your toes?

Toenails need trimming looks like. I'll do those when I get home from school. Yes school is fine. Thank you for asking. Just like Seattle-U, slump-shoulder Jesuits mewling about, imparting wisdom to their flock of student-sheep.

Look at your lad. Still standing. Something on you still works, I'll say so.

Up with your leg first, under here. No bedsores, good. A scrape here, and here. Where's the ointment? There it is, here you go. A little dab will do you, here and here. Now the other leg. You could help a little you know, not just lay there. At least your lad's trying to stand. There.

Now up with the head of the bed, I'm going to just lean you forward. That's it, no toppling over now. You can help too you know. Watch your PICC line. Total Parenteral Nutrition, TPN, goppy-gloop, not much of a breakfast. I'd feed you if I could, spoon after spoonful, never stopping, until you were full up, yes I would.

Your back looks good today. Need to change that bandage though. Nasty bedsore that one was, on your right shoulder-blade. There, lean back. Just you're front to go, then we'll get you nice and dry, and JC will be here, with a gentle knock-knock-knock. Seven-thirty, on the dot. After your morning bath. Rub-a-dub-dub, James and Ryan in the tub.

This nipple is a little raw, just below where the PICC line goes in, probably from the sheet rub-rubbing it. Maybe some balm there too. Or a kiss. And another. Wake up and kiss me, won't you?

What's that? Your dream was always to play Snow White? Very funny Ryan-not with me still the frog-prince, and no kiss for me, what an awful bind we're in. A fractured not-so-funny fairy tale, you and me. Two fairies, you and me. But fairies fierce, not the airy-fairy gauzy kind, the cunning kind, Connacht faeries, mad berserkers of the mountains, fierce in battle, deadly to the end - that's us.

Now to the bathroom, four quick steps, and a nod to myself in the mirror. Empty the water down the well, down the well. He looks better today, don't you think? I do think, more there somehow, more there than before, more present, yes, more present.

Back to the bed, check the catheter bag, a little honey-hued dribble in it. Not much in, not much out, a basic concept, easy to understand, easy to follow, the tube from the bag, up the side of the bed, the end of it here, swab with alcohol, and now nice and clean, ready for your little cap to go back on.

What? Yes it does. Your hair looks good cut short like that. JC did a nice job.

Okay now, which drawer are they in? Which drawer? Top, no, bottom - I always forget. There they are, a brand new box, and a new kind too? No, just a different brand. Catheter, sort of like a condom, don't you think? As if I'd know what a condom looks like, that's what you'd say, laughing, isn't it? Bitter wit you always had. But where's that wit now when I need it?

Your lad in hand, you don't mind that, not a bit, not a bit, I bet. Not that it works completely; but still the throb of it greets me, the pulse keeping be, hope, let me stroke it. Feels good I bet, yes. Different sensations might help him, the doctor had said at their first meeting. Talk to him, read to him, play music for him, anything stimulating.

But can people in comas have orgasms doctor, isn't coming an involuntary response?

And oh how his simple question had silenced the room, until finally interrupted by a not-so-brief disquisition on the blah-blah-blah requisite psychological component in achieving arousal and subsequently ejaculation. Oh, yes-well then, thank you doctor, thank you very much. But tell that to Ryan's lad now. He leaks a little, not the big-bang-boom, but that's still something, come what may.

Will you, won't you, why don't you, open those damn eyes? I hold you here in morning time, waiting for this magic to work. Come on Ryan, come on.

But then, all right, that's enough for now. A kiss for your lad and his hat back on. Fold the towel fresh, soft it is. And balm the lips, no longer cracked from coughing. It's like you're getting younger, Ryan, so this is how youth and death converge. Is that what this is? No, now it's the door. Up with the sheet, cover you up, Josh is here-don't forget to smile.

-Hey, says James. Good morning.

-Good morning, JC says. You done with his bath?

-Just.

-I'll get his catheter bag, if you haven't already.

-No, I checked it, James says. Barely anything in it, not enough to bother with draining.

-Not much to come out, I guess. JC says, shrugging.

He looks defeated, James thinks, not knowing that JC is thinking then the same thing of him, each of their thoughts a mirror-image of the other's.

-It's okay, James says, not sure why. About normal really.

-Do you have class today? JC asks.

-Not until ten, James says. Myth and modernism.

-Sounds interesting.

-Intermittently, James shrugs, like JC had shrugged. I was thinking that we should buy Ryan some clothes - pull-on shorts, maybe, and a short-sleeve shirt. Something that buttons up the front, easy to get on and off

-Still kind of hard to dress him, JC says. With the PICC-line and IV. The bed-robes are easier. Where are the clean ones?

-I couldn't find any.

-Fuck, they're downstairs, JC says, touching his forehead like it hurt. On top of the dryer. I forgot to bring them up last night, after I folded them. Sorry.

-It's okay, James says, echoing what he had said before. I can get them later. It's a little warm in here anyway.

-I'll open the window.

-That'd be good, James says, looking at Ryan and smoothing his hair. Wouldn't it Ry?

-We should change the bedding, JC says, standing in the gush of light that through the open window fell. The sheets will be damp from his bath.

-Yes, James nodded.

Lifting and gentle-rolling, one hand on his crooked hip, one hand on his shoulder, careful not to tangle or tug the IV line, James tilts Ryan up while JC pulls the bottom sheet from where it was tucked and scrunches it to the middle of the bed, toward Ryan. JC then unfolds a clean sheet half lengthwise, smoothing it out, and then on the bed he pulls it taut. Together they lower Ryan, well-practiced, just like the hospice-nurse had taught them to do. Ryan's skin is pink and warm and smells of the Johnson's baby soap that James used to wash him. On one side of the bed, then the other, rocking Ryan like a canoe, to one side tilted up, then the other, they change the bedding on the bed. Then they pull the top sheet back up together, over Ryan, draping him, and tuck their sides each in.

-How'd you sleep last night, JC asks.

James is arranging the pillows beneath Ryan's head and does not answer at first. When done, he looks across the bed at JC, who is rubbing the top of Ryan's hand, crouched down, and inspecting it. The IV that was there two days ago, before being taken out and moved to his other hand, has left it angry-red and tender-looking.

-There's tube of ointment there on the table for that, James says pointing.

JC glances up and smiles, a wan smile, without much energy to it.

-The dark under your eyes, JC says, taking the tube from the bedside table. It's a lot worse. Are you sleeping at all?

-Not much, James says. I read to him most of last night, and dozed in the chair a little.

-No wonder your not sleeping, JC says. You can't sleep in a chair.

-It's worse in bed, James says. But don't' worry, I'm doing fine.

JC squeezes out a dab of ointment on the back of Ryan's hand. The ointment is a pale translucent yellow, and smells of lemon and mint. With a slow finger, he rubs the lotion in, careful not to press too hard, not wanting to make the wound worse. He hums a short hum, stops the tube with a click of its cap, and looks at James again.

-Are you really? JC asks. Doing fine? Because it doesn't look it.

James shrugs and says nothing.

-Maybe it would be better if you stayed at your mom's house, once in a while, as a little break from all this. She'd like to see you more you know.

-Are you kicking me out?

-Of course not James, JC says, regretting that he'd started on this again, the need for him to get away from the house for more than just school.

-I'm just worried that this is going to grind you down.

-It's barely been two months, James says.

-That's my point, JC says, coming around the end of the bed, past the pots of white narcissus that line the dresser against the wall, and the purple hyacinth, twenty pots, their fragrance exploding.

-What if it's ten more? You won't last at this rate.

-Please don't say if, James says. Not in here. Not where he can hear you.

-I'm sorry, JC says, closing his eyes and shaking his head. Do you want some breakfast? I'll make French toast.

-I'm not really hungry, James says, kissing Ryan's cheek. Maybe coffee.

-All right, JC says. But you'll have to come to the kitchen to get it. I'm not bringing to you in here. So come on.

JC holds his hand out to James who reluctantly takes it, following him. As he walks through the door, James forces himself to not look back, to not check over his shoulder as he leaves the room, greedily seeking another look. He will be there when you come back, he thinks. And sadly he knows it is true.

IV. Your Shadow at Evening.

A silent dinner, JC and James alone. The house is quiet, the evening still. Dishes are washed and put away. Neither one eats much. Neither one could. Hunger possessed them, but it was not about food. Stranded together, these two are now, like on an island, their storm-tossed ship sunk, washed ashore, to this silent house, with the evening still,

alone from day to day, and day to night, things falling into place, at the shadow palace. Him sitting quiet, this night, upstairs, listening while James plays the cello downstairs. He knows the piece well, but does not know how. He has never played it, not this piece. Sibelius, Valse Triste, from the incidental music for Kuolema, Opus 44. A haunting tone poem that James plays for Ryan, luring him back from the darkness in which he sleeps,

playing until a cell-phone rings, a discordant tone that breaks the music's mood. Stephen calling to say hello. Hello he says. Thanksgiving yes. I'll see you yes. It's been a while, I'm sorry, yes. You love me, yes. And miss me, yes. School is fine. Yes, school is fine. Ryan, no. No, he's no better. Yes no better. I should go. Yes, I should go. Thank you for calling. Yes I love you, I love you too. And then the cello, playing,

soothing him asleep, on the couch, his usual place. With Lance in France, he sleeps on the couch. Then waking up, what time is it? He looks at the clock; it's nearly two a.m. What does a.m. stand for? After midnight? But then what's p.m.? Post midnight? That can't be right. Post morning, maybe. Or mourning? Better check on James

downstairs, each step silently trodden, in stocking-clad feet. His jeans droop with each step, too big now for him now. Hands hitch belt-loops, pants pull up. Light shines from the light at the top of the stairs, his shadow descends before him, across the foyer, and into Ryan's room

where James is asleep in the chair next to the bed. A book open on his lap, two books closed on the floor. His hand rests on Ryan's arm, just above where the IV needle pierces the blue-purple egg-shaped bruise in the bend of his elbow. He gazes at James, this collection of crooked arms and legs sprawled in the chair, just managing to remain upright. His eyelids flutter, and lips part, a startling grimace blooms like an ugly flower on his face, which he sees

and sighs at, shaking his head. Not even a look of peace in sleep. Like a soldier fighting a battle he knows in his heart he will lose. Enemy soldiers hounding the fields, distant gunfire, rattling the air, echoing an image of Lance on the screen, in The Ghost Road, a movie still hard for him to watch, dodging bullets that slice smoke-filled air, running and running, across a vast muddy pockmarked field, falling finally, struck and killed. Yes, a war is on, and James a warrior in it. But let him sleep, sleep at least. There's some escape in that

at least. And a blanket at the end of the bed for him, scavenged from upstairs, where no longer needed, it had sat in a closet, waiting. He stoops to move James' kicked-off running shoes. The soles are worn flat at the heels and the toes are dirt-stained and scuffed. He notes the size and sets them down near the door. Touching the blanket, he thinks of Aaron, him covered in it, lying on the floor upstairs, watching television, or reading

while he cooked dinner, when you were boys and small. I used to tuck you both in, just like this, taking the blanket off of the bed and draping James with it. James stirs, his eyes move beneath the lids, frantic. He waits and watches, but James does not wake. He lightly touches James' shoulder, then his hair. You're not a boy and small anymore. And you who were always old for your age anyway, always thinking, always that far away look in your eye, like you could see storms coming, the threat of weather's sudden change, one minute sun, and the next minute thunder and lightening and rain,

like an unexpected punch, from out of the nowhere hitting. Yes, you'd been hit before, not three minutes with you, I saw that in your eyes - and not just from the playground fight, from before. Someone you thought you trusted had hit you hard, and like that you were branded, cursed with the burden of belief that bad things can happen from out of nowhere, unseen things lurking in the shadows at the edge of your life, distrust your nemesis, like rain rusts iron, corrosive. And somehow every hurt you deserved. But you don't James, you don't deserve to be hurt, no one does,

just as a cello that sits tilted in the corner does not deserve its silence, a silence sadder than the Sibelius James had played before. The bow leans against the cello like a friend, at an odd angle but intimate, one belonging with the other, an inevitable association, like comrades never meant to be apart. And so he knows this, yes. He nods and sighs ands and shuffles back, his gaze engulfing them together, one next to the other, James and Ryan. There,

I will hold you two together, in my gaze at least, even if it is difficult at this moment not to cry. He remembers now how Lance had helped him lift Ryan into that bed, a miracle of lifting even though Ryan seemed so small. Toni could not help, could not bear to help. His fragility was frightening, he felt that too. Toni had stood by the bed gasping. James stood in the hall, not wanting to watch, afraid that Ryan might shatter, break apart somehow. He had wanted to wait until Ryan was safe in bed to look, to not have to watch

him and Lance lifting Ryan from the gurney, together on each side of him, the nurse and attendant helping too, their arms a cradle for him, Ryan who looked so small and young. The nurse hung the IV-bag like a macabre Christmas ornament, the way it sparkled, the way it swayed on its stainless steel bough. Lance saw it too, the symbolism of it, and looked at him and nodded. He known right then that Lance felt sorry for Ryan too; but not a borrowed sorrow, his empathy disarming.

That is why I love you so. You never just pretend to care, but just do.

Lance had looked for a long time at Ryan's face, then reached out to touch him, his chin, his cheek, his brow, like a sculptor taking the measure of a model before some act of creation.

He's handsome still, Lance had slowly said, looking up at him. Don't you think?

-Yes, he whispers now, again, like he had said before, still meaning it. As handsome as ever, a beautiful man, you should wake up for James you know.

He turns to leave, finding the light-switch without needing to look, a small knob that he turns until what light left is barely warm, a diffuse glow. His hand traces the edge of the dresser, feeling for dust, but finding none. With a poke of a finger into the potted dirt, he notes that the plants on the dresser will need water soon, something he will do tomorrow, after Ryan has had his morning bath, and he fixes James his breakfast

and cajoles James to eat. Keep your strength up for Ryan, he will softly say, insistently say. You know that Ryan will have my head on a platter if he wakes up and finds you standing there as sick and thin him. Here's some toast, have another bite, and drink your juice. I squeezed it fresh, oranges from the yard. I know you like orange juice, especially fresh. Now drink, please he will beg

despite those eyes, staring always back, hungry eyes, every morning, hollow eyes, like eyes not there, blank spaces left like in a mask that once had pearls for eyes, but the pearls were stolen, leaving hollow sockets, filled with rain, on the verge of overflowing. He goes to him most mornings, walks to him and takes his hand. James, it will be all right, he says. Believe me it will. No one as loved as Ryan is right now can fade away with nothing left to say. You must have faith. He'll rise for you,

he'll rise for you, he says again, and then lets James cry, sharing the edge of the chair with him, and the resulting silence. These moments are not for words, not until the crying stops, and he gently suggests they go for a walk. The exercise will do us good, he says. The nurse will be here in a few minutes, then we can go down to the shore for a while. The tide is out today, and there will be lots of shells to find. And beach glass. We can gather a jarful for Ryan, and put it next to his bed when we get back. How does that sound,

my friend? He finds himself standing over James again, arranging the blanket, smoothing it, touching James' hair. The scent of hyacinths suffuse the room, enfolding them in a fragrant embrace. Strange how things work out, he thinks, shaking his head. Strange how duties come to find us, how callings comes to call. His, not to care for Ryan after all, but to care for James. He knows that this what Ryan would most want of him now, to keep James safe, to care for the love he holds for him, in safekeeping, like the most fragile of things, except that it is not fragile James, it is not fragile at all.

He kisses James lightly on the temple, then bends down to whisper into Ryan's ear. His hand rests on Ryan's forehead, a prayer, a benediction.

-I will care for your friend as fiercely as he cares for you, he says. I will not let him perish, even trying to save you, I promise.

V. I Think We Are In Rats' Alley.

Acronyms for dying, word puzzles for coming undone. HIV, Human immunodeficiency virus. AIDS, Acquired-Immune-Deficiency-Syndrome. VIH, Virus de l'immunodeficience humaine. SIDA, Syndrome d'immunodeficience. No matter the language, the same result.

And still called an epidemic, still called a plague. But a plague involves many, and as far as James was concerned, AIDS involves only Ryan. He is a continent of suffering with a population of one. And he and JC mere tourists to it, lost, and wandering, trying to find away to get everyone out and home alive.

There was no map for this places they were in, no guides you could hire. All you could do was fumble forward, like a person trapped in strange darkened room, feeling for furniture, avoiding hidden sharp edges, finding a wall, thinking, Here at last, this is the edge of it. Now where is the door?

But there was no edge of it, and there was no door. There was only the endless inching forward, progress measured in the smallest of increments, like slash-marks on the wall denoting time, in order to endure, in order to keep track, the slow unspooling of time, each second a tiny torture of waiting, endless and unfillable.

And so James read, the entire canon, the catalog of a war, an awful beautiful literature that had sprung from suffering, like seeds sown in stony rubbish, countless books and poems, trying to tell the tale of other journeys made, before him, recognizable, but still not his own.

Reading:

All these years later I sit in my living room, alone still, except for the drone of continuous CNN coverage of our "New War." I think of David. I watch the television as if in a trance, mute, words failing as always, as buildings fall, antiseptically, once removed from me. People jump or fall from high windows to escape the flames. Many thousands, reportedly, are presumed dead.

Through my open window sounds from the street add a counterpoint to the news coverage. I know these sounds and needn't even look around to identify them: chains rattle, a car is towed, someone shouts, someone else shouts, a car alarm screams uncontrolled. There, before my eyes a dark shape falls from the 80-something floor. A voiceover, shocked, incredulous, describes the scene, but isn't there a thrill of excitement in the voice? A child getting the answer right?

David is in my mind again. He lost. Every war has its battles, its winners and losers. They say this is our new war. What happened with the other one? Is it over?1

Reading: A world of wonders in Each challenge to the skin.

I cannot but be sorry The given shield was cracked, My mind reduced to hurry, My flesh reduced and wrecked.

I have to change the bed, But catch myself instead

Stopped upright where I am Hugging my body to me As if to shield it from The pains that will go through me,

As if hands were enough To hold an avalanche off.2

Reading:

Nous autre sidatique, nous a notre survies, n'avons pu empecher ces specialistes diserts de nous voler la parole, de nous spoiler du seul bien qui nous restat: notre maladie.3

Reading:

What is written here is only one man's passing and one man's cry, a warrior burying a warrior. May it fuel the fire of those on the front lines who mean to prevail, and of their friends who stand in the fire with them. We will not be bowed down or erased by this. I learned too well what it means to be a people, learned in the joy of my best friend what all the meaningless pain and horror cannot take away-that all there is is love. Pity us not.4

Reading:

It had been terrible, to let the body be taken; had not I been so certain that it was not him I couldn't have done it at all, I could never have allowed it. But even though it was only his body (only! as if that were some minor thing) I couldn't allow him to go naked, without something of home, so I sent with him a quilt I'd made for him, years ago, a red and white geometry splashed with starlike red leaves. I am not much of a quilt-maker; my clumsy stitches were done in honor of my quilting grandmother. First I'd thought it would be a November birthday gift, then Christmas - and then eventually the thing spread across my lap and legs kept me warm all winter and into a Vermont spring while I worked on it. The stitches were rough but they were mine, every one of them. His body left wrapped in it. I didn't watch. I took the dogs down to the harbor, beneath a great wheeling starry void, the air so cold and sharp and still it seemed it might crack.5

Reading without end it seemed, an avalanche of words sweeping over him, freezing him in place, like the sleep that held his friend. A l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauve la vie, by Herve Guibert, Was, by Geoff Ryman, The Gifts of the Body, by Rebecca Brown, Angels in America: Millenium Approaches, and Perestroika, by Tony Kushner, Martin and John, by Dale Peck, Plays Well With Others, Allan Gurganus, Les Nuits Fauves, by Cyril Collard, The Farewell Symphony, by Edmund White. James read until his eyes hurt, foraging a library of loss and pain, until finally he could read no more, and to the sad solaces of Whitman he returned, as if to move from mourning to morning and so hope. He read:

With many a pointed blossom, rising, delicate, with the perfume strong I love,

With every leaf a miracle...and from this bush in the dooryard,

With delicate-color'd blossoms, and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,

A sprig, with its flower, I break.

Yes, there was hope to be found in that at least, and with it consolation. This disease that deprives more than it bestows, that reduces more than it grows, that tarnishes more than it glows. If there is a way out of here, out of this, through the dooryard, he will find it, because he must.

VI. Winter Kept Us Warm.

Shoulder slumped, James stared at the yellow legal pad and the inky scratchings on it. A few words here and their, random jottings that he had put down in the hope that some thought or idea might cohere, and from it his sophomore honors thesis might arise. In bold capital letters at the top, RAGE --> the first word of Homer's Iliad. Then the scribbled, scrimped quotation:

Rage -- Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,

murderous, doomed,....

And questions followed by more thoughts:

What is a HERO? A hero is fated, not motivated; his inhuman greatness an unchosen gift from the gods. A gift as a curse. What is fate? Fado-

Achilles' flood of rage is a mark of what? Love? Self-pity? Guilt? No - love.

Whitman-O I think it is not for life I am changing here my chant of lovers

-I think it must be for death...

Patroclus/Achilles --> war divides; love reunites. Alone/Together.

James shakes his head, disgusted.

-This is stupid, he says, throwing down his pen.

The pen bounces off the tablet and rolls off the edge of the desk, clattering to the floor. He does not bother to pick it up; he leaves it to find later. He's had enough of trying to study, of trying to think clearly, of trying to make sense from things that cannot be made sense of. There is no meaning, no truth that he can discern in any of the things he reads anymore; it is as if all words had become hollow husks, cracked carapaces from which the life had drained out.

Standing up, James stretches his arms into the air, interlocking his fingers above his head, cracking his knuckles. The one small window in his room is curtained. There is not much of a view looking south, just the scrub pine and black walnut trees shadowing the side of the house. He keeps the curtains drawn, except at night, when it is dark outside, and it does not matter if the curtains are open or closed. At night, the only things he can detect through the window are random noises: the scuffing of the trees on the wooden sideboards of the house, the sound of a night-bird singing, and the whistle-whispers of the wind. These are eerie noises all, but he finds a strange comfort in them, each night as he tries but fails to fall asleep, and thinks of creeping back to the chair beside Ryan's bed.

He had chosen the smallest of the guestrooms because it was the one furthest from the center of the house, where Ryan's room is, on the other side of the foyer, the first room on your left as you headed for the kitchen, the family-living room, and the doors that lead outside to the deck and the pool and the yard. After all these years, he was still sometimes amazed at the layout of the house, its size not obvious until you spent the time to walk around in it, which he did, often at night, gliding the hallways like a ghost might, haunting the place.

There was less and less comfort for him to be found in Ryan's room; and he found himself spending less time there, and feeling guilty about it. He bathed him still, talked to him still, played music and prayed for him still. But more and more Ryan seemed less alive to him, less there, less a possibility, less a person, less likely to rise, despite what JC said, with his seemingly imperturbable faith, a faith that seemed to grow fiercer and stronger day by day, as if in exact counterpoint to his own ennui, his own dispirited fatigue, his own fading faith.

It was December 21, and tomorrow was the first day of winter. The air had grown chilly, but not cold. Just past six o'clock, he knew the sky outside would already be the color of pencil lead, with dagger-shaped shadows creeping across the ground, starting at the trees, like something leaked from them, black sap seeping forward, until all was dark, like the sky.

He picked his hooded sweatshirt up from the floor where it had slipped off the bed. It was Aaron's from high school, bright yellow, with the words Francis Parker Academy printed in navy-blue across the front of it. JC had found it for him to wear, along with some sweaters, and other things to keep him warm while at school or just outside.

After pulling on the sweatshirt, his head sliding easily through its stretched-loose neck, he looked at the new pair of running shoes that sat next to the closed door. They had appeared there yesterday, in place of his old ones, which had disappeared. He smiled at the sight of the new shoes sitting there, and was comforted somehow. Why exactly he did not know.

Sitting on the floor, and putting on his shoes, he tied the shiny white laces carefully into double-knots, still too slick to stay tied with a single knot. He plans to check on Ryan and then go upstairs to join JC, maybe help him with dinner. Or offer to put the lights on the Christmas tree so that Lance would not have to do it when he got home tomorrow. About to stand up, there is a knock on the door, and it startles him.

-James?

-One sec, he says, standing up and stepping back.

JC is there when he opens the door. A cell-phone is in his hand. He hands the cell-phone to him and smiles.

-Someone would like to say hey, JC says. If you have a minute.

-Sure, James says, puzzled. Hello?

JC smiles and nods, then wanders back down the hall, past the bathroom on his left, the picture window that looks out on the backyard, the larger guestroom on the right, Colin's room, when he's in town. There is a linen closet just across from it, full of sheets and towels, a dust mop, and a box of toilet paper. Stepping into the foyer, JC finds his hands on his hips, and his eyes on the framed photographs that line the walls. There are a hundred at least, all different kinds - snapshots, seated formal portraits, paparazzi shots, school and class photos, pictures cut from magazines - spanning decades, documenting their lives, he and Lance, Aaron, or all three of them, in nearly every one.

For some reason, he has always loved this room, the entree to the house. Twenty-five feet across in each direction, a nearly perfect square, the room is the intersection of inside and out, front and back, left and right. There is a windowed door across from him that leads outside to the backyard, and a windowless door on the left wall that leads downstairs, to the basement and planting room, to the myriad boxes stored beneath the house, and to the washer and dryer, two mundane machines, sitting side-by-side, their third set purchased just last year.

-We've been together through three washing machines, JC says to himself, softly laughing as he thinks, What strange ways we find of counting things, of keeping track of time, three new washing machines, twenty-five years of washing our clothes together, their scents in sloshing water together, dirt and sweat, semen, piss, saliva, vomit, blood - everything a body could do. Aaron's first sticky sock, he'd started jerking off, Lance laughing at the news. Leave some paper towels in his room, is what'd he'd said. He'll figure it out.

-I love you Lance, he softly says, almost singing. I do, I do.

The front door is behind JC, and he leans against it, next to the steps that lead upstairs. He smiles remembering how many kisses he'd received and given on those stairs.

What's the password? Lance would say.

A kiss on your lips, a chuck on the chin, he would answer. And an I-love-you.

-Would you have known the password Ryan? JC says. Probably.

JC looks to his right now, across the room. He can see the wide hall that leads to the north end of the house. Light from the first open door spills into the foyer, but only barely. It is a slight halo of brightness, barely there, like the remnant of light, or its memory. This is Ryan's room, the light from inside spilling out. He begins to walk towards it, but stops when he hears footsteps, then James beside him, and his hand on his shoulder.

-Here's your phone back, James says, handing it to him. Aaron said he'll call back again later, after he's talked to Lance.

-All right, JC smiles. Thanks.

-So Aaron won't be here for Christmas? James says. You must be bummed.

-A little, JC says. But Lance and I will fly up Christmas morning, and spend a few days there in Portland with him. It will be all right. Not the same, but still all right.

-Did he ask you his question?

-About the ornaments? James says. Yes.

-Well what do you think?

-I'm not sure I can, James says. There Aaron's, not mine.

-But he wants you to hang them for him. He wouldn't have asked if he really didn't mean it. Aaron's not like that.

-I know, James say, shrugging then saying nothing more.

-Think about it then, JC says, taking both of James' hands and holding them. Whatever you decide is fine. But let's get you an ornament tomorrow, one to hang of your own.

-Can I get one for Ryan too?

-Of course you can, JC says. That's a great idea.

James stares at JC for a moment, a little awestruck, or seeming so. He can feel JC's hands, gentle but firm, still holding to his arms, just above the elbows. It is a simple thing, this grasp, this gentle touch, this hold on him, patient and reassuring, comforting and calm. For a moment he feels that nothing can hurt him, reach him even. He is protected.

-Thank you for the shoes, James finally says. They're a perfect fit.

-You're welcome, JC says. Do you like them?

-I like them a lot, James smiles. Thank you.

-Glad to do it, JC says. You don't mind that I tossed the old ones.

-No, James says. They were a little rank. That's why I kept them by the door. I couldn't smell them then.

-I wondered about that.

-It's a habit, James shrugged. But a useful one. When does Lance get back exactly?

-The day after tomorrow, JC says. Just past noon.

-Okay, James says.

-Maybe your mom can come over to stay, when Lance and I leave for Portland. I'd hate to think of you being alone on Christmas day.

-I won't be alone, James says, more harshly than he'd meant to, snapping at JC. I'll be with Ryan.

-No, that's true, says JC quickly. I just meant that I'm sure your Mom will want to see you, that's all.

-I know, James says and nods. I'm seeing her Christmas Eve.

-Well that's good then.

-We have plans for dinner. That's always how we did it when I was a kid, dinner out, and then home to open presents. I always get books, a shirt, and new pair of jeans. She likes new colognes, so that's what I get her.

-Every year?

-Yeah, James says. When I was growing up, she'd be all year tearing out those perfume strips out of magazines and rubbing them on her neck and wrists and asking me what I thought. I thought she was going to give herself a paper-cut one day, but she never did.

James laughs remembering.

-I always liked the books she bought me best, those were my favorite gifts. What were your favorites when you were a kid?

-Oh nothing, JC says, frowning. Nothing special really.

-We'd get donated stuff some years, from the church. My dad was gone or out of work a lot. If I got a toy, or something fun, like a coloring book or something, I'd give it to my brother, as my gift to him. That always made him happy, and me, to see him smile and all.

-What about you though? James asks. A gift that made you happy?

-Actually, JC says, smiling now. There was a book one year, a book of poetry, that this nice librarian - Miss Madge was her name - gave to me. Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman.

-I love that book.

-I saw you had Ryan's copy.

-From you it was.

-Yes.

-I saw you'd signed it.

-I've given that book to lots of people.

-To Lance?

JC nods his head yes and runs his hand through his hair. James smiles at him and it makes JC happy, reminding him of his brother's smile, and of Aaron somehow.

-Well I'm glad you'll be seeing your mother, JC says. I've always liked her.

-She has her moments, James says, smiling.

-As we all do, JC laughs.

-I'll tell her you said hello.

-Do that, JC says.

-Aaron sounded good, don't you think?

-Yes, James says. Kind of tired, but mostly happy though.

-Mostly?

-No, he's okay, James says quickly.

-It's been forever since I've talked to him. But I can still tell how he's doing. We'll always have that, I guess.

-You two should talk more, JC says, his voice serious and plain. You were such good friends, and so close. It's a pity that you've lost each other so.

-Well, James says. He has his life now, and I have mine. People change, and move on. I know that I have. Besides, it would be hard for him to see me like this. And hard for me to have him see me.

-Maybe, JC says, pausing to think first, his right hand rubbing his temple, like there was a pain there he wanted to go away.

-But when you say that people change, and people move on, that doesn't mean the past just disappears. It has a way of keeping up. Look at me and Ryan.

James nod silently, smiles weakly, and looks past JC to the light-filled open door beyond him. Ryan is in there, waiting for him, always waiting, that is what he thinks.

-Anyway, JC says, touching James on the arm. I don't mean to preach. But there might come a day when you'll want that friendship back, the one you had with Aaron, and regret no longer having it. I would hate for that to happen.

-I know, James says. At least, I think I do.

The conversation pauses as JC and James regard each other. Both feel the closeness that they have forged, and are grateful for it, especially James. He has always seen JC and Lance as surrogate parents, grown-ups that have always looked out for him, cared for him, and loved him. But this understanding was in the past always more intellectual than anything else, something he understood, but only sometimes deeply felt. More and more he realized how cut-off from his feelings he had always been, thinking more than feeling, analyzing more than living, protecting himself from hurt in this way. That had been his life to now, a set of problems to be solved, with untoward risks to be avoided. Ryan had changed all that though, his crazy adventure with him.

-There's something that I'd like to give you, JC says. If you have a minute more.

-Sure, James says, surprised. Time I have tons of.

-I have it in Ryan's room, JC says, holding out his hand. Come on.

-Okay, James says, following JC across the foyer.

James takes a deep breath as he approaches the room and then steps into it. He always does this, as if to ready himself for what he is about to see, even though the scene is so familiar he can see it simply by closing his eyes: Ryan there in the bed, unmoving. Glancing around the room, James sees that there is a box with green ribbon tied around it sitting on the chair next to the bed. JC picks it up and hands it to him. He takes the box and gives it a soft shake. No noise comes from box, no clue as to what it might contain.

-Open it, JC says. It's a late birthday present, and an early Christmas gift. Take your pick, either one.

-Or a gift for the Winter solstice, James says. Which is tonight you know.

-I didn't know, actually.

-Aaron reminded me, James says, untying the bow, and removing the ribbon from the box. The shortest day of the year, when the earth is tilted farthest from the sun.

-But every day gets longer now, JC says, smiling. And closer to the sun we tilt. There's hope in that I'd say.

-I guess, James says, looking inside the box now, and seeing tissue paper. What is it? A frame or something. Oh-a photograph. Oh my god, it's Ryan. Look how young he looks. How old was he in this?

-Sixteen, JC said, looking over James' shoulder at the framed photograph he held. He'd just turned, like two or three days before.

-Wow, James says, almost beneath his breath, staring intently, his hands trembling slightly. He's so beautiful.

The photograph shows Ryan wearing cut-offs jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt. He is standing barefoot in just-mown grass, a garden hose in one hand, water spraying from a brass nozzle, catching the sun, glitter-twinkling, wet-cascading, splashing against the grass. The smile on Ryan's face reveals a shiny-white row of teeth, a vast and welcoming smile, which squints his eyes, and delights his face. He looks like he is about to laugh, that he has never before been as happy as he is at that moment, happy to see who is taking his picture, right at that moment.

-Did you take this, James asks, looking up at JC.

-Yes, JC says.

-I had just gotten back from Los Angeles, that very day. We hadn't seen each other in awhile, several months. I was supposed to be on my way to Lou's place, for a rehearsal, or something like that. But I had the cabdriver drop me off to say hello, totally spur of the moment, like snapping this picture. I'm not sure why I did it, except that I happened to have my camera out and was struck by how he looked.

-I'm glad you took the picture, James says, still looking at JC, beaming. I really am.

-So am I, JC says, smoothing the hair out of James' eyes, where it always seemed to fall and hang. And I'm happy that I could find it for you. I wasn't sure I could, or why I suddenly remembered taking it. But there it was, the photo, right where I had left it, between the cover and first page of my journal from back then.

-He looks really happy, was he?

-He was I think. JC says this slowly, thoughtfully, unsure.

-That grass there, JC continues. It was dry and brown and nearly dead when Ryan first moved in, when I'd last seen it. But he'd spent the months I was away totally reseeding the lawn, and watering it every day.

-You'd be amazed at what a little water will do, that was what he told me.

-That sounds just like him.

-Yes, JC says.

-He planted a flower bed too, that one right there, with pink and red geraniums, and the petunias. Not a lot of flowers, but they're lovely don't you think?

-He was in love with you, James says, looking up from the photograph, not hearing the last few words that JC had said.

-You can see it in his eyes, James says, smiling at JC, his eyes wide. Look at how bright his eyes are, how bright and alive.

-I saw that too, JC says, his voice softening. In the photograph I did, but not at the time. He was just my friend, my only close one back then.

-Were you ever lovers?

-Ryan never told you?

-No, James says. I knew about the boxes, the ones he promised to keep for you.

-The boxes?

-Three boxes, your belongings. He kept them when you went to Europe.

JC nods, thinking, looking past James, at Ryan, then the ceiling, then the wall. A sigh leaks from his mouth. He looks back at James, meets his expectant stare, and smiles.

-There's a lot Ryan and I will have to talk about, JC slowly says. Things I'll want to tell him, and things he'll want to tell me. I'm sure of that.

-Is that why you're doing this for him? James asks. For a second chance with him?

-We all deserve a second chance, JC says, his hand now on James' shoulder.

-Don't you think?

-I guess, James says. Mostly.

-But the reason I'm doing, JC says. Is because I care about Ryan, and realize that I love him. Not in the way I love Lance, of course. I'm not in love with him. I'm not inspired to want to share my entire life him. But there are a lot of different kinds of love, and a lot of different ways to love someone.

-Yes, James says. There is I guess.

-And so this is one way I'm trying to show that love, that's all.

-I'm not sure you really know him, the kind of man that Ryan had become.

-But I know the kind of man he was, JC says. And that's the seed from which he grew.

-Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, James after pausing quietly recites.

-Enclosed and safe within its central heart, nestles the seed Perfection.

-The song of the universal, JC says, smiling. One of his most beautiful.

-Yes, James says. And one of Ryan's favorites.

-I imagine he had many.

-So many, James says, laughing as he glanced at Ryan lying there in the bed beside them, not moving.

-By every life a share, or more or less.

-You remember it, James says, looking back at JC and smiling more.

-None born but it is born-conceal'd or unconceal'd, the seed is waiting.

-It is, James says, beginning to cry. I hope you get to meet him again, because he is a really good man, the best I've ever known, I think. And he loved me so.

-You're a good man too, JC says, the hand on James' shoulder rubbing it. Wise beyond your years, and a heart as big and brave as I've ever seen. You remind me of Lance.

-No I don't.

-Yes you do, JC gently says.

James says nothing, staring at the photograph he still holds, Ryan still staring back at him. I love you so much, Ryan's face in the photograph seems to say to him.

-Why don't you put that photo next to the bed, JC says, his hand gently on the back of James' neck now, slightly pushing him.

-It will remind us of that sunny afternoon, Ryan happy and young, making dry grass green, and flowers bloom. That's what you should think of when you are with him, not him being sick, not him being somewhere other than with you, because he is still here you know, and he's going to come back to you. I promise you that.

-You can't promise that, James says. Because he might not. And I can't stand to think of that, I really can't.

-Look at me, JC says. Let's have faith together James, you and me, all right?

James blinks and stares, starts to cry, then stops. Two sniffs of the nose, then he sets the frame that holds the photograph on the table next to the bed. The frame is small, seven inches across, and just five inches tall. But looking at what's in it, the photograph inside, it is as if for James a vista has opened, one big enough to walk through. He imagines standing there, in the picture with Ryan, watching him water the grass, his eyes happy to see him come home. We could have lived in that house forever, James thinks, you and I together, in love and young. I would have saved you, Ryan, kept you safe, and you'd never have this horrible sickness, this disease, which I damn god for giving you, damn you god, damn you.

-I'm in love with him, James says, looking at JC, who he sees through blurry-wet eyes. I don't know when it happened, but I fell in love with him.

-I know you must feel like you have, JC says, whispering in his ear. And that's all right James. Love him with all your heart. Just don't give up on him. or you, because that's the only thing that matters in the end, not giving up.

-Sometimes I wonder how long I can stand this, James says, shaking his head. It's just so hard to see him like this, like he's already dead, but not really.

-You're stronger than you think, JC says. And so is he. You'll see.

A single silent nod and then James is in JC's arm, crying silently, steadily, hard. His back heaves and falls with each sob. JC's arms are tight around him, holding him. JC murmurs to him, not words exactly, but soothing sounds, reassurances.

-Do not despair, James, JC whispers. He will rise for you, just wait and see.

VII. What the Thunder Said.

-Fuck.

The word was small and hard and barely audible. And neither JC nor James had uttered it. Struck silent, they stare, frozen, at each other. The feeling felt is like when one walks home alone, in the dark, the long way home, feeling lost, and then suddenly steps are heard behind you. Who's there? Who's behind me? Should I run? Am I in danger?

Fuck-the word echoed in the room, and echoed in their heads.

He had coughed up the word, Fuck, like a piece of apple caught in his throat.

-I pissed the bed, the voice this time said, weaker, less emphatic, fading already.

James clutches JC's arm and with him turns around. Ryan's eyes are open, not wide, but open, and blinking. Tentatively, his lips move, as if unsure whether he had the strength to try to speak again. But before he can, James face is pressed against Ryan's cheek, his hand on his neck. He wants to crawl into bed and hold him, cradle him, to not let go, to not let him slip away again, to keep him there with him forever.

-You're back, James says. You're back. Oh god, thank god, you're back.

Ryan smiles, his hand slow-slides up James' back, struggling. JC helps him. He takes Ryan's hand and places it on the back of James' head, his fingers threading through the long hair there, smoothing it. You're back, you're back, is all that James can seem to say, echoing what his heart says. He continues to say it, You're back, you're back, again and again. Ryan cannot help but hear the joy in James' voice, and cannot help but smile and nod at JC behind him, who he is not sure is actually there. It occurs to Ryan that what he sees must be a dream, that he is dying, or even dead, and this vision is the end of his life, not any kind of beginning. But no, no, that cannot be. The look on JC's face is not right, the way his eyes find and meet his own, shyly, unsure, glad. He is glad to see him, in a real way glad, not imagined real. He is alive, he must be, and must believe, to be, yes, alive.

-You found yourself a faithful friend, JC finally says, continuing to meet Ryan's gaze.

-Not many an hour that he's not been by your side, taking care of you.

Ryan nods, his eyes weak, his lips still moving, but barely. Tear-smudged, red, James face rises from where it had laid pressed close to Ryan. He is silent now, no longer reciting his hosannas of, You're back, you're back. JC pats his shoulder, his neck, his back.

-I'm going to call the doctor, JC says. Can you manage?

-Yes, says James, turning back to Ryan.

-How do you feel? he asks, pleading.

A small shrug, a small smile, a sigh. This is all Ryan offers. But it is as if James has been handed all the riches of the world, and every power too. Suddenly he is omnipotent, and joy-filled too, the source, the font, the holder of every joy that ever existed, and ever would. He watches awestruck as Ryan's shoulders move, just a little. He nestles willfully into the pillow, on his own, not just settles there, not gravity doing the work for him, but him moving on his own, animated, alive.

-Piss, Ryan whispers.

-Oh right, James says. Let me get my stuff. I'll be just a second.

James darts into the bathroom, leaving Ryan for a moment to consider the room he finds himself in, a room painted a shade of green he is not sure he knows how to describe. It is pale, but intense, like Spring peas, or the color of a fern frond, young, just sprouting. The sheet that covers him is soft and white, not scratchy and stiff, like ones from before, where? He cannot remember. Then James is back and the sheet is lifted. He sees he is wearing shorts, pale blue madras, the front dampened dark, a hearty whiff of ammonia in the air. A short-sleeved shirt is open, unbuttoned. Ryan horrified, stares at the tube that enters his chest just above his right nipple, and then the IV in his arm.

-I'm going to lift you just a little, James says, sliding his hand beneath Ryan's back. I won't hurt you, don't worry. I've done this a hundred times before.

Ryan watches James work, how quickly. The shorts come off. His penis is in his hand, and a soft cloth is wet and warm upon it. A red latex cap loose and dripping is taken away. A dry towel beneath him. A warm dry towel to dry him. The shorts in a basket by the door. New shorts from the top drawer of a dresser lined with pots of blooming flowers - purple hyacinth, red amaryllis, and white lilies. James crying, soft-sobbing, but with a gentle giggle percolating through it, like a bubble rising in water, floating to the top, hiccup-popping. A cello in the corner. A pile of books on the end of the bed, on top of a blue blanket. His shorts up and on. The sheets replaced. Yes I can help. There lift up. Thank you. Thank you. And then he's done.

-There you are, James says. Isn't that better?

-Uh-huh, Ryan nods, his eyelids drooping, as if near sleep.

James holds Ryan's face now, his hands cupping the side of his face, his thumbs rubbing the bottom edge of Ryan's lips, which he kisses softly, surprising them both.

-I love you, James says. I love you Ryan. I have to tell you that, while I can. I mean it. I do. I love you Ryan. I love you. I love you.

-Where am I? Ryan finally says, his eyes dazed and roaming. I don't know where I am.

-In San Diego, James says. At Josh and Lance's house.

-Did you hear me? I love you, I said.

Ryan slowly nods. James kisses him again, softly, swiftly, surely.

-Yes, Ryan whispers. I heard. Can I have water? I'm so thirsty.

-I'm so glad you're back, James says, standing up and kissing Ryan's cheek this time. It's been over three months. I'll get you a glass of water, don't fall asleep. I'll be right back. There is a glass in bathroom I think. One second...can you hear me from in here?

The sound of water running, and the clink of a glass against a faucet, then James is back in the room, holding the glass out with one hand, and his other hand behind Ryan's head, cradling it, gently lifting, helping him take small sips, with tentative-eager lips. A little water dribbles down Ryan's chin and James with his thumb catches it, then licks his thumb, and smiles at Ryan, kissing his cheek again.

-How's that? James asks. Is that enough?

Ryan nods weakly.

-How long again, he asks?

-Ninety-six days, James quickly answers.

-San Diego?

-Yes, James says. At Lance and Josh's house, in San Diego.

-Why?

Ryan looks puzzled and slightly frightened. His eyes dart around the room, like he once more is not sure that the room is really there, like he might be imagining it, the room a wishful hallucination, the beautiful flowers there before him, and James telling him again and again how much he loves him. Wasn't this something that he had wished for, always wanted? How could something as lovely as this be real? But he so badly wanted it to be, to have James holding his right hand, just like that, with the small bed barely able to contain them. James manages anyway, to lie beside him anyway, holding his hand, holding him, gazing into his eyes, enchanted by what he finds there: life.

-I am alive, Ryan says.

-Yes, alive, James says. I love you so much.

-Why, Ryan says, stopping, then starting again. Why am I here?

-Because we love you, James says, beginning to cry, his eyes filled with joy as much as tears. Because we love you so fucking much.

-James, Ryan whispers, his eyes full and round and wet, still searching. He is unable to say more, just this name, just this once. He is too weak. His lips will not move, and he cannot find his voice. James he said, and he hopes that is enough. And it is.

-This is where I belong, James says, his lips pressed to Ryan's cheek, his neck, his ear, planting kisses in each spot like seeds in tender earth. Right here, Ryan, right here, right here.

JC returns to find Ryan's head cradled against James' chest, James behind him, holding Ryan , rocking him gently to and fro. Ryan sees JC, blurry, but sees him, JC smiling at him, and waving shyly. James is quiet, and his eyes are closed. He hums to Ryan, musical and soft, a gentle melody of sweet appreciation for this gift he has received: Ryan risen for him.

VIII. And Indeed There Will Be Time.

The air in the living room is warm and smells of cinnamon and clove. The voices there are soft, held beneath by music, a cello and piano playing from a farther room, a gift from years ago, a recording of traditional Christmas songs, many mostly Celtic - The Wexford Carol , A Midnight Waltz, Joyous Mystery, and the one that JC now softly sings, recalling James and Aaron playing the song together, recording it for him and Lance.

-Full many a bird did wake and fly, he sings, Ryan sitting beside him, nibbling the edge of a cookie, and listening.

-Curoo, curoo, curoo.

-Full many a bird did wake and fly, to the manger bed with a wandering cry, on Christmas day in the morning. Curoo, curoo, curoo.

-That's nice, Ryan softly says.

-Yes, JC smiles. Would you like some more ginger-ale?

-No I'm fine, Ryan says. But thank you.

Ryan finishes eating the cookie that JC has given him and wipes the crumbs from his lips with a green paper napkin.

-That was good, he says. Not too sweet.

-Soft ginger cookies, JC says. A recipe from Lance's mother. They're his favorites.

Ryan smiles and JC and slowly nods. He is sitting side-by-side with JC on the couch while Lance and James finish with the Christmas tree lights. Nearly every branch is ready now, with the green wires that string the lights together carefully nestled in the needles so only the glowing lights will show. This year, like every year since Lance and JC have lived here, a noble fir stands twelve feet tall in the corner, its top just touching the ceiling. With the last lights in place, Lance holds the aluminum ladder while James climbs quickly down, jumping off the second to last rung, his bare feet hitting the floor with a soft thud.

-There, James says, clapping his hand twice together. Ready to go.

-Do you want to do the honors James?

-Plug the lights in? James asks, his voice excited. Sure, I'd love to.

-Get to it then, Lance laughs.

-And then there was light! James half-shouts as he plugs in the lights the extension cord that snakes from beneath the tree to the wall behind.

-It looks great, doesn't it Ry? James asks, stepping back from the tree and admiring his and Lance's work. Like it's on fire almost.

-Almost, Ryan says, taking a final sip of ginger ale and then setting the glass on the side table next to the couch.

-And if we were true pagans, Ryan continues, his voice having grown stronger. It would be, really on fire, with a virgin tied to it for good measure.

-I think we'll stick with lights, Lance says, winking at JC.

-Which is for the best, JC says, laughing. We're short on virgins in this house anyway.

-You can say that again, Ryan says, laughing with him.

-So this is our little Christmas tradition, Lance says, pointing to the tree with an open hand and then at the four boxes that sit on the floor in the middle of the room.

The boxes are in a neat row, one next to the other. Three of the boxes are of identical size, thirty inches square. The fourth box is smaller, and made of dark-brown wood. A brass clasp where a lock once hung keeps the lid closed. Smiling at Ryan, then at JC, Lance crouches down and removes the lid from the first box, then the next, until the three big boxes are open.

-Those are all our ornaments, JC says.

-Josh and I collected them, Lance says. Over the years, here and there, like souvenirs.

-Except for Aaron's ornaments, JC says, looking at Ryan, then pointing at the smaller wooden box. His are all in there. He bought a new one every year, with his allowance.

-He was almost as bad as JC making up his mind.

-So I'm indecisive at time, JC says. We can't all be perfect like Mr. Lance Bass.

-Oh please, Lance laughs, turning to James.

-Do you want to help me with this?

-Sure, James says, opening the clasp on the wooden box and lifting open its lid, which was double-hinged and folds back in two sections. How's that?

-Great, Lance says, sliding the wooden box closer to the couch.

-Lance and I bought that box ages ago, JC says. It held our collection for years.

-It looks old, Ryan says.

-We got it at a second-hand store. Lance found it.

-Who knows who had it before us?

-Or what it was used for.

-When Aaron came along, we let him use it for his ornaments.

-I remember how he used to keep it in his room under the bed, James says.

-He would show me his new ornament every year once he got it, like it was the most important thing in the world to him. He was always so excited, which I loved, because it made me excited too. I was never much on Christmas before I met Aaron.

-Aaron asked James to hang his ornaments for him this year, JC says.

-Since he couldn't get home to do it himself.

-Where is he, Ryan asks. He's making a movie, right?

-Yes, Lance says, frowning. His idea, not ours.

-But we're supporting him in his decision, JC says, looking at Lance. Aren't we?

-Yes, Lance nodded. We are.

-So Aaron asked me to hang his ornaments for him, James says. As a favor. But I thought it'd be great if you'd hang some with me, the first one especially.

-Aaron always hung the first ornament.

-We'd be honored if you would do it, JC says, patting the top of Ryan's hand, which lay on the couch beside him. Hang the first ornament for us.

-Or as many as you want, we have so many.

-I'm not real good at standing yet, Ryan says, his face flushed, remembering how Lance had helped him up the stairs, lifting and half-carrying most of the way. He weighed barely one-hundred pounds, and was still quite pale and weak.

-I'd feel awful if I broke one.

-I'll help you, James says. You'll do fine.

-We'll all help.

-Yes, we will.

-All right, Ryan says, a smile slowly forming on his face. He cannot help but smile the way that James watches him now, beams at him, is so happy to see him.

-Great, James says, clapping his hands together, and bouncing his shoulders.

-I'll need to pick one first, Ryan says. The one I want to hang.

-Here, Lance says. I'll hold the box. And Josh, maybe you can unwrap them for him, so he can see which one he wants.

-Sure, JC says, taking an ornament from the box, quickly unwrapping the tissue paper, and revealing the ornament inside to Ryan.

JC holds the ornament out in front of Ryan's face. It is a bird, a cardinal, blaringly red, with a sprig of white holly berries held in its shiny gold beak.

-Aaron picked that one out when he was ten, Lance says.

-No, he was nine, JC says, giving Lance a playful look. Because we got him the binoculars and bird books the Christmas before, when he was eight.

-You're right, Lance says.

-For a change, JC laughs, turning to Ryan. Lance has a much better memory than I do.

-For some things.

-You should put the bird on the tree, Ryan says, looking at James. That seems right to me for some reason. I'm not sure why, but it does.

-Sure, James says, taking the ornament from JC, and holding it cautiously, afraid that it might break if he did not pay close attention. But you go first though. Pick one.

-Hmm, Ryan says as he watches JC unwrap three more ornaments, shaking his head no at each one, a rocket-ship, a golden shield with constellations on it, and a white butterfly. Those are nice but...no, there's the one. I'd like to hang that one, if you don't mind.

Lance bent and put the box back on the floor, pushing it out of the way. JC stood now and held the ornament aloft, his other hand held out to Ryan. The ornament Ryan had chosen is a large and delicate crystal star; it looked as if it might have been carved from quartz or ice, and it seemed both fragile and incomparably strong. Ryan admired the star for several moments, from where he sat; it fascinated him somehow. Smiling, Lance watched the fascination show on Ryan's face, and was touched by it.

-You ready? JC softly says, taking Ryan's hand so he can help him u.

-Here, let me help, James says, stepping around JC to Ryan's other side.

-No, Ryan says, looking into James's eyes and smiling. I'm fine pal. But thank you.

Ryan slips forward to the edge of the couch. Then using his both hands to press down on the cushions, he raises himself up and slowly stands. Once standing he takes hold of JC's still out-stretched hand.

-There, he says. Progress.

-Right on, JC says, smiling.

-Josh, Lance says, nodding at JC and the star ornament he holds. Why don't you let me hold that until we get ready to hang it on the tree.

-Okay, JC says, handing the ornament to him.

-This is Aaron's very first one, Lance says, talking to Ryan.

-He stood in the store a half-hour deciding.

-Well, there were so many to choose from. And he was only three.

-It's beautiful, isn't it?

-Very, Ryan says. Are you sure you both want me to hang it?

-Positive, JC and Lance say together.

-You know, JC says. There's a story to that ornament. Do you remember James?

-It's Aaron's magic star, James says, nodding and smiling, watching Ryan eagerly, his joy-filled face following Ryan's proud shuffling steps, with JC beside him, guiding.

-There's one wish that goes with it, James continues. When you hang the star, you can have a wish, if you want it.

-Aaron never used the wish, Lance says, on the other side of Ryan now, one hand on his back, the other hand holding the crystal star. Every year we asked him.

-And every year he said he didn't need to wish for anything.

-A lucky boy, Ryan softly says.

-Yes, James says.

-Yes, JC says.

-The last three years, he refused to hang it, Lance says, nodding to Ryan, then looking at James. It was like he finally had a wish, but wouldn't make it.

-Or couldn't.

-After all those years without one.

-This will be the first year in three that Aaron's magic star will be back on the tree.

-He'll be happy to know that I think.

The four of them stand around the tree now, in a curving line, one half of an ellipse, each within the sight of the other. The tree is ablaze with light, hundreds of tiny glowing white lights, glittering constellations lighting up a vast green sky, dazzling their eyes, coaxing forth smiles. James hands the star to Ryan, who smiles taking it from him. His hands shake, but only slightly, as he takes the star from Lance.

-Thank you, Ryan says. For letting me hang this, and all you've done.

-You're entirely welcome, Lance says, soft-patting Ryan's back.

-Make a wish, JC whispers in Ryan's ear, his hand on Ryan's back as well, finding Lance's hand, and holding it.

Ryan looks at JC with an expression of kind but slightly sad regard. He understands at once what JC has suggested, and is struck by benevolence of the gesture. He feels warmth in his chest that he cannot describe, and does not try to. He lets it radiate through him, filling him with a sense of belonging again. No longer is it him against the world, or even him and James against the world. He feels something cold in himself slip and break and begin to melt. He hears the music softly playing in the room again. It was there before, he thinks. But he has noticed it again, the cello and piano, playing together, with stunning force, and uncanny beauty.

-But it is not my wish to make, Ryan says, regarding JC still, the lights reflected in his eyes, which glisten and dance regarding him as well.

-Or my wish to have, Ryan says. It's Aaron's wish.

-Yes, JC says, believing now that he knows exactly what that wish was that Aaron did not make, the wish he hopes comes true somehow.

-But the wish will never be made, JC says. Unless you're the one to make it.

JC kisses Ryan softly on the cheek, lifting and guiding his hand as the star rises and climbs and goes on the tree, catching the light of all the other lights around it, capturing the light and holding it, holding it until the star is ablaze, and a source of light itself. Ryan understands the wish, and knows that he will make it, with JC he will make it.

-Let's wish together then, Ryan says, JC's hand still holding his, helping him to secure the star, then lightly touching it together, with the faintest of fingertips.

-Yes, JC says, looking at Ryan. Let's make it together then.

-Now, Ryan says, looking at JC.

And it is thus the wish was made, silently, JC and Ryan's thoughts together, parallel and identical, wishing James and Aaron together again.

1 "What About the Other War?" Neil Stannard, published in Positive Living (April/May 2002).

2 From "The Man with Night Sweats," Thom Gunn, Collected Poems, (c) 1994 by Thom Gunn.

3 From Corps a Corps, Alain-Emmanuel Dreuilhe (1987).

4 From the preface of Love Alone, Eighteen Elegies for Rog, Paul Monette (1988).

5 From Heaven's Coast, Mark Doty (1996).