for b-p, an incredible artist
The longer Duo went without him, the more reasons why he loved Heero piled up around him in a garden of weeds.
Missing him came unexpectedly and in varying degrees of pain. Sometimes it was a mere twinge in his chest, much like a growing pain (but he'd stopped growing a long time ago; who was he fooling? certainly not himself). Other times, it was a sudden collapse of his ribs and his lungs, forcing the air from his body like a hand squeezing an untied balloon.
They meet at a lifeguarding class on the beach. Duo has dreams of spelunkers and mad scientists and long thin crystals, visions that float on dollar signs. His father runs the beach club. He's gotten Duo a job patrolling, thirty dollars an hour, an insurmountable figure to a seventeen year old boy.
Heero is his instructor. He has strong arm muscles and pink nipples that look like scars against the smoothness of his chest. He is one long year older than Duo, and he carries the weariness of the world on his broad shoulders.
"The water is roped off into different sections," says Heero, his voice a heavy drone. "Children should not be allowed past the blue ropes, and adults past the red."
"I've been out past the red," says one young brownnoser.
"You were lucky you didn't get caught in a current and swept out to sea," says Heero. He gestures to the land around them, a small island surrounded by circling shark water. "Past the red, you're almost a quarter of the way to Venus Island. Only fifty miles to go after that."
Someone laughs at the name, and Heero turns and fixes his gaze to them. He wears Oakley sunglasses with reflecting lenses, lenses that give him a cycloptic glare, a thick ray of vision instead of two streams.
"Everyone grab a partner," says Heero, and Duo feels a prickly sensation on the back of his neck, a knowing that there is an odd number of people in the group, that he will be paired with Heero, that there is a higher hand shoving him along, an index finger of fire stirring the seas like a stew.
Often, it was small things that made him remember, like the ant hill coffee grounds left in the maker, or the cassette Heero'd forgotten in Duo's car, the one with fifteen tracks of "Blowin' in the Wind". He thought about Heero as the wind, sometimes; you couldn't own it, and you couldn't control it.
They become fast friends. Duo pulls nepotistic strings with his father, and they end up working the same shifts in the same parts of the beach.
Heero tells him that his little sister died during an earthquake. The ground just opened and swallowed her up.
Duo tells him that his mother died giving birth to him. They don't cry, but they are quiet together. It's the closest that Duo has ever been with another human being, except for his mother. He never knew his mother, but he figures since the woman gave her life for him, there's some kind of deeper connection. Heero agrees, and Duo secretly loves him for it.
When the summer is over, Duo expects Heero to go back to L.A., but instead, he buys an apartment twenty minutes from Duo's town and trades in his surfboard for a beat up Chevy.
Duo is eighteen when his father dies unexpectedly of a heart attack and leaves him everything, including an undeveloped lot. A week after the wake, a developer with an interest in commercial expansion contacts him. Duo's vision goes gold, and when he comes back to himself, he has said yes.
[I was lucky that he stayed so long,] Duo had thought many times. Duo put wood wind chimes at every window of his apartment. He never closed windows after Heero left, not for winter snows, not for hurricanes.
There were other, big, major things that could set him off too. Valentine's Day, for one. There was just something about all the couples, young and blushing, wrinkled and sun-kissed, that made him feel lightweight. He thought his arms were going to float away into the eye of the sun. Duo remembered sitting on a bench in the park and watching the sunset melt onto the pond. He remembered the golds and the tans and the way they reminded him of that party--
"To the new CEO of Nature's Art," says Heero. He pops a bottle of cava, champagne imported from the northeast of Spain, and pours them both glasses. Around them, people mill through the living room. The sofa and the walls are a warm creme color. Surprisingly, no one has arrived in clothing with colors that scream 'fashion faux pas'; everything is soft, blurry at the edges, smoothed by alcohol's palm.
Duo laughs, because Nature's Art is a small rock store in a strip mall. Duo and Heero have spent countless hours in the backrooms, examining precious stones with microscopes powerful enough to be utilized in laboratories.
"This is all thanks to you, you know," says Duo, kissing Heero's cheek. "I couldn't have done it alone. I would have gone nuts." Heero says nothing, but Duo knows that he is pleased.
--and the way the candles had burned dimly in their bedroom after. They had burrowed under thick blankets and made love for the first time. God, the hours they spent after, trying to fall asleep, trying to get used to the feel of someone else's bumpy hips and cushy thighs. Like all things, it was a process.
The transition times between dead night and bright day, candles, soft music, the brilliant blooms of roses all set him off. There was usually nothing to be done about it; Duo just wiped his eyes with a tissue and hoped that somewhere, maybe in a cold hotel room, maybe panning for gold in a quiet dustbin of a town, Heero was doing the same.
His temper had gotten shorter. One day an employee had come in late--
"You're fired." Duo smiles at him, as if delivering news of a raise or the coming of Christmas a week early. The boy is only a few years younger than Duo, but he still looks at him with something akin to reverence.
"You're kidding, right?"
"I don't kid," says Duo, tapping one finger against the glass counter, the glass counter the boy was supposed to be working fifteen minutes earlier. Time goes so much slower now that Heero is gone; all it takes is fifteen minutes for Duo to work himself into a frenzy, into a slow, calculated fury. He thinks of responsibility and discipline, of trust and how much he needs, now more than ever, to be able to depend on his people.
"Shit," says the boy, but Duo is already polishing the amber pendants. Someone, (maybe the suddenly unemployed boy) has smudged their perfect surfaces with fingerprints. Duo doesn't bother to ask himself what use a thing has if it can never be used, never be touched. In the backroom, there is a large amber half-circle, flawless but for a tiny mosquito that fell into the sap bubble, that he and Heero were carving into a falcon. Duo has never been able to bring himself to touch it.
--and Duo had eliminated him as ruthlessly as Heero had him.
But time was the best balm. Time was the perfect pink eraser from grade school that you could never bring yourself to use. Fewer and fewer things made him think of Heero. He didn't know when he made it through a whole day without daydreaming of the curve of his collarbone, but he did and the days melted into weeks on end, whole pages of his calendar ripped off without a thought.
Duo looked at the letter and swore quietly.
"Any mail for me?" asks Duo as he breezes by on his way to the elevator. There is never any mail for him; he has it all sent to the office. Duo practically lives there now. He remembers mornings with Heero, and coffee and a newspaper sans sports page, and a bundle of letters and bills set on the kitchen table.
"There's a letter from California," says the woman, holding out a crumpled white envelope. "H. Yuy."
Duo stops dead in his tracks.
Duo looked at the tiny black ring that fell from the paper of the letter, just big enough to fit his little finger. It was strange that Heero would choose such a stone; or rather, it was disconcerting that Heero chose to ignore the history that a different gem would have called up--
Duo swallows hard as Heero leans over his shoulder to look into the eyepiece. He smells faintly of perfumed salts, and it reminds him of the hot baths at day spas. His aunt, who loves it when young men press cucumbers to her eyelids, drags him to one every year at Christmas. He always carries the scent of the ocean for days after.
"It's a decent piece," says Heero. "But there're tiny stress fractures down the sides; it's not naturally this shape."
Duo smiles. "Of course not," he says, almost shyly. "I shaped it myself. No one wants to buy lopsided amber." Heero shrugs, flicking on the light. Duo blinks as the sudden fluorescence of the room stings his eyes. "I guess since it's used in jewelry the majority of the time, it has to be smoothed into form."
"Jewelry?" Heero sounds faintly surprised. "I can't picture anyone wanting to wear something with bugs that are millions of years old inside it."
"Oh come on," says Duo, biting his lip as Heero's eyes meet his, "appreciate the aesthetics." He is about to say something else, a lame joke, a hare-brained scheme for removing the insects inside the amber involving McDonald's straws and a Hoover, but then Heero kisses him.
Heero kisses him, and it is sad and maddeningly sweet and wonderful at the same time.
--inside him. Duo closed his eyes as he slipped the ring on. He admired the way its black fishspine curved around his finger. The letter was from Heero's father in the end. He claimed that it had been in Heero's pocket when the police found the body. He also claimed that Heero had been going to see Duo.
Duo wasn't sure what he was going to do. Part of him wanted to rent a car and drive out to L.A. that very afternoon, not even stopping to sleep, or eat or rest. He wanted to walk up the Yuy's house, see where Heero had lived and slept and breathed and dreamed. He wanted to bury his face in his pillow, inhale his scent. The pillows Duo had no longer smelled like him.
"I don't know," he said, staring at the tiny barbs of sunlight reflecting from the opal. But the words of the letter reverberated inside him.
_He's dead._
"God damn you," said Duo, laughing softly. "Just...fuck you. Fuck you for leaving me."
Later that night, Duo laid on his bed and studied the ceiling.
Duo thought of all the arid deserts and decrepit pyramids they said they would conquer, and eventually plunder. He thought of the first time Heero had cried in front of him, choked sobs that hounded Duo long after they ceased.
Duo felt certain one moment, and ambivalent the next. He hated Heero the next instant for entering his life so smoothly and then tearing it to pieces as he exited, a fish hook with multiple barbs and plastic bait. In his head, he listed all the reasons that he hated Heero, and while he was still mulling that over, an owl began to cry outside, begging to be let in.
"No," says Duo.
"Come on; open the door!" Heero pounds on the door twice, then swears loudly. The sound is strange coming from him. Duo suspects that Heero learned it from him. "Duo, you're being completely unreasonable. All the neighbors are listening to us."
"Let them listen," says Duo, sniffing. He feels miffed, he feels stubborn and angry, and Heero is a perfect target. He always is; he forgives him wordlessly every time. "You're not going to put a fucking mortgage on my store."
"Duo--"
"I said no!"
"Duo."
"I'm not listening." He slumps against the wall, keeping one ear near the crack of the door that serves as their phone line. "Damn it, Heero, I bought that place with my father's insurance money. I'm not going to let some pansy bank own part of it."
"They won't own part of it if you pay it off. It's just a little money; you could use some free cash. You get more bills in the mail every day. It's a small island, with a small demographic. There's only so many rock collectors in the world and an even smaller number with access to--"
"Shut up," says Duo, and surprisingly--horrifyingly--he does. "Cut the bullshit."
"You are going to lose Nature's Art if you don't," says Heero, and Duo hates him more in that moment than he ever has, and ever will. He hates him for the truth that hurts, hates him for using the truth to make him act. Duo wants to hurt him.
Instead, Duo bites the inside of his cheek and lets Heero inside. He pretends to give in, but carries his resentment in a small seed buried in his chest. Every day, he suns the seed until it germinates, and waters it until it flowers. One day, over nothing, it explodes and flings them to the ground, stunning them, knocking the air from their lungs.
Heero leaves. He doesn't say when he'll be back; if he'll ever be back.
Duo broke into his own store at three in the morning, wearing boxers and a t-shirt that Heero either forgot to pack or didn't want. The shirt read 'USC' in large, blocky blue letters. He slipped in through an open window in the backroom and used his keys to open the small vault.
The lock turned easily, greased by haste, and Duo began to pile the contents of the vault into his backpack. He hadn't used his bookbag since he was a lifeguard at the beach, flirting with Heero under the boiling sun, keeping an eye on the rich old ladies in sunhats and their hooligan grandchildren.
He remembered the time he and Heero built a sandcastle and the waves came and swept it all away. The tide claimed it as its own.
Duo walked out through the front door and got into his car, heaving the bag into the backseat. It was a new vehicle, one of those redesigned Ford Mustangs, but it rode like a living room and made him wish for the bumps of Heero's Chevy.
"I wonder what he did with it," said Duo.
They found him after a week of dragging the ocean with a seine net. He appeared like Aphrodite rising from the foam, hair tangled into the webbing, fingers half-cocked, his body frightening naked. He was stripped of mystery, stripped of dignity.
It was Detective Winner who had the audacity to open the bag. He nearly dropped the bag; it was heavy, had to weigh at least one hundred pounds. The other officers edged away, as if a pile of decapitated heads would come rolling out.
Instead, great balls of honey, perfectly round and smooth, came thunking out, half-burying themselves in the packed sand. The sun was beginning to peek from behind the clouds, signaling the arrival of summer. Winner noted that there were already lifeguard chairs planted at intervals of the empty beach.
"Shame," said Darlian, peering over Winner's shoulder at the sandy stones. Her eyes were made for appraising jewelry and gold. He'd be surprised if she were still on the force in a year. "If it weren't for those rock things, he'da made it across the sound. Only had ten miles to go."
"Yeah," said Detective Winner. "What could possess someone to go for a midnight swim with those on his back?" Hesitantly, he reached down and picked up one of the stones, testing it for heft and weight. He held it up to his face and saw tiny air bubbles inside, trapped there for eternity. It made him think of that kid, what it must have been like to slowly drown, to _want_ to drown. This was his last breath, immortalized in stone.
Winner jerked at that thought, dropping the amber. It rolled without complaint toward the others.
The clean-up team came with its head, Sally Po, shooing Winner away. "You look exhausted," she said. "Go home. We'll take care of it. Darlian's already made herself scarce. You do the same."
"Right," said Winner. He still couldn't help but take one last look at the body, now on a stretcher, being wheeled toward a waiting van. His body was rigid, arms upraised to the sky. Had he seen a vision while dying, a white light?
No matter what anyone said, he knew that the number had been infinitely more than ten, more than all the seas in the world, more than the line between life and what waited after.
end. O_O
Bianca
Please send comments to: weirdsisters@hotmail.com