A red tainted Silence (69 page)

He put his arm around me. “You aren’t going to lose him, Nicholas.” I looked at Lee, felt my throat tighten. “How do you know that, Lee? We don’t know what happened. I mean, we know he was raped repeatedly --” Lee cringed at that. I recognized the look in his eyes, saw it in my own when I looked in the mirror. I put my hand over his and squeezed. “It’s okay, Lee. None of us knew.” He sat back, rubbed his hand over his beard, shook his head. “Should’ve. Should’ve pushed. I had the chance, more than once, to force it out of him, pin him on the real reason he was pulling back --”

“I don’t think it would’ve done any good. We were destined to lose him, from the band anyway. He just couldn’t handle it like you and I and Sam and Tommy and the girls could.

He just couldn’t.” I took a deep breath and looked at the computer, at Brandon’s words on the screen. “He wrote about it, though. What he couldn’t tell us, he wrote about.” Lee leaned over and, taking the mouse from me, scrolled down, reading quick snatches.

“Wow,” he whispered, a smile stealing across his face as he read through the part where Brandon first saw me in the play. My audition, and how Brandon had fainted from lack of food and being sick and the shock of seeing me. And later, his eyes danced as he read how Brandon finally tracked me down after so long at the bookstore, how I’d made verbal love to him in a room full of my friends.

And then he read how I was attacked, and raped. My face heated at that part. I felt sick, remembering. His eyebrows lifted as he read Brandon’s account of how he saved me, how we hid in that nasty, filthy apartment, how we were threatened by those bastards. I felt so weary, reading that again.

“I never knew. I didn’t --”

“It’s all right, Lee. That was a long time ago.”

“But --”

I sat up and shook my head. “No, no. Remember, that was the most horrific night of my life, but also the most wonderful. It brought me lots of pain, but it also brought me Brandon.”

“But if it hadn’t happened --”

“We likely wouldn’t be sitting here trying to figure out what all this means. But we also might not be sitting here at all. I don’t know, Lee. I’ve thought about this over and over again. That night’s tragedy brought us together so hard and fast we couldn’t help but become 408

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what we did.” I smiled sadly. “We might not have gone beyond that night, not thinking we needed each other. Sparks might not have flown. Dream might never have been.”

“You don’t believe that, do you?”

I grinned and shrugged. “I think Brandon believed that with or without him, I would’ve succeeded.”

“You probably would’ve, Nick. That’s just it.”

Lee didn’t get it either. “But see, Brandon believed I didn’t need him, ever. But that’s not true.” I pounded the table in frustration. “I would never have pushed myself like I did, or maybe I would’ve been singing stupid musical crap or something. Brandon brought me to a place I could never have reached on my own. He helped me, Lee. I don’t think he truly understands that.”

Lee nodded. “I’d like to keep reading this, if I can. Maybe there’s something I can see in there --” He paused. “If you think it would be okay?”

“Would you?” I said. “Maybe you would be able to see something.” I looked at my watch. “It’s just about ten. I want to take a shower, and then I think I’ll read a bit more before I go back.”

“Want me to go to the hospital with you?”

I shook my head. “No, not if you don’t want to.”

“I can always take a cab back if I start to annoy you guys.” I laughed at that and nodded. “Okay, great.” I picked up a blank floppy from the table and made a copy of the file, handing it to Lee. I smiled shyly. “There’s some stuff in there that he wrote about me and him and, well, he wrote about it all.”

“Gay sex?” Lee said, waggling his eyebrows. “Always wondered what it was like, two guys fucking each other. And now I get a firsthand account? Cool.” I punched him on the shoulder. “Lee! I’m ashamed you.”

“Hey, it’s not like I’m asking you to tell me what it was like.” I stood. “No, you’re not. But I think you’re enjoying the prospects of reading about it a little more than you should, for a straight man.” He laughed at that, clearly not perturbed. “Just curious. I’ll just pretend it isn’t you guys. But from what Jon told me, you haven’t exactly been shy of your affections for Brandon lately.”

I grinned broadly. “Only because he lets me now.” Lee sighed and stood. “It’s really amazing. When I saw the articles written about you guys, how Brandon handled you guys coming out to the whole fucking world, I was amazed.”

I smiled happily. “I was flabbergasted!”

“So you think he’ll tour again?”

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I hesitated, shrugged. “I don’t know, Lee. Honestly I don’t. Dream will live again --” The light danced in his eyes. “And yes, you are definitely a part of it. Sam and Tommy, too, if they want to. But it will be a while. We’ve got our coming tour to worry about first, don’t forget.”

“You know I’m on board for the long haul.”

“I know. And I appreciate that. We both do.” I took a deep breath. “Okay, then, shower time for me. I’m stinky.” Lee wrinkled his nose and I held a finger up to him. “Not that stinky. I did have a shower this morning.”

“Before you worked up a sweat attacking killer dust bunnies.”

“Get your laptop, and I’ll join you in a bit.”

“Okay. Sounds like a plan.”

I left Lee, feeling immeasurably better. I took a shower as quickly as I could, then got dressed in black jeans and a gray turtleneck Katie had bought for me. She is a great shopper.

Then I joined Lee at the table. Brandon’s mom had arrived from her errands, and Tommy and Sylvie had finally gotten up and were eating a late breakfast, and Jeff would be back soon. So I felt content, and ready to dig once more into Brandon’s -- and my -- past.

“Okay, baby, let’s get to it,” I whispered to the computer. Then I began to read.

* * * * *

“What are you doing, Brandon?”

I looked up from my bowl of soup. “Eating.”

“Have you had a chance to look at the lyrics I wrote last night?” I pushed the bowl back and nodded. Hell, yes, I had. “Yeah, they’re really good, Nicholas.”

He pulled a chair back and sat, then took my bowl of soup. “I’m starved. Done with this?”

I chuckled and stood, grabbed the pan off the hot plate, and spooned some more into the bowl. “Guess I was. How were the little dirt monsters today?” He groaned, rolling his eyes. “I swear, kids are so bad here. I don’t know what it is. It’s not like where I used to teach. The kids have no manners, they cuss. I have a biter.” He pulled his sleeve up and showed me a bruise. “Look what the little bastard did to me.” I peered at the angry purpled skin, stroked my fingers across it. “As long as the skin wasn’t broken.”

“It wasn’t, but my temper was. I yelled at him.” He put his chin in his hand and stared at his soup, playing with his spoon. “I’m really getting tired of this, Brandon. I don’t ... I love 410

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kids; you know that. But these kids are ...” He closed his eyes, then looked up at me. “How much longer do you think it will be?”

I couldn’t help but glance at the stacks of mail on our bed. I’d sorted it into rejects and bills. There were more rejects than bills -- not unusual for us. “I don’t know.” I pulled my chair around the table to sit next to him, put my arm around him. He still had his chin in his hand, but his eyes shifted to me. I didn’t like the sadness in them. Or the fear.

“I’m worried, Brandon. No one likes our music.”

I ran my fingers through his hair. “Not true. Remember how everyone liked us in Murrieta?”

“Yeah, but this is Los Angeles, no friends to fill our audience up and scream and holler and --” He shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe we were always meant to be a cover band.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“I don’t know anymore.” He sighed and looked down at his soup. “You should be eating this, not me. You’re too skinny.”

“I had enough,” I said, knowing he likely didn’t believe my lie. I was hungry, but he’d been sick a lot lately, his constant sore throats a real worry. He pushed himself really hard, both at school and every night when we stayed up late making love and writing and planning for our future -- a future that, as the months passed, grew more and more uncertain to me. He needed the little food we had more than I did. And we didn’t have much.

“I don’t know what else to do, Brandon.”

I walked over to the notebook he’d left for me, came back, and sat by him, flipping to the lyrics he’d scratched down the night before. I reached for my guitar and began to strum some chords, reading the words over and over again while he finished eating. After a while, he started to sing the words to me, closing his eyes as the words overtook him.

He had no idea how beautiful he was. He thought people there didn’t like him. That wasn’t true. They just hadn’t seen him yet, not like in Murrieta. Somehow, we needed to remedy that. I grabbed a pencil off the table and began to jot down some notes in the notebook. I’d run out of blank music paper some weeks ago, so I had had to make do with the notebooks Nicholas got for us from the school.

We continued like that, as we did every night -- Nicholas so tired he could barely function, and me coaxing him along, drawing out what I knew was hidden deep inside of him. Nicholas told me once that if not for me, the emotions inside of him would never have been unleashed and he’d no doubt have been eaten alive by the age of thirty. That only I had the key to let them out, let the words flow through his mouth and carry on his voice into the world.

He was wrong about that, of course. Nick’s one of those rare, magical beings whose gift is so strong, so tangible, there would never have been any way to stop him. I was just the guy A Red-Tainted Silence

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lucky enough to be there to catch his wind in my sails and be transported by him across amazing worlds.

That night, though, we both were feeling down. It was too warm, even with all the windows open. Our little Christmas tree I’d bought for two dollars at a thrift store sat sadly in the corner, its tinsel drooping. I looked around at our place, at the blank, ugly walls, the dirt-brown, matted carpet, the torn linoleum and yellowed refrigerator that never ran cool enough, and felt despair weigh me down.

I didn’t need much, but I sure as hell wanted more than this. I never said that to Nick.

He needed me to keep his spirits up. Sometimes it was hard, though, really hard.

Nicholas rubbed his throat, tears in his eyes. He looked at me, shaking his head. “I can’t sing anymore tonight, Brandon. I just want to go to bed. I don’t feel so good.”

“Okay, Nicholas, that’s fine.” I put down my guitar, picked up his bowl, and rinsed it out in the sink, taking care not to slosh the liquid in the crack on the left side.

He trudged into our bathroom -- a room so small both of us couldn’t be in there at the same time unless one of us stood in the tub -- and brushed his teeth, washed his face. He stared at himself in the mirror -- I watched him, and he didn’t know it -- and began to pose.

I bit my lip to keep from laughing as he tried different postures on his mirror self.

Later, when he and I found every move we made photographed, I regretted not joining him in his practicing. That’s what he was doing, after all -- practicing posing in front of a camera, making sure he was so well trained and ready that, unless a photographer caught him unawares, they never saw what really lurked in those blue depths.

Fear. Fear not of success, but that he wouldn’t find it at all. That he’d be stuck in a place like this for the rest of his life. And later, when the success did come, the fear that he would lose it all. I’d known from the beginning that Nicholas had an insatiable drive to succeed. Success to him meant never being hungry again, having a nice house, being able to help friends and, later, strangers ... the fans ... too. The lyrics he wrote, especially in latter years, reflected that desire of his to help others through his music. Through his words he tried to bring people up, mend their hearts, lift their spirits. Almost every song he wrote had a basis in someone else’s pain or need. Or, quite often, his own.

Nicholas didn’t write songs because he thought “this” or “that” would give people what the current “those in the supposed know” thought they needed. He wrote from his heart, and from that deep, dark place inside of him. Sometimes it was a painful thing to witness, and more than once I’d seen him change lyrics that delved too deep.

So many people claim Nicholas feels too much, and maybe that is true, but that is Nicholas. And maybe because of that, we had a nice, big stack of rejections to sort through every day.

We’d sent out about a hundred fifty or so of the demos we’d made after scraping together what Christmas money we’d been given and the little amounts we’d been able to save from our jobs. I’d gotten a job at a copy shop, where I’d been able to make us nice little 412

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covers for our tapes. I’d been addressing them all myself, and after each group was ready, Nicholas and I walked to the post and sent them on their way, Nicholas singing a silly little good luck song to each tape as he dropped it in the box.

The rejections had started almost immediately. Some were just simple “no, thanks, not for us” rejections, others were scathing. One was so bad I tore it up and threw it away before he got home from work. If Nicholas had seen it, it would’ve crushed him, and that I didn’t want. I’d been waging a battle to keep his spirits up, and something like that would’ve put him to bed for a week. Maybe made him give up entirely.

Years later I had the chance to talk with that individual who had been so needlessly cruel. We were at some event or other; I don’t remember what because frankly so much of those years are like a fog in my head. But I remembered this event. Nicholas and I were the guests of honor. We’d gotten some award that evening and had gone to this producer’s house that night -- think he had something to do with the show or something. Don’t remember, don’t care.