Crawling Between Heaven And Earth (17 page)

Mrs. Stevelanos, whatever her name was now, stared at Phil. Her eyes filled with tears.

"You look younger," Phil said, and caught himself, and smiled. "I mean, younger than my memories of you. I guess when I was a kid, you looked like this"

She giggled nervously. "Grandmother. Yes. I imagine. I was only forty. I had Madeleine when I was sixteen and Nick at eighteen. I never got" She shook her head.

She kept her hands firmly stuffed into the pockets of her short blue jacket, forming little protrusions on the side, as though she made fists in there. "You look older."

"So my mirror tells me," Phil said. He nodded. "Would you come in?"

"No." She looked past him into the living room, looked away quickly. She shook her head. "No. These rooms are all non-smoke, aren't they? I don't want to—Why don't you come out? We'll walk on the beach."

Her mention of smoking made Phil remember his own cigarettes. He hadn't smoked since he'd got here, probably the longest, other than plane trips, that he'd gone smoke-free in the last year, ever since he'd found out that no matter what happened he wouldn't live forever.

He got his jacket, felt the pocket to make sure his pack was in it, and followed Nick's mom out of the motel, to the road, and down the short stretch to Anchor Street, and from there to the beach access stairs.

"Imagine after all these years," she said.

They walked on the soft sand, well away from the sea that broke, heavily, against the sand a few feet away.

Here and there a gigantic log lay, that the waves had carried in. Felled giants they looked mournful, out of place.

Driftwood wasn't supposed to be this big.

When Phil and Nick had been here, it hadn't been. There had been very little driftwood, in fact, and the sea had looked like a mirror under the cloudless sky. Though they'd been warned not to swim—and didn't—they'd walked in the water, with their feet in the chill while the sun burned their bodies.

Just the thought of it, made middle-aged Phil's feet hurt, as if each of the little bones had been frozen.

He offered his cigarettes to Nick's mom and lit the one she picked, then lit one for himself.

"Thank you," she said. "Fancy you coming here, after all this time. Business?"

"No. No. I just—Nick—I was hoping to find some trace of where he is, what he's doing."

She stopped and looked at him. Her face, made very pale by the cold wind, looked like the face of one long drowned. "You don't know?" she asked. "Damn. No one ever told you?"

"Told me what?"

It didn't take very long to tell. She did it in gasping sentences, between breath intakes.

The morning after Phil had left, headed to his first job in Akron, which would be followed by the job in Denver and the yet better job, also in Denver, Nick had woken up, read the goodbye letter Phil had left behind.

That night they'd found Nick dead in the narrow bathtub, the walls splattered high with his blood.

"They had to put a plastic enclosure around the tub," Nick's mother said. "Because they couldn't get the stains off the walls. They called me. The reason—The reason Stan and I had paid for this vacation for you boys was that we wanted Nick out of the house while we negotiated our divorce. He was so sensitive and everything affected him so" She took her cigarette to her lips, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out in an angry cloud. "Well, the fares to Goldport were good and we thought"

Phil stood. "You—You mean, he killed himself because of—because I left?"
And you're talking to me
, he thought.
And I'm standing here, alive. And I've survived Nick for twenty years

and enjoyed life.

"Well . . .. Probably not just because of that. You were the one stable thing in his life, see." She looked at Phil, winced, looked away. "I think he knew very well that Stan and I—That our marriage . . .. And he was never that close to Madeleine. He—Well—You couldn't have known." She sucked in nicotine, sighed. Her eyes were focused behind Phil, on the grey waves. Her tennis-shoe beat a tap-tap on the sand. "Please don't. You were just a kid, yourself. And maybe it was all for the best." Her words had the singsong quality of a learned speech. "When my husband found out what—what you two had been up to—I knew but I had never—I thought—Well, Stan said he would have killed Nick, if Nick hadn't beat him to it, so you see." She flung the butt of her cigarette towards the sea and turned to face Phil. "Please, don't think I meant to accuse you. Nicky didn't accuse you. I got his letters out of Stan's hands. The one to us and the one to you. They were in the same envelope, so I read yours and besides, they had to be read, you know by the police." She reached into her pocket and handed him a folded paper. "Here. Here, you see." She wiped her eyes to the sleeve of her coat. "I need to go. God, I need to go. Carl will be home from work any minute now and II met him when I came down to—Well, it doesn't matter. I—I'll talk to you later." She ran over the sand, up the beach access stairs, to the road.

Escaping her memories. Escaping her own guilt.

Phil stood in place, holding the paper. Nicky's letter. At length he unfolded it, read it. The beginning was clear, business like, strangely at odds with Nick, particularly a Nick crazy enough to kill himself moments after.

"Phil, I knew it couldn't last and I understand your letter perfectly. My family wouldn't take it so well, either, and maybe you're right, maybe it's nonsense, maybe there's a woman out there you can love. I don't know. I don't think I could ever love anyone else. But I know it's impossible and I don't want to be a millstone around your neck. Go, Phil. Go and be happy. You say you don't deserve me, but it is I who doesn't deserve you. Forget me. Get married and raise a dozen Italian brats. Just—if you can—keep a corner of your heart—if not for me—for the songs I wrote for you."

It was signed in a shaky hand, emotion at last betrayed.

Phil could see Nick sitting at the rickety kitchen table, perhaps with the letter Phil had left him, reading it.

That letter would have come like a thunderbolt out of a cloudless sky. Nick wouldn't have had any idea of Phil's doubts; Phil had hid them so well. Phil's letter, Phil's absence, must have been a pounding shock. And Nick had taken his life . . .while unsound of mind.

He wouldn't ever know that Phil himself had contemplated suicide rather than leaving; that it had taken all of Phil's self-control not to kill himself.

Phil stood in the whipping wind, holding the letter in one hand: the last letter Nick had ever written.

Phil should have killed himself. Then they could both be dead together. They could have departed, hand in hand, in search of whatever lay on the other side. They could have been together in their dreams.

Phil swallowed and swallowed again, to keep his emotion in check, but by the time he got back to the motel, there was a taste of salt and tears down his throat.

The songs I wrote for you.

The songs Nick wrote. God, the songs he wrote. The pure emotion in Nick's voice hadn't lied. Nor could it endure betrayal.

The radio program had been a dream. The phone number actually belonging to Nick's mother had to be a bizarre coincidence. Chance.

Phil sat on the bed and finished smoking his cigarette before realizing he'd brought it indoors, into the smoke free room. He threw the butt in the toilet and flushed, and stood staring at the little tub veiled by a pink shower curtain. Nick had died here. This small bathroom with its tiny built-in, triangular corner vanity, had been his last sight in this world. Nicky's large, expressive eyes had stared at that ceiling as he died. His blood had run down these drains.

Nicky was not middle aged, and fat, and happy elsewhere. He'd remained twenty-two. He'd never be older than twenty two.

Crap, oh crap. It didn't matter if Nick had committed suicide as much because of his parents' divorce as because of Phil's desertion. Phil had deserted Nick. Betrayed Nick. Made a mockery of the love they'd shared for four years.

He might as well have opened Nick's veins himself.

For a moment, Phil stood, with the letter in one hand, looking at the bathtub. If he had any courage at all, he'd splatter his own blood all over these same walls.

But then the dreams in his eternal sleep would be of Nick. They would always be of Nick, now.

Again and again, like Sisyphus pushing his rock up an endless slope, Phil would write that last letter to Nick. Again and again, Phil would catch a glimpse of Nick in his sleep, Nick's mobile face at rest, Nick's voice stilled. And Phil would leave, unable to do anything else, knowing fully well he was killing the only person he'd ever truly loved.

Phil dragged himself to bed and lay on it, fully dressed, with his jacket on.

In that island between waking and sleeping, a radio announcer's voice came to mingle with the sound of the waves roaring on the shore.

"And we have Nicky Stevelanos right here with us. So, how do you like Goldport?"

Nick's voice, maybe a little graver than Phil remembered it, answered, "Fine. It hasn't changed much in twenty years."

"No, no. We don't change. It's a point of pride with us. So, you were here twenty years ago. May I ask"

"Just a vacation. With a friend."

"And I heard you actually had trouble finding a room here? Because everything was booked for your own beach concert?"

"II was in—I gave a concert, in London, and it was hard to get connecting flights, so yes, I got here just hours ago and everything was booked up."

Nick sounded embarrassed. He'd always hated public situations.

How could Nick live the life of a star?

"So you got into a little third class motel, didn't you?"

There was something to the way the announcer's voice lifted at the end that suggested that Nick had glared at him to prevent him giving out the motel's name.

God, Nick would hate celebrity.

"I'd stayed there before," he said. "It's a nice little place."

"Isn't it kind of an odd stopping place for a star, though?"

An odd, embarrassed laughter. "Probably. But then I'm an odd star."

"So, how come the tabloids have never got hold of anything about your love life?"

Sharp intake of breath. "My love life is in my songs. I have no love, outside my music."

"So we hear. Besides being the only folk star to survive and do well in the eighties, you're the only star to be celibate."

This time the laughter was genuine. "Just private."

Somehow, somewhere, Nicky's life had gone on. It had gone on without Phil.

"I had a great romance, long ago. And yes, all my songs are to that one person, though that person died. Many years ago," Nick said, from the radio. "I never—I could never love—All my love is in my music."

Phil fell asleep, lulled by the familiar voice, the comforting certainty that Nick still lived somewhere.

Later, he was half aware of Nicky coming in, closing the door behind himself.

Nick Stevelanos, internationally famous folk star, came into his rented motel room.

He couldn't believe that nit-wit announcer had almost told every crazed little fan out in Goldport where their idol hung out. And he couldn't believe luck had shunted him to this one room, of all the rooms in the world.

The room where Phil had died.

Nick took off his red jacket, dropped it on the floor, by the door; pulled off his leather boots, flexed his toes against the low-pile carpet. His jeans felt damp on his legs and his blue sweatshirt was the same he'd worn on the plane: rank with sweat and the peculiar smell of closed in spaces.

Tomorrow, he had to give the beach concert. If he could master the energy.

He was so tired.

He needed

He knew very well what he needed. He had it on hand, too, in the pill box inside his bag, on the bed.

But he had promised himself he wouldn't take pills again. Or, if he did take them, it would be the last time. He'd make sure he took enough to kill himself.

He had to make a decision.

Either give up the pills for good, or give up life.

Because they were robbing him of life.

At first drugs had been a way to dull the pain, to fade Nick's memory of Phil lying dead in that bathtub.

These many years later, Nick could still feel the heart-stopping shock; he could still smell blood and sudden death; and still recoil from that body he'd loved so long and so well and that had, suddenly, become a grotesque, grey thing.

That memory required ever more pills to quiet it, until the pills, and the unreality they bought, had taken over Nick's life. Little by little.

The arrest at JFK Airport, on his way back from London, had been the last straw, and damn hard to hush up.

If word of that got out, Nick's squeaky-clean performer's image would be gone forever; and likely his career with it.

He looked at his bag, then around at the room. It had changed, but not so that it didn't teem with memories of Phil.

He could remember Phil sitting at the cheap dining room table, looking at Nick with his pensive brown eyes.

Those eyes

How long had they been so sad? How long had Phil flirted with death, before throwing himself in her arms that night twenty years ago?

What luck that this would be the only room left in town for Nick Stevelanos. What madness to have booked a concert in Goldport.

Nick could remember feeling he had to come back to Gold-port. Even if the beach concert didn't net any money. Even against the advice of his promoter. But he couldn't remember why he'd felt that way. The pills could do that to you.

Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps he was meant to end it all here, where Phil had ended it.

He walked towards the bed, towards the dark bulk of his suitcase on it. He'd take the pills. Take the pills and be damned.

Damnation had to be better than this half-life.

The pills were inside the lining of the suitcase, where only Nick and JFK security—would look for them. Nick felt for the hard round case—a large daisy-wheel medicine keeper—brought it out. It was full. He'd replenished in New York, after the airport.