Don't Let Me Go (27 page)

It’s not that he had ever thought otherwise. He wasn’t surprised. It wasn’t that. Still, there was something pathetic in that moment.

And that, Billy thought, is our life. Not that other lovely thing, where we answer the door in a nice outfit and tell the handsome man with the bottle of wine that we’re happy to take a break from our choreography to visit. Nice try, he thought. No,
this
is our life. The one in which we realize we might be falling in love a split second before the beloved asks if we’ll help fix him up with someone else.

Yeah. That one.

“You OK?” Jesse asked.

“Yes. Fine.”

“I just thought…well…you know her.”

“Yes and no,” Billy said. “I do like Rayleen a lot. But just the other day Grace and I were talking about all the things we don’t know about her.”

“You still know her better than I do.”

“True.”

“Maybe she just doesn’t like me.”

“Don’t be silly,” Billy said. “How could anybody not like you?”

Then he flushed, and probably reddened, and looked down into his glass to have someplace to look.

“You’re empty again,” Jesse said.

“I am.”

Billy held his glass out as far as his arm would reach. So Jesse could fill it without leaning in.

“Seems to me there’s something very special about her,” Jesse said. “But don’t get me wrong. I’m not a stalker. If she’s not interested, I don’t intend to push. There’s just a hint of something mixed in her signal. I think. I suppose I could be seeing what I want to see. I could be wrong. It’s happened before.”

Billy breathed in deeply. He realized, in that instant, that he had a chance to potentially draw those two together. Maybe. Eventually. Or, with a few words, he could drive them apart. Definitely. Right now. Forever. All that power rested with him.

“I think there’s some pain from her past,” Billy said. “I shouldn’t even talk about it, because I don’t know. But she’s an unusually good person. If I were you, I’d give her more time.”

Jesse reached over and patted Billy’s knee, causing his whole body and brain to go numb as a style of evasion.

“Thank you, neighbor. I’ll let you get back to what you were doing. When I’ve invited the other neighbors, I’ll let you know when the smudging ceremony is set to take place. Then I’ll offer something more like a formal invitation.”

“You don’t have to go,” Billy wanted to say. That, or the more pathetically direct, “Stay and talk to me.” But all he said was, “Don’t forget your wine glasses. And your Swiss Army corkscrew.”

Jesse laughed as he gathered them up.

“I had a sense about you,” he said. “I’m a good judge of people. And you’re what I call ‘good people.’ I knew that when I first laid eyes on you.”

Billy rose and walked him to the door. All three or four steps of the way. He said nothing.

“Thanks,” Jesse said, his voice soft. “It meant a lot to me, what you said. More than you know.”

Then, before Billy could react, Jesse stepped in and embraced him. Billy stood stiffly, unable to even raise his arms to hug back.

“Back to your choreography. After all, what’s more important than Grace’s big performance? Maybe I’ll go. Is everybody going?”

“I haven’t asked everybody.
I’m
going to be there.”

As if it were a completely possible thing. As if he weren’t out of his mind in even suggesting such a ridiculously unlikely event.

“Maybe I’ll go,” Jesse said.

Then he let himself out.

“Goodnight, Billy,” he said, from two steps down the hall.

Billy opened his mouth to answer, but no words flowed. Apparently there were none left inside. So instead he just raised one hand in a weak, pathetic little wave.

• • •

Billy lay awake all night. Never closed his eyes once. Which is likely the only reason he received no visit from the wings.

• • •

“Don’t hold my hand
too
tightly,” Billy said.

“Why not?” Grace asked. “I’m the only thing keeping you from running away.”

Billy felt Rayleen take his other hand and squeeze it gently.

“Not quite,” she told Grace. “I’ve got him, too.”

They stood in the hall, staring at the front door of the building. Through the glass inset of the door and out into the street. The street!

Billy was dressed in jeans and ridiculously white tennis shoes. He’d had them for a decade, but had never worn them. Not even in the house. Even the soles were still a perfectly untouched white, like a fresh snowfall before anybody wakes up to tramp around in it. He looked down at them disapprovingly, then out at the street again.

Billy felt something rise from his chest and into his throat, and he tried to swallow it back down. But, whatever it was, it remained unaffected by swallowing.

Rayleen asked, “Got your keys?”

Her voice sounded tinny, with a slight echo. Far away. As if Billy were drifting away from the moment. Which he supposed he was.

“Of course I’ve got my keys. I only checked my pocket six times. God. Can you imagine what a disaster that would be? If I went outside and then got locked out?”

“Just checking,” Rayleen said. “Ready?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Seriously? You’re not going?”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going. I said I wasn’t ready. And I never will be. So let’s just hurry up and do this thing before I change my mind.”

Rayleen swung the door inward, and a blast of morning air hit Billy in the face.

It reminded him of red wine. Scary. Distantly familiar. Too long forgotten. Nice.

Together, almost as one entity, they stepped out on to the stoop.

“You OK?” Grace asked, peering up at his face.

But Billy’s throat had tightened and his chest had constricted, so it would have been impossible to answer. Instead he gestured forward with his chin.

They stepped out to the stairs and began to descend.

Five concrete steps. Only five. Billy began to calculate how many years it had been since he’d climbed them, either up or down, but he soon realized the answer wouldn’t serve him well, and so changed the subject in his brain.

Over his head, he heard a bird chirping an excited song in a canopy of trees.

“They still have birds in L.A.?” he attempted to ask, but no sound emerged.

He tried to think, to remember. If birds sang in the trees outside his apartment, he would have heard them from inside. Had he? He couldn’t remember positively, but he didn’t think he had. Did that mean he was now alive in a way he had not been until this very moment?

Duh, as Grace would say.

He whipped his head around to see his building, now three buildings down the street from him. He had walked outside, on to the street, and three buildings away while pondering songbirds. But, now that he saw it back there, looking so distant, the panic found him, caught him, knocked the wind out of him. It felt like a vise crushing his chest. His face felt cold, yet he could feel beads of sweat break out on his brow.

He stopped dead.

Rayleen stopped with him, but Grace walked a couple more steps, hit the end of his arm and bounced back.

“What?” she asked.

But Billy couldn’t speak.

“You need to go back?”

“Are you OK?” Rayleen asked.

He shook his head, and found the movement weirdly unsettling. As if he were only barely balanced, and any sudden moves could send him flying.

“You can go back,” Rayleen said. “If you need to.”

“Just a little more, Billy,” Grace whined. “Please? Just down to the corner.”

Billy shook his head again. More carefully this time.

“OK,” Grace said. “Well, that’s OK. You did good for your first time.”

They both let go of his hands at exactly the same time, apparently not thinking he might be a helium balloon, and they might be the only ballast pinning him to the earth. Without the warmth of their hands to ground him, standing on the street three doors down from the safety of his home was unimaginable. What had he been thinking?

He began to run.

It should only have taken a few seconds to reach his own front door again, but instead time stretched out, betraying him. He told himself it could only be an illusion, but it was such a vivid illusion, and so extreme. Still, in what seemed like ten or fifteen minutes, he arrived back at the front door of the building, twisted the knob violently, and tried to push his way through. Instead he bounced off again.

He tried again. It was locked.

A flare of panic struck him, a reaction similar to throwing a bucketful of grease on to a fire that had already been burning well enough to overcome him.

He steadied himself, and pulled in a big, manual breath.

“This door doesn’t lock,” he said out loud, surprised by the return of speech. He must have been doing a good job of calming himself. “We’re just not turning the knob correctly.”

He tried the knob again. No, he realized. There’s really only one correct method for turning a knob. And this door was locked.

He thought about trying to catch up with Rayleen and Grace, but that would involve moving in the wrong direction. He looked for them, to see if they were close enough to hear him if he yelled. But they were nowhere. They were gone. They must have turned a corner, but Billy didn’t know which corner, or which way they would have turned.

The only way out of this would require getting the attention of one of his neighbors inside.

Not Jesse
, he thought.

He pounded hard on the glass of the door with the backs of both fists at once.

“Felipe! I’m locked out! Can you come open the door?”

He waited. Nothing.

He looked up at the second floor. Was it Felipe’s apartment that faced the street, the one whose windows he could see from the stoop? Or was that Jesse’s? He didn’t know, because he had never been upstairs.

“Mrs. Hinman!” he screamed.

A few desperate seconds later he saw the third floor window pop open, and Mrs. Hinman’s head poke out.

“My goodness,” she said. “What on earth is all that shouting about?”

“I’m locked out,” Billy said, and hearing his own words out loud forced a few hot tears to flow. He couldn’t hold them in, no matter how hard he tried.

“Well, my goodness. There’s no need to make such a fuss about it. Why didn’t you take your key?”

“I did! I did take my key! To my apartment! This front door doesn’t lock!”

“Well, of course it does, dear, or you wouldn’t be locked out.”

“Since when? Since when does this front door lock?”

“Oh, ten years at least.”

Billy sat down hard on the concrete stoop, his back up against the door. He couldn’t see Mrs. Hinman from that position, which seemed like an improvement.

“Or at least eight or nine,” he heard her say.

All the fight had gone out of him. He pressed his back harder against the door, feeling drained and sick. He still needed to get in, but he only had just so much energy left to do anything about it.

“Can you come down and let me in?” he called, not sure if his volume would even reach her.

“I suppose I could, though the stairs are awfully hard on my knees.”

“Can you please hurry?”

“Now why on earth would you ask me to hurry when I just told you the stairs are hard on my knees?”

Billy squeezed his eyes closed, semi-resigned to being stuck in hell. This is what happens when you go out. This or something else uncontrollable. You leave your safe environment and things just happen, and then what do you do? Well, there’s really not much you can do. You’re stuck. It’s what you get.

The door behind Billy opened in suddenly, spilling him on to his back in the hallway. He looked up to see Jesse standing over him.

“You OK, neighbor?”

Damn.

“I got locked out,” he said, sounding pathetically childlike. Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. There were tears on his face, he was drowning in an obvious state of paralyzing panic, and his sneakers were too white. It was not the way he wanted to be seen. Damn. “I went outside, and I didn’t know they’d put a lock on this outside door, and I got locked out.”

Jesse reached a hand down to help him up.

Billy looked at the extended hand for too long before taking it. But in time he did bring himself to take it, and be helped to his feet. He could feel his own hand trembling as Jesse pulled on it, and he knew Jesse could feel it, too.

“You went out, though,” Jesse said. “That was good.”

Oh, God. He knows. He knows everything.

“I have to practice,” Billy said in a shaky voice.

They walked down the hall together, toward Billy’s apartment door. Jesse had a hand on Billy’s shoulder. Apparently Jesse was smart enough to know a helium balloon when he saw one. He knew better than to let go.

Billy dug his keys out of his pocket with trembling hands and opened his door.

As he stepped back inside his familiar cocoon, everything drained away. Everything. His panic. His energy. His ability to think. Everything. It left him empty and hollow enough to echo, like a shell that washes up on the beach when the organism has vacated it through death.

He sat down hard on the couch and looked up at Jesse with dull eyes.

“I thought it was interesting,” Jesse said, “when you said you were going to Grace’s dance recital. I thought, Wow. If you’re agoraphobic, that’s a big statement to make.”

All is lost, Billy thought, though fortunately the thought was backed with little emotion. Jesse knows everything.

“I thought I could practice,” Billy said in barely over a whisper.

“You can,” Jesse said, sitting too close to him on the couch.

“Today was a glorious example.”

“Tomorrow will be better, because I’ll make you a copy of the key to the outside door.”

The cat came meowing around, and Billy picked her up and held her tightly, enjoying her warmth, the softness of her fur, and the rumble of her purring. Unfortunately, though, it forced a few more tears to slip past the guards. But it was too late, anyway. It was too late to hide who he was from Jesse.

“I don’t think one day will be time enough to recover.”

“OK.
Day after
tomorrow.”