Full Circle (4 page)

"I've been thinking," I said slowly around a piece of toast. "You're not having any luck finding a real, full time job." Even with the Christmas rush, jobs for a young guy with no diploma and no references were scarce. "What about going back to school, get your diploma?"

He didn't pause in scooping cereal from his bowl, which told me it wasn't a new thought to him. "Don't know how that would work. Do I just apply for a GED?"

"A GED's good, but a real diploma's better. You're just eighteen and haven't graduated. I'd think you could just request a transfer to the nearest high school. The nearest good high school, if there's any choice." I made a note to check them out. No point in this kid getting stuck in dead-end classes with his brains. "Your credits should transfer, unless you don't want a trail leading here from Connecticut." He still hadn't told me why he left, but the pattern of his flinches was suspicious, and he carried a few questionable scars.

"I'm eighteen. He can't touch me." The color swept over his narrow cheeks and he dropped his eyes.

I calmly added a second layer of jam to my toast and didn't look at him. "Might make sense then. Get your degree at least. Your job won't conflict, and it might open the door to something better. Maybe even college someday."

"Hah. Guys like me don't go to college."

"Guys with IQs so high you need a ladder to see them?"

That flush was a better one. "Guys so broke they have to choose between new socks and new underwear."

"What did you choose?" And it was my turn to look away. Totally inappropriate thoughts were going through my mind.

It didn't help when he took it innocently and grinned. "Commando is better than bare feet in this weather."

Shit. Since he'd recovered enough to make it to the bathroom on his own, I had never seen him naked. But there had been those first few days when I had my hands and my eyes all over him. I hadn't been thinking anything but medical at the time, but my mind was capable of pulling those memories out now and working up a pretty good picture. Damn.

"So, what do you think?" I asked. "About school?"

He nodded slowly. "I'd like that."

We ended up with a school he could bus to in twenty minutes, and he went on his own to get signed up. Decided on his own to start now and take the exams before Christmas in the classes he'd been in back in September, or the nearest equivalents. I suggested waiting, starting fresh after New Year's, but he was confident he could do it. He lugged back a stack of books and spent a week studying non-stop. Twice I dragged his face up out of a book at the kitchen table and guided his sleep-walking steps to the couch. But two days before the holiday he came home and dumped an empty bag on the table. "Whoot. That's done, for better or worse. Books returned, signed up for next semester on the assumption that I passed."

"You think you did?"

"Hell, yeah. It's a lot faster to work from the texts than going to class. I think I did good in everything except maybe history. Too many freaking dates to memorize."

"Great. Now maybe we'll get some home-cooked food around here again."

He glanced up quickly. "I'm sorry. I've been busy..."

I whapped him with the dishcloth. "Teasing, you fool."

I'd ignored Christmas for two years now. Well, other than maybe choosing peppermint schnapps to get plastered on in honor of the fucking season. But it was different with the kid in the house. He went out and scrounged up decorations from somewhere. Strings of gold bells and blue-white icicles that he strung around the windows, and a strand of pine bough that he draped over the door. The third time it fell on my head I told him to find someplace else for it before I burned it for heat, but by then he knew I was joking. He nailed it to the wall over the table.

Christmas Eve the grocery store was closed so he didn't work. I'd bought a chicken for Christmas day, but that evening we were just eating mac and cheese. Toller put something in it that made it taste less like kid food. I took a big mouthful and looked at him over the table. "So, little boy, what do you want for Christmas?"

I meant it lightheartedly, but he gave me a long look. "Seriously?"

I'd bought him a few things. Nothing expensive. He had his pride, and I was still in the habit of making Henri's money stretch. I wondered what he wanted that warranted that look. "Sure. I kind of like you. I'm willing to spring for something."

He nodded, and swallowed once. "I want you to stop drinking."

Jesus Christ.
I clenched my teeth to hold back my first reaction, which was to scream and run. He had no idea what he was asking. "What's my drinking to you, kid?"

"It's gonna kill you, sooner or later. I'd just prefer it to be later."

I'd been so good, so fucking good since I'd taken him in. He thought I was drinking too much? He hadn't seen anything. At worst, I'd had a few evenings when I was passed out on the bed when he got home from his job. Maybe a few mornings puking it back up. I'd tried to just keep a steady buzz on, but sometimes when he was out and the place was silent I'd let it get away from me. But nothing like I used to. "I don't drink that much."

"I think for you anything is too much."

"So what now? You want me to join AA? Stand up in front of a bunch of strangers and say, 'My name is Jamison and I'm an alcoholic?' Take Jesus Christ as my personal savior?"

"Fuck you." He got up, pacing restlessly. "I don't care how you do it. Although if you're going to get all God-struck I'm out of here. I just want you to stop killing yourself slowly."

"You have no idea," I said intensely. "You have no clue what I'm drowning in whiskey on quiet nights."

"Maybe not." He came over and knelt by my chair, looking up. It was so uncharacteristic a pose for him, I had to ball my hands into fists to keep from reaching out. "But whatever happened to you, dying is not the answer. I need you. I don't think I can do this by myself."

I wanted to answer sharply, but my voice shook when I said, "It hurts."

"Yeah. Well, you're not the only one who hurts." He took a deep breath. "My step-dad started tying me up and fucking me when I was nine."

It was like a punch in the gut. I started to say something and he reached up to press his palm hard against my mouth.

"Don't, okay. Just don't say anything." He dropped to a cross-legged pose, his face hidden in his hands, but went on steadily. "He told me it was what I was made for, the only thing I was good for. I ran away three times. Each time the fucking social workers listened to him and not me, and brought me back. The fourth time he caught up with me himself and beat the shit out of me. Then he told me that my sister didn't appeal to him the same way, but an ass was an ass. If he couldn't have mine, he'd use hers. I was fourteen."

He looked up at me and his eyes were bleak but dry. "She found a nice young guy. He was in the Army, and headed overseas. She would have married him a year ago, gotten up and out, but the Step wouldn't give his consent. The day she turned eighteen, they had the wedding. A small ceremony, and she didn't invite the Step, but I went after her to see her off. As I was walking out of our house he put a hand on the back of my neck and said, 'We'll be alone in the house tonight.' I stood in the back of the church and watched her tie the knot, and then I walked out with the clothes on my back and never went back."

He stood abruptly and went to look out the window at the dark street, where a few pathetic strands of lights decorated the balconies across the way. He spoke to the quiet night outside the window. "So maybe you have your reasons for drinking, Jamison. But don't think you're the only one who knows about pain."

I pushed my plate away from me. "Henri was three days older than me," I said to his back. "We were together as long as I can remember. Best friends, partners in crime, and then...more." I wasn't sure he even knew I was gay. And he'd been abused by a man... But he just stood there, head tilted a little so I knew he was listening.

"Henri was the golden boy. Everything came easy to him. But he had a sweet nature and he loved to laugh. We decided on medical school. He helped me study, stuck with me. He got accepted to Yale Med, but went to UCLA with me instead. We interned here in Chicago in two different hospitals. Shared an apartment but saw each other maybe an hour here and there in passing. Residency wasn't much better, but we stuck it out. We weren't exclusive. We would both fuck other men, if we were interested and got the chance. Saving it for each other would have meant getting off about twice a month, after all. But we were the real thing, the forever thing. Then he got AIDS.

"When he first started getting sick, we chalked it up to stress and overwork. And being exposed to every damn bug that went through. He was finishing a Pediatrics residency. I was working the ER.

"But it never went away. Even when we'd finished training and he started work in a small suburban clinic, he kept getting sick. One thing would get better, and another would come along. He got skin rashes, he got diarrhea, he got pneumonia. That one landed him in the hospital.

"In the hospital they diagnosed pneumocystis. And by then we'd begun to realize that diagnosis went with a trashed immune system. And they tested him."

"Shit." Toller's voice was soft. "What about you? Are you...?"

"Don't worry, you're safe," I said harshly.

"I didn't mean that."

"I'm fine. No idea why. All those years together, and we were fucking long after he started getting sick, and I never caught it."

I took a big drink of water.

"You don't have to tell me," Toller said softly.

"Shut up, kid. You told me your shit. Let me finish." I took another drink. "He got fired of course, right away. Couldn't have that around the kids, not the AIDS or the gay. I kept working for a while, still making some money. But he slowly kept getting sicker, and then he got Toxo. It causes cysts in the brain. He had memory loss, balance problems. He had seizures. He would forget who I was, who he was. I would come home and find the oven on and something dried up and blackened in it. I had to quit my job."

"You could have hired someone."

"Jesus, no. He barely knew who I was sometimes, but then he would remember and cling to me. No stranger was going to be there for him like I was. Our friends mostly stopped coming round. We'd been too busy to make many friends, and the ones who'd been fuck-buddies had their own worries. I did it all. I didn't think I could, sometimes. I would get him settled, calmed down and sleeping, and then I would break things. Anything that would smash. By the time he died, I don't think we had a plate left in the apartment that wasn't plastic. And I was drinking steadily, doing uppers to wake up, valium at night to sleep. I kept it together as long as he needed me to. And then..."

I wasn't going to tell this part. But he'd put his pain on the line for me. I said, "I'd sworn I would be with him when he died. Promised him. But I wasn't. We were out of juice and applesauce, and there was so little he would eat that tasted good. And we were out of whiskey. And I thought he was better. I thought he would be okay for just half an hour." I dug my fingernails into my palms. One more thing.

"The night of his funeral, I went out and got smashed and picked up this guy in a bar. Took him to the park and sucked him off against a tree. And we got caught. So now I have an arrest record, and they yanked my medical license for the drugs I had in my pocket. But I found out that alcohol isn't such a bad anesthetic, if you use it right."

I waited for the verdict. After a minute, he said to the dark window, "Maybe I should try it."

"Jesus, no, kid! Don't do that to yourself."

He turned to look at me. "So you're allowed to drink yourself to death, but I'm not."

"You're eighteen. You have a whole life to live for."

"You're not that old. You can't be more than what, forty?"

"I'm thirty-two," I snapped.

"Fuck, you have lived hard, huh?"

"Go to hell." But I could feel my face getting red again.

He came back and dropped into his usual chair. And then he reached out and took both my hands in his. "Jamison, I get that it's been hard. It's been hell. And I've never loved anyone like that, so I can't say I understand it. But if I was Henri, and I saw what you're doing to yourself, I'd be damned angry."

I yanked my hands back, because for a moment that gentle pressure had felt like Henri's. "You have no idea what you're asking. Have you ever seen anyone with the DTs?"

"No. But I've read up on it. They say if you can use some Valium, it's easier. Or if you have the money for a rehab, you could do it under medical supervision."

"No way. No one else gets to hear my pathetic whining. If I do this, I'm doing it here." I stopped, hearing what I'd said.

"Then you will?" His eyes were bright as a thousand candles. "I'll help, I swear."

"You'll have to." I paused. But God, there was no way I wanted to see that light go out. He had looked so bleak, so wounded, and now there was nothing but hope there. For
me!
"Okay, kid," I said slowly. "I'll try it. Not tomorrow. Fuck if I'll spend Christmas puking. I spent good money for that chicken. Anyway you're right. I need to score some Valium. Boxing Day. That'll be how I'll feel too, like I've gone ten rounds." I'd tried it a few times, sworn to just stop. I'd made it almost thirty-six hours once. "I'll start then. And you're going to spend your school vacation doing laundry and cleaning up puke, I guarantee it."