Jacob's Ladder (23 page)

“Now.” He put his things away. “What can I help you with?”

“Nothing. I"m ready. We can go.”

“Really?” He eyed my duffel. “You have everything?”

“Yeah… Or rather I don"t
have
much of anything. Nothing I care about anyway.”

“You always did travel light.”

“Yeah.”

The silence built up between us, and for once, I had nothing to fill it with.

“He could have killed you here, you know. Nothing would have stopped him from taking one of your expensive damned knives and ending your life.”

“You don"t have to tell me that.”

“Don"t make me ever,
ever
tell you again, Jakey.” I heard a catch in his voice and saw that his eyes glittered with tears. “You"re all the family I"ve got.”

“I know.” I couldn"t bring myself to go into that kitchen, even though I wanted to. I wanted to wrap my arms around my brother and reassure him that I"d never be that stupid again, but I couldn"t cross the threshold. “Can we go?” He stood so quickly the chair slid backward, scraping across the tile. “Yeah.” He pulled his keys from his pocket. “We need to drop this and the key off with Madeline. I don"t think that will require an audience with Her Imperial Highness.” I heard teasing in his voice. “You liked them, didn"t you?”

“Yeah.” He grinned. “I"ve adopted them as role models.”

“I hate to say it, but me too,” I admitted. “I"ll miss them.”

“It"s not like I believed for a minute you"d buy single malt whisky for someone you don"t like.”

“Found out.” I closed and locked my apartment door for the last time, and felt little more than I had felt about my job really. I was sorry to leave it behind, but ready to go.

“I"ll drop the key off with Madeline,” he said, handing me the keys to his car. “I suppose this is as good a time as any to ask. Do you have a driver"s license?”

“Yeah. I just don"t have a car. Insurance is too expensive, and parking is fucked-up at Il Ghiotto. I"d have had to pay monthly fees at the bank next door. And the bus stops right outside the place practically.” 132

Z. A. Maxfield

“Good. In that case you drive back. We"ll take the I-5 this time, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “Nothing to see at night.”

The drive up the I-5 was uneventful, but the fog got thicker as we headed toward the coast on the highway that leads to the 101 and Santa Barbara. By the time we neared Goleta, we could hardly see at all; even fifty feet was difficult. We took it slow, but I think Dan knew I was nervous, so we pulled off for a cup of coffee at a gas station, and I gave in to the urge to buy some junk food. Once back on the road it was a slow, nearly blind drive toward what I"d begun to think of as home.

“I checked around a little before we left St. Nacho"s. It looks like there are some places available for lease. I wanted to ask what you had planned—if anything—before I got ahead of myself, but if you want, I"ll take a place there that"s big enough, and we can share it while we figure out what comes next.”

“That"s—” I broke off when I thought about what it might mean to share a place with Dan. “Won"t you be uncomfortable if I have an overnight guest?” Dan snorted. “Seems like your overnight guest—who sneaks in on foot so no one will see his truck and then slinks out again before dawn—will be more embarrassed than I will. What the hell are you doing with a guy like that anyway?”

“I don"t know.” I replied honestly. “I find him attractive in—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dan teased. “I can see why you"d think he was hot, but there are other guys—that firefighter Cam for example. He"s hot too, and he"s out, it seems.”

“Yeah, he is. Charming too. He did ask me if I wanted a ride on the Camshaft.” Dan laughed. “You"ve got to be kidding me.”

I risked a quick glance his way to see if he thought it was as amusing as I did.

“I couldn"t begin to make that up.”

“So?”

“Who can say? JT is fine, like…fine wine, fine food. He"s a generous, good person. He"s gentle and caring, professional. Heroic. But his fear is tearing him apart, and I feel for him. He thinks he"s sinning against God, and it"s not like I"m his rabbi. I can"t tell him he"s not.”

“Yeah, well. It"s hard for all of us.”

Again I glanced over. “I assume you mean to express a sense of solidarity.

Hard for everyone to be honest in relationships, but—”

“No, Jakey. I don"t mean that. I mean it"s hard to man up and admit you"re gay. It"s especially hard to admit it when you"ve finally gotten the balls and the freedom to do something about it and your asshole
freshman-in-high-school brother
practically comes out on the six-o"clock news, and you realize that ends any hope you ever had of being able to live your life the way you"d planned.”

“What?” I snapped. That I didn"t accompany it by sailing the car over the rocky cliffs and into the Pacific remains one of the great mysteries of my life. “What?” St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder

133

“Did you know Mom called me at school, just frantic? „Jacob is gay, what can we do, it"s so dangerous, it"s so unnatural, I pictured grandkids, what will Zeyde say."”

“I didn"t have a clue. She didn"t seem…” I realized what must have happened.

“She did all her angsting on the phone with you, didn"t she? And then she came to me all cool and glued together.”

Daniel tapped his nose. “You got it in one.”

“Fuck.” I felt sick. “I never… Why didn"t you tell me?”

“What could you have done? It"s not as bad as it sounds. I did actually—at one point—think I loved Bree. That I could love her enough.”

“How long did that last?”

“Really? Until she laid down the law about kids. What a joke. If I"d wanted to adopt, I"d have stayed gay in the first place.”

“That"s not funny,” I snapped. “It"s not a fucking choice. You make it sound like—”

“No,” he agreed, subdued. “It"s not. I know better than anyone it"s not.”

“I can"t believe you didn"t tell me.”

“What would you have done?”

What would I have done
? I didn"t have a clue.

“I"m getting those red cigarettes your friend Laverne smokes next time. They smelled like money.” He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and lipped one from the carton. He lit it with a cheap lighter from the gas station and blew a thin stream of smoke through the barely open window. How come I never knew he could be so different from what I"d always believed? How could he hide himself so completely from me?

“I can"t believe I didn"t know—”

“Now you know why I love the movie
It’s a Wonderful Life
. You"re Harry Bailey.”

The fog was too thick, and I had to keep my mind on the road, but his revelation made me more than a little sick inside. We moved through patches so dense, we couldn"t see beyond the hood of the car, inching along carefully. The car had headlights that dimmed when other cars approached and did other smart-car things that were entirely useless in this situation. I don"t know exactly how fast we were going. There were not very many people on the road besides us, and I was grateful for small favors.

“I"m sorry.” It felt like we were on a ride in an amusement park or something, like we"d entered a silent wormhole in space. We pressed on through the thick void together, and it might have seemed for a minute that we really were the only two people in existence, or that we"d slipped beneath existence, between the cracks of time and space entirely.

134

Z. A. Maxfield

I turned on the radio and tried to find something good to listen to, but got bad reception. I didn"t trust my brother"s taste in music at all, but maybe in this, as well, I would be surprised.

“Eerie,” I remarked. “Do you have any music CDs?”

“I just have audiobooks.”

“Figures.” Audiobooks. Probably all about getting ahead in the real-estate game or something. “I don"t think it"s a good idea if I fall asleep.”

“Asshole.” He grinned and looked away. “I don"t usually drive with music. I always feel like I should be learning something.”

“You"re right. We are a pair of fucked-up losers.” The radio offered nothing but the insistent buzz of static.

“HID retrofit lights,” Dan said. “They fuck up reception.” A mere second later, a microsecond, the Lexus slammed into the back of a vehicle I hadn"t seen at all until I was right on it. The air bags deployed, a blast of fabric and gas, hot and disorienting. The collision jerked us around in our seat belts like dolls as the car spun, our momentum still trying to carry the back around whatever we"d hit.

I don"t know how long we sat there, silent, sideways, watching dirt particles float in the glow from the dashboard lights. We were both still restrained in our seats, and the windshield was cracked but intact. It was impossible to see what we"d hit.

I groaned and felt around to release myself from my seat belt. Dan caught my hand and stopped me. I looked up at him to see why, but his head was turned the other way, looking out the window.

And then I knew.

I saw it.

Another car, the headlights barely like the glow of candles in all that mist, coming straight for us on my brother"s side.

“Jakey,” he called, “keep your seat belt on.”

“No, man. We have to get out.”

“We can"t. We don"t have time.

I had just found him.

I had just unearthed the brother I"d always wanted—had always dreamed about—from the one I thought I knew, and I wasn"t about to lose him. I tried to start the car, but it was hopeless.

At the time of impact, I was screaming, “
Fuck this shit
.” It all happened in an instant, and it took forever. The thing that frightened me most was the calm way Dan looked at me when he gripped my hand. I clung to him, to the calm in his eyes, as the other car slammed into the passenger side and the lateral air bags deployed.

St. Nacho’s 3: Jacob’s Ladder

135

Chapter Twenty-one

I don"t really know what happened to the time we spent in that car. It couldn"t have been long, but things passed that I wasn"t aware of until I heard someone tap on the window with a flashlight. I couldn"t remember how to open the windows or the doors to let myself out.

At first I thought the people trying to get my attention must be the police, but it was other men and women, emerging like shipwreck survivors, gathering the things they had on hand and trying to help, to do what they could while they waited for emergency services to arrive. Outside my window an older woman held one of those small plastic pouches of tissue out to me like she was offering it, and I made myself think how I should answer. The entire situation was confusing and absurd.

“I don"t know what to do.” I gestured to her in a daze. “Can you help me?” She bit her lip and tapped the window again. She called, “Undo your safety belt.” I wasn"t sure what she was talking about. Then I looked down and saw that my hand was still clutching Dan"s, painfully white-knuckled. It took a minute to let go, then more to get the feeling back in my fingers. When I finally had it, I pushed the button that unlatched my seat belt.

My hand felt strange, buzzy, and not at all like I was in charge of it, but my seat belt came free.

I smelled gasoline and antifreeze and brake fluid. The situation became clear fairly quickly after that. I knew I had to get Dan out, but that would be easier said than done. He wasn"t conscious and had taken the impact of the second car on his side. There was no way to tell if he was too injured to be moved, but I could smell
heat
. Dan had dropped his cigarette, and it was burning the carpet or the upholstery or something. Smoldering somewhere. I prayed it wasn"t in his lap, on his skin, burning his flesh, but I didn"t smell that…exactly. And I would have known. I"d smelled it before.

I unlocked the door and opened the latch on my side, and several people"s hands reached in to help me out. I wasn"t injured, at least not specifically, but I wasn"t feeling my body at all. I might have been a corpse walking around for all the sensation I had in my skin.

“I need to get my brother out,” I said, turning back to see what I could do to get that started.

“I agree,” a man said behind me. “It"s not safe here. We need to get him to the side of the road.”

136

Z. A. Maxfield

No one had to tell me how difficult and dangerous that would be. I knew it. At any moment another car could slam into the wreckage. Someone like me who hadn"t seen anything until it was too late. I climbed back in and knelt on the driver"s seat, unlocking the seat belt that held Dan in place. The rudimentary training I"d had in first aid kicked in, and without thinking, I felt for a pulse. His eyes fluttered open.

“Oh,
Danilo
.” I spoke his childhood nickname and nearly sobbed with relief.

“We have to get you out of here.”

“Give me a minute.” He licked his lips.

I looked out the window, but I saw nothing. “I hope we have a minute.”

“You get clear. I can"t move.”

“What?” I searched with my hand, feeling in the barely lit car for something—

anything—that would tell me what he meant.

“I"m… My arm is wedged. Trapped.” He swallowed hard.

I sat back on my heels. “What can I do?”

“You need to get to the side of the road. The car behind me will absorb the impact of another and so on. It will accordion around me but protect me from the force, and as soon as help arrives, they"ll get me out.”

“I"m not going
anywhere
.” How could he think it? How could he think I would leave him alone like that?

“This isn"t the time to be stubborn. It"ll be all right.” I shook my head. “I"m not leaving you here.”

“No. Get to the side of the road, as far away from the wreckage as possible.

You have to be smart; do the right thing.”

“I can tell you"re thinking
for a change
.” Dan gave a pained laugh. “Yeah.”

I looked behind me and saw two faces peering into the car. “He can"t leave,” I told the woman with the tissues. “He"s pinned by his arm.” She looked anxiously behind us, at the road where any traffic would be coming.