Christmas Presents

Part 5

Warning! Major Character Death

I knew he was dead.

I knew it as soon as the noise stopped and I turned to look at him, to ask if he was alright.

His airbag deployed. They both did, but if you don’t have that belt on it doesn’t mean shit.

Not when you hit a tree at fifty miles an hour.

He was sitting sideways on the seat, half off it on the floor, and I could see that his head was at an unnatural angle and he wasn’t moving.

I tried to get him to respond to me, to talk or open his eyes or moan or something but he didn’t.

A car behind us stopped and called 911.

I just sat in the car holding his hand. I didn’t want to leave him and it was so cold there with the heater off. I think I put my jacket over him, but I don’t really remember.

I knew that he wasn’t breathing, that there was no pulse, but I kept talking to him anyway.

He hates the cold.

I kept telling him that help was coming and that he’d be warm soon, but I guess that he didn’t hear me.

His hand was so cold.

The paramedics said that he was killed on impact. His neck was broken and his skull was fractured. They said that he hadn’t suffered and that there would have been no pain. He probably didn’t know what happened. He looked like he was just sleeping. Honest to shit, he did. There wasn’t even any blood. None.

He wasn’t even looking ahead when it happened. He was looking at me, smiling because I had just told him that I love him.

He always wanted to hear that shit.

It always made him smile.

The car went off the road, sliding on the fucking ice and hit that tree.

He always wore his seat belt, always.

I was. I was OK. I fucking walked away with a sprained wrist.

He didn’t that night and I don’t know why. Maybe he just forgot. I don’t know.

Was it my fault? Maybe. I was driving. He distracted me with his hand on my leg; he didn’t wear his seat belt. Was it his fault?

What fucking difference does it make? What if we had gone dancing? What if we had ordered room service? What if it hadn’t snowed? What if we had gone to Hawaii?

What difference does it make?

They took him to the local hospital and declared him dead. They x-rayed him so that they would be able to answer the coroner’s questions. The doctor told me that his spinal cord had been severed, so he couldn’t have felt any pain. I guess that’s good.

They didn’t bother testing for alcohol or drugs because he wasn’t driving, but they did test me.

I’d only had one beer at dinner and no drugs in over a week, so I was cleared. It was declared an accident, I wasn’t charged with anything and they let me go.

The police gave me a ride back to the Inn and asked if there was anything they could do for me. There wasn’t.

The owners of the Inn were kind. They did what they could. They ran a bath for me and they offered to pack his things so that I wouldn’t have to, but I told them that I was fine and would rather do it myself.

They called a doctor to come look at me.

He said that I was in shock, no shit, and gave me some kind of a tranquilizer and I think a sleeping thing, but neither of them seemed to do anything. I spent the night sitting in a big chair in front of the same fireplace we had made love in front of the night before. I couldn’t deal with the bed.

Shock feels numb.

Did you know that?

Shock isn’t a bad thing. People talk like it is, but they’re wrong. It’s how you sometimes have to cope without screaming.

Shock lets you be calm enough to arrange for a coffin for your lover and to make the arrangements to transport him home in it.

Shock lets you pick out the clothes for him to wear in his casket.

Shock lets you kiss the lips of a corpse and pretend that they can still kiss you back, that there’s still someone home there who can respond.

Shock is why I could call Justin’s mother and tell her that he was dead.

Shock is what happened to Jen, too.

She was quiet and asked how I was. She asked when he would be home as though he was just at the movies. She asked if I had any thoughts about the service and I said that Father Tom would be a good man to conduct it if she didn’t mind a priest. I told her that I would ask him to downplay the Catholic side of it. That was fine.

Shock is OK.

I wish that I were still in shock.

It carried me through the funeral and for a couple of days after that, but then I guess it started to wear off and the real world came back into focus.

I stayed in the loft and the others seemed to always be there. I think they worked out some kind of shifts so that I wouldn’t be alone. For a couple of weeks there was always someone around. I don’t know what they thought. Maybe they were afraid that I’d try to kill myself, but I won’t.

At some point I noticed that Justin’s things were disappearing and I got angry with that. That shit was Justin’s and he was my husband and it was my decision what was to be done with that. I made it clear how I felt about it and then the things stopped going.

One day Debbie was here, I guess that it was her turn, and she yelled at me, really went into one of her rants about how I should cry, that it wasn’t natural not to. I remember that I didn’t answer her, just looked out the window and tuned her out.

I know Deb; she was trying to get me to break. I know that was what she was doing and I just wouldn’t do it, not to her.

I don’t know. Maybe it would have helped. Part of me wanted to, I know that. I wanted to cry and scream and pound the floor and kick my feet. I wanted her to hold me and rock me in her arms like I hold Gus when he falls down. I wanted to feel someone’s arms around me again. I wanted her to stroke my hair and tell me that it was OK and that Justin loved me and that he had been happy with me and that what we had was wonderful.

I wanted that so bad.

I wanted to feel someone’s arms around me like they meant it. I want to be able to believe that it’s not just some fucked up sense of obligation that’s bringing everyone here and I want them to stop looking at me like I’m going to implode in front of them.

I went back to work a couple of days ago. No one bothered me, Cynthia saw to that.

It was strange to be there. Usually when I walk around people get out of my way because they’re afraid that I’ll ream them for something. Now they get out of my way because they don’t know what to say.

They don’t know where to look when I walk into a room. No one meets my eye. I wondered if that was because I’m a gay man who’s lost my partner, my lover or just because I’m a widower.

I don’t know.

That’s a weird word, isn’t it?

Widower.

Sounds like a garden tool to eliminate moles or something.

About a month and a half after the funeral Mikey, came over with some Chinese food. I didn’t know that he’d be showing up and I was sort of looking forward to being by myself. The Brian Watch seemed to have been disbanded a couple of weeks before.

Anyway, he walked in with this bag of food and I just didn’t want it. It had been a crappy day and it was raining and I just wasn’t in the mood for him right then.

He wasn’t taking that for an answer, though. He just came in and puts this shit on the table by the couch, gets some plates and some chopsticks and starts dishing out this food.

He got steamed dumplings.

Fucking steamed dumplings which he knows I fucking hate. And the egg rolls had no shrimp in them and he forgot to tell them no MSG.

I mean, Goddamnit.

It just got to me, you know? It really pissed me off. Here he’s supposed to be my fucking best friend and we’ve known each other forever and he even can’t remember that I hate steamed dumplings and MSG.

So that was when I figured what’s the point and it just really bothered me and I started crying.

I just sat there on the edge of the couch with my hands on my knees and I just started to cry and I couldn’t stop.

He got up from where he was sitting on the floor and sat beside me and put his arms around me and held me so fucking tight and I held him back and I just cried forever. As soon as I thought that I was done I’d look at something—one of his paintings or my ring or his sweatshirt on the chair and I’d just start again.

Mikey didn’t bother trying to tell me all the shit that the others had—that Justin had loved me, that I would never forget him, that he would want me to move on—none of that shit.

I know that shit.

I know he loved me, I know I’ll never forget him and I know that he wants me to move on.

Fuck you all.

I’m fucking angry; can’t any of them see that?

I want him back. I want to hold him and kiss him and make love to him.

I want to walk in the loft after work and see him standing there waiting to put his arms around me and kiss me. I want to feel him next to me in bed and I want him in the shower. I want to see him sitting in my car and walking in after a day of classes.

I want to see that incredible smile again.

I want to touch him and feel him and hear him rag me because it takes me twenty minutes to fix my hair. I want him to complain because I’m late for dinner or because I forgot his fucking birthday. I want his shit all over like it used to be. I want him calling me at work ten Goddamned times a day and I want—fucking everything we had.

He was twenty fucking years old and that’s all he got and he was the most amazing man I ever met and it’s all so incredibly fucking wrong.

Somehow we’re up on the bed and Mikey is still holding me like he used to when I’d have a run in with Jack. And I realized that I was still crying and I didn’t even care.

I want him back. I want the twenty or thirty years that we were supposed to have.

I fucking miss him every minute of every Goddamned day.

I’m afraid to go to sleep at night because if I do I know that I’ll dream about him again and I’m afraid that if I go to sleep that this might be the night I don’t dream about him and then I’d be losing him all over again.

Doesn’t anyone fucking get this?

God, I want him back.

I want that so bad.

Finally, finally the crying stops, at least enough so that I can breathe again. Mikey is still holding me, though. I was sort of curled up against him, which is odd because I’m so much bigger than he is. Then I start thinking that this was usually how I would hold Justin and I’m about to start again and I sort of force myself to stop this time.

Then he asked me if this was the first time I’d cried since it happened and I tell him the truth. That every time I would take a shower I would sit on the floor with the water running full blast on me to drown out the sound and I would cry until the hot water was gone. I did that for a long time, when the Brian Watch was in effect because I didn’t want the others to know.

Anyone else would have asked me why, but Mikey knew why. It was private, between Justin and me. He just sort of nodded. He knew.

My eyes were leaking again. I wasn’t really crying, but tears kept coming out of them and I couldn’t stop.

I told Mikey that Justin was never a threat to him, to us. I don’t know if he believed me, but I told him.

He kept holding me.

I finally fell asleep.

In the morning I knew that I had overslept because of the way the shadows were, but Mikey came in and said that he had called Cynthia and she knew I wouldn’t be in that day.

OK. Now that pissed me off.

I got up and showered and dressed in like ten minutes and walked into the Agency around ten thirty. Cynthia looked surprised and I told her to never listen to Mikey and get me some fucking coffee and something to eat, even a Goddamned donut.

She was less than two minutes.

When she handed them to me she was smiling and that pissed me off, too. I asked her what ray of sunshine had crawled up her ass.

She just said that she was glad I was back.

Bitch.

I sat at my desk with breakfast, such as it was, in front of me. After a moment I opened the bottom drawer on the left side and took out the picture that had been there for a couple of years, I’d never put it out because it figured that it was no one’s fucking business.

I had taken it one day at the loft; he was sitting working at his computer and had just glanced up and flashed that smile when he saw it was me.

I loved that picture of him. I love him.

I would go back to work now.

But first I put him out on my desk where I could see him.

The End