House of Cards

   

Justin had been back from New York and Sloan Kettering for about five months and things were looking pretty good if I say so myself.

 

He was going to a couple of classes at PIFA, he was staying with me on more than just weekends, his medical bills were under control and things were looking up.

 

Gardner was talking about opening that New York office he’d been salivating about since he was like about twenty and even he agreed that it was because of the contacts I’d made while I was with Justin during his treatment that had put us over the top. The plan seemed to be that we would start scouting locations for office space, make sure that we had the contracts signed that would keep the second office solvent for at least a year and then I’d probably make the move to set the thing up and run the day-to-day operation. Cynthia would come with me along with a couple of the others who could tell the difference between their butts and a hole in the ground.

 

I’d get the bump up from junior partner to full partner and a hefty raise to compensate for the move and the added expense of living in New York.

 

Justin knew about it and the idea was that, as soon as he got the clearance from his doctors, he would start applying to schools in New York, we’d find some apartment that would have enough room for us to share and things would be perfect. You know, walk off into the sunset sort of stuff.

 

We were having dinner over at Jennifer’s one night when Justin sort of blurted out the news and it was pretty obvious that Jenn wasn’t all that happy about the idea of her little boy going off to the big city when he was still not 100%.

 

Oh, Hell, he was so Goddamned much better, though. You couldn’t believe how much better he was.

 

His hair was back and it seemed even thicker than it had been before. He’d regained a lot of the weight he’d lost. His sense of humor was in place and he was interested in things again.

 

He was drawing and painting as well as he ever had and there was a new depth to his work and a maturity to it that wasn’t just my imagination.

 

You know how they talk about the light at the end of the Goddamned tunnel? Well, it way practically blinding.

 

We even had our sex life back—Ok, not quite up to the previous standards, but that was alright. We had something better than just hot sex—not that there’s anything wrong with hot sex, mind you. We had something even better than that.

 

We’d gotten to the point where we’d developed a language for lovemaking and it was one that I didn’t really know existed. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I knew plenty about screwing and fucking and I could probably teach master’s classes in giving head and all the rest of it, but this went beyond simple mechanics. We understood one another’s bodies and wants and desires and needs on some nonverbal level and it was fucking amazing. It was the best sex I’d ever had because it went beyond sex.

 

Jesus, listen to me.

 

I sound like a fucking lesbian.

 

But you know? It’s true.

 

I’d known it since before he’d left me for Ethan, but I couldn’t get enough of just lying in bed naked, holding him and knowing that he was with me. And he still gives the best blowjobs on the planet.

 

So, things were rolling along just fine. I had to go to New York almost every week for a couple for days to deal with the new office and find a place for us to live in. I got the agency a decent space just off Madison Avenue. It wasn’t huge, but it was big enough for the basics and close enough to the high rent district to impress anyone who thought that shit mattered. Then I found a sublet for the two of us down in the Village. It was the top two floors of a four-story brownstone with a private entrance. It had a kitchen, a bath and a living room with a spare room that I would use as my office on the first of our floors. Then up on the top floor was a big bedroom with an amazing bath and what had been a nursery that could be fitted out as a studio for Justin. It even had a skylight.

 

I also made sure that it had an elevator so that Justin wouldn’t have a problem with the stairs. It was tiny, like the one in the film “The Producers”, but it went up and down, so it was fine. I signed the lease for a year with an option.

 

Everything was in place and it was all set to happen in about a month. Justin had been to Manhattan with me a couple of times and he’s checked out the different art schools that were available. He’d finally decided that Parsons and Pratt were the two that had the most of what he was looking for, so he applied to go as a transfer student with special notes from the various Deans who he’d been working with since he’d gotten sick.

 

Both places accepted him as a part time student, based on his portfolio and it was understood that everything was contingent upon his health, but he hoped to move up to full time with in a semester or two. He opted to go to Pratt.

 

So the loft was closed up, the stuff in it would stay right where it was for when I came back, and we found things for the sublet. Clothes and various necessities had been shipped in cartons and the business end of things was under control.

 

The last thing we had to do, which Justin had put off because he’d been feeling so damn good and was so fucking busy, was a final check up before he transferred back to the care of his oncologist in New York.

 

He’d made the appointment for a Wednesday afternoon and I’d offered to drive him, but Jennifer had told him that he could take her car and he was always looking for an excuse to drive.

 

I was going to meet him at the loft after I finished up at work, probably about seven.

 

So around seven –thirty I walked, expecting him to be ready to go out for dinner and couldn’t find him. The loft isn’t that big when you come down to it, just one big room, so it wasn’t hard to double check.

 

The lights were on, though—all of them, and that wasn’t like him. He’d had that ‘turn off the lights if you’re not using them’ thing drilled into him, so I knew that he was probably around somewhere.

 

I checked the roof; he’d go up there sometimes to get some air or sketch, but nothing.

 

I called his cel but it was off.

 

I took another tour of the loft and it looked like the shower had been used but he wasn’t there.

 

I checked the kitchen to see—I don’t know, I guess to see if he’d packed a lunch or something, but it didn’t look like anything had been moved or anything.

 

I called Daphne to see if he’d stopped by there, but she hadn’t seen him in about a week.

 

I called the diner. Deb told me that if she didn’t get to see us before we left, she’d fry out nuts for breakfast and no, she hadn’t seen him in a couple of days.

 

He wasn’t at the munchers. He wasn’t at the comic book shop; he wasn’t over at Deb’s with Vic. I tried his studio at PIFA—I’d insisted that he have a phone installed there so I could get him if he forgot to recharge his cel and he didn’t notice that it was two in the morning. I got his answering machine.

 

It was now after eight-thirty and I was about to try the cops and the hospitals when the door slid open and he walked in, looking like shit on a shingle, as dear old Jack would have said.

 

Before I could say anything he walked over to me, put his arms around me, holding on for dear life and started crying.

 

I held him back, maneuvered him over to the couch and just let him cry himself out.

 

It took over an hour.

 

Every time I though that he was slowing down a new wave would start and he’d either start that hiccupping crying that you know is almost out of control or he’d slip into out and out sobbing. He’d slow down to a sort of steady crying then start up again.

 

I just held onto him, rubbing his back and saying these meaningless bullshit platitudes about how it would be alright, don’t worry, it’s not as bad as you think it is and crap like that. Even I knew they were a load while I was saying them. He didn’t even bother responding. He just cried.

 

He was scaring the shit out of me. Honest to God he was. I’d seen him go through all kinds of Hell without even raising a complaint—he’d been bashed, he’d been thrown out of his parent’s house, he’d had Goddamned cancer, we’d broken up—OK that was a big one for me, anyway—and all he’d ever done were a few drama queen moments that were really hardly more than a two or three on the drama queen scale.

 

Finally, finally he seemed to have almost cried himself out and was just laying there against me, quiet, with tears still tracking down his face

 

I waited for him to tell me what I thought I already knew.

 

He’d had a follow up MRI that afternoon and you usually get the results, at least the initial ones, pretty much right then.

 

The doctors had found something and it was probably bad.

 

His voice was so quiet, low and muffled against my chest, that I had to strain to hear what he was saying and then after he said it I had to strain some more to make sense out of it.

 

“…They found four new tumors. Two are in my lungs and the other two are in my breasts.”

 

Jesus.

 

Shit.

 

Fuck me.

 

“They haven’t been biopsied. You don’t know that they’ve metastasized. It could be nothing.”

 

He started crying again. “I know, Brian. It’s my body. I know.”

 

I held him some more and after another hour or so I could feel him drifting off, exhausted by the day and the trauma and the upset. I settled him on the couch, covered him with a blanket, turned out a bunch of lights and called the doctor. I got his service, of course. It was after nine by now. I didn’t give a shit if he was home after a long day.

 

To the guy’s credit, he returned the call within about ten minutes.

 

I liked this man. He was, as far as I could tell, a good doctor and he actually seemed to care about his patients. He hadn’t developed that thick skin that most of them have to as a defense against the horrors they see on a daily basis.

 

The biopsy was set for the day after tomorrow and he really couldn’t know what treatment that he would recommend until he had those results.

 

Yes, we should go ahead with the move to New York. Sloan Kettering was there and, should it be necessary, it would be better for him to continue treatment with doctors who were familiar with Justin’s case. They had state of the art facilities and he’d be in the best of hands. Besides, Justin was looking forward to the move and it would be a blow to his morale to have that taken away at the last minute.

 

He went on to say that I should, absolutely go ahead with the plans that I’d been making—the new branch of the agency, the townhouse, all of it. A side from the fact that I still had a life to live (I almost laughed out loud at that, but he was trying to be kind and I knew that, so I contained myself). It would be bad for Justin to think that I’d put my career on hold because of him. Justin had spoken with pride about how well I was doing, how good I was at my job and how in demand I was. To let him think that he’d somehow damaged that could be devastating to his sense of self worth.

 

I thanked him, apologized for disturbing him at home and ended the call after promising to have Justin at the hospital for the biopsy.

 

I walked over to the where he was still sleeping on the couch. His hair had grown back, he had some color to his face and he looked healthy, Damnit.

 

He did. He looked like he was going to be alright.

 

Oh, Christ.

 

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