The Fifth Favor (6 page)

“It has to be at Avalon this time.” His jaw hardened almost imperceptibly. “And if an hour is all your magazine can afford, I’m afraid we’ll have to make do.”

“I understand.”

“Also, you’ll have to go through Azure to schedule this last appointment. And don’t mention that you met with me today.”

She didn’t ask why, only extended her hand, willing it to be steady. “I’ll see you soon, then.”

His warm fingers enclosed hers, sealing some sort of pact she didn’t yet understand. “I’ll look forward to it, Ms. Cort.”

30

The Fifth Favor

Adrian paused in the doorway of his condominium’s kitchen and considered the black Labrador gazing mournfully back at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

The dog, Rudy, blinked and huffed.

“Where’s your banana?” Adrian patted him on the head as he moved by to grab a bottle of beer from the refrigerator.

At the mention of his favorite stuffed toy, Rudy whined and leaped up as quickly as his ninety pounds would allow, then circled and stared at his master, ears perked.

Adrian bumped the refrigerator door shut with his hip and frowned as he twisted the bottle cap off a Heineken. “You threw it off the balcony again, didn’t you? Damn it, Rudy.”

With the dog anxiously leading the way, Adrian crossed the spacious living room to the French doors and stepped between the filmy sheers fluttering in the night breeze.

The balcony overlooked the city’s lush tree canopy, a velvet carpet of blackness punctuated by sparkling lights.

Grasping the balustrade, he leaned forward and squinted at the sidewalk fourteen floors below. There it was. The faded, thoroughly chewed and well-loved stuffed banana, lying forlorn on the concrete in front of the building.

“I’m not going down to get it this time,” he told the dog, who sat at his feet and gazed back with an eerily human plea in his cocoa brown eyes.

Five excruciating minutes passed while Rudy followed him around the apartment in silent protest of his master’s decision. Finally, with a weary sigh, Adrian set aside his beer, stepped into a pair of running shoes and grabbed his apartment keys.

“I’ll get the banana,” he said, eyeing the dog, “but this is the last time. And you’re losing your balcony privileges.”

Tail wagging, Rudy settled on the cool teak floor of the foyer and watched him flip open the locks. As Adrian started to twist the knob, a low sound emitted from the dog’s throat, a warning, soft and urgent.

Adrian glanced back at him. The dog was staring past him, as though he could see through the door to something ominous on the other side.

From the hallway came a dull thud, as though a weighty object collided with the wall by Adrian’s apartment.

“Stay,” he muttered, easing open the door. Initially he saw no one, but when he stepped into the hall, his stomach nose-dived.

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Lucien clung to the wall, bloodied and beaten and reeking of alcohol. He was barefoot. His grimy T-shirt hung off one brown shoulder, hair matted with filth, eyes so swollen and bruised, Adrian hardly recognized him. “Christ! Luke—”

“Ad,” he choked, grabbing at Adrian’s shirt with desperate hands. “Help me.”

Then he tilted back against the wall and slid to the carpet, his fingers leaving streaks of crimson on the pristine ivory plaster.

* * * * *

“Drink this,” Adrian forced Lucien’s shaking hands around a cup of coffee and directed it to his friend’s mouth.

When the hot liquid hit Lucien’s busted bottom lip, he cursed and sloshed it down the front of his bare chest.

“Jesus!” He glared at Adrian through one partially swollen eye. “How about a little salt to go with my wounds?”

“I’m sorry.” Adrian took the cup and set it on the night table, then handed him a napkin. He studied his friend in abject silence, too disturbed to conjure words. Then, for the hundredth time in three hours, he asked, “Who did this to you?”

“If I tell you, will you beat him up for me?” Lucien’s bruised mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “Come on, Ad. You know I’m not going to tell you. I can handle it myself.”

“Bullshit,” Adrian said quietly. “You’re going to die if you keep this up. Don’t you care?”

“I care. But it’s like being on a train with no brakes, you know?” He shrugged and winced at the pain caused by the subtle motion. “I can’t give up my fun and games. I tried. It’s got such a hold on me.”

“Sounds like addiction, and you know it.”

Lucien closed his eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. You’ve got a hold on me, too, Ad. But I hadn’t considered myself addicted to you. Not ‘til now, anyway.”

Adrian clenched his jaw and looked away. “Say the word and I’ll take you to a rehab clinic.”

“On the off chance that the third time’s the charm? I can already tell you, three times in rehab will end in three failures. Just what my shattered self-worth doesn’t need. Come on, Ad.” His hand enfolded Adrian’s, squeezed gently. “You’re a smart guy. Don’t you know a lost cause when you see one?”

A surge of anger, kindled by grief and helplessness, seized Adrian’s stomach and twisted. “God damn it, Luke. What do you expect me to do? If the situation were reversed, if I were in your shoes, burned out, beaten and dying a slow death, wouldn’t you pull out all the stops and help me? I’m your friend!”

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The Fifth Favor

“And therein lies the problem.” With a sigh, Lucien lay back against the pillows and lifted a trembling hand to gingerly examine the abrasion high on his cheek. “All you have to do is love me back, you know, and the problem will be solved. No more abusive boyfriends. No more drugs. I’ll be so good—”

Adrian shot to his feet, face aflame. “Jesus Christ—don’t.
Don’t
! I’ll put you out of here, Luke. I don’t care if you die in the hallway, or curled up in some gutter with a thousand dollars crammed up your nose. You will not manipulate me in my home. You will not lay that burden on my shoulders.”

“Sorry.” He held up his hands, palms out in a gesture of contrition. “You know how wasted I am, how maudlin I get when I’m stoned. I’m kidding, Ad. Really.”

But under all that sarcasm, under the flippant excuses, lay an ultimatum
. Love me
like I love you, or I’ll die.

Adrian stared at him, his throat knotted with a mixture of agony and outrage. “I can’t help you. It’s beyond me now. You need to be hospitalized; you need therapy and medication and constant supervision. I’m not your man. I can’t help you.”

Tears spilled over Lucien’s lashes and rolled down his mottled cheeks, even as he laughed and folded his hands across his stomach as though nothing were truly amiss.

“Just let me crash here for tonight. I’ll sleep it off and be out of here in the morning.

Really. You know I don’t mean that crap. I’m sorry.”

Adrian swallowed his despair and bent to turn out the lamp. When he reached the door, he paused and glanced back at his friend.

Lucien looked small and broken in the middle of the double bed, a skeleton of the broad-shouldered, vibrant eighteen-year-old Adrian had met in the dorms a decade ago. Luke DeChambeau was an old man at twenty-eight, riding the slick rails of drugs and alcohol to certain destruction.

It occurred to Adrian then: he’d been grieving the death of his friend for at least a year, struggling against the current of its inevitability, and still Lucien hung on, driving the knife in deeper with each destructive day.

Lucien’s family in upstate New York was so proud of him. After eight years, they still believed their only son was a physics professor at a community college in Virginia.

He was as skillful a liar as he was an Avalon companion. He even had Azure fooled.

“Does Azure know why you didn’t show up for work tonight?” Adrian asked, his voice low as weariness stole his indignation.

The faint glow rising off the city beyond the window flooded the sparse guest room with a purple hue, slashing across the foot of the bed, across Lucien’s hollow features.

“No. I figured silence was better than her wrath when she heard the truth. I was already walking on thin ice with her. She’ll fire me when she finds out about this.”

“I’ll call her and tell her you’re sick.”

Lucien shifted his dark head on the pillow. “She’ll believe you, too. She takes you so damn seriously.”

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“You’ll stay here tomorrow, and as long as you need, to get back on your feet.”

“If your doorman sees me, he’ll kick me out,” Lucien said with a trace of humor.

“Last time he caught me, he thought I was homeless.”

Adrian’s lack of response spoke volumes about how homeless Lucien really was.

“One night is all I need,” Lucien added. “I don’t mean to put you out.”

“It’s putting me out because I know you’re going to do nothing to change things.”

For a moment Lucien didn’t reply. “I might surprise you,” he said finally, his voice thick with unshed tears. “One of these days I’m going to pack up, leave the hell Avalon’s made of our lives and start over. One of these days, Ad, I’m going to fly.” He shifted to meet his friend’s eyes. “Will you miss me then?”

“My God, Luke,” Adrian said softly. “I already do.”

* * * * *

The apartment was silent when Adrian rose at daybreak. He threw on his running clothes, then gently opened Lucien’s door, watching the slow rise and fall of his friend’s chest with an anxiety he didn’t want to feel.

Lucien’s love was too big a burden to carry. How the hell had it started? How had their friendship become fodder for a passion Adrian hadn’t invited or entertained?

Avalon held the key, as with everything in their lives confusing and turbulent. At Avalon, straight sex bled so easily into fantasy; fantasy into lost inhibitions, and for Luke DeChambeau, into loss of self. Drugs, alcohol, money, sex…all had proved desultory and inadequate for the boy who couldn’t get enough. Except his friendship with Adrian. The one truthful, untainted thing in both their lives had somehow gotten mixed up in Lucien’s tormented mind, and Adrian had been oblivious to his friend’s developing feelings until it was too late.

Faced with the granite obstacle standing between them, he’d tried so damned hard to accept it, to brush it off as sheer misunderstanding, even as he felt himself recoiling from the shock of Lucien’s unsolicited affection.

In their world, in Avalon’s twisted, surreal existence, sex was interchangeable with friendship, with mere acquaintance, with money, with drugs. Lucien couldn’t understand why Adrian didn’t desire him, and Adrian had run out of ways to explain it to someone who’d long ago been sucked into the Avalon miasma.

Half buried beneath the blankets, Lucien stirred, grimaced in his sleep, and Adrian silently pulled the door closed again. He grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and retrieved Rudy’s leash and Frisbee from the foyer closet. Then man and dog headed out of the cloying condominium building and toward Rock Creek Park, into a place of escape and physical exertion and play, enough to wipe the agony from Adrian’s reality for a blessed few hours.

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The Fifth Favor

* * * * *

He came home at noon, fed Rudy and peeked in on Lucien, who was watching the small television situated in the guest room’s narrow armoire.

“Jerry Springer,” Lucien said with a wan smile, both eyes so swollen and bruised, Adrian didn’t know how he could see the screen. “They’re talking about gay rednecks.”

“How fascinating for young minds everywhere.”

“They should throw a few of Azure’s companions up on that stage. No one would ever believe a word we had to say.”

Adrian smiled but didn’t respond, just watched his friend with speculative concern.

“Did you get something to eat?” he asked finally.

“Cereal. I also borrowed the Advil I found in the bathroom cabinet.”

“The bottle’s yours.” Adrian tilted his head to study him. “So what do you think?

Anything broken? Ribs? Nose?”

“Just heart,” Lucien said, and after a meaningful pause, looked back at the television.

Adrian shifted his weight, at a loss for words of comfort. Their growing estrangement sapped even the most generic phrases from his mind.

“By the way,” he said, when the silence between them stretched to agony, “I called Azure for you. Told her you had a raging fever.”

“Did she believe you?”

“Of course.”

“Of course.” Lucien rolled his eyes. “You can do no wrong.”

Flashing him a mild grin, Adrian rubbed a hand through his sweat-slicked hair.

“I’m going to jump in the shower. I have to be at the club at two.”

He started to withdraw, but then Lucien said, “Ad?”

“What?”

For a moment, Lucien didn’t reply, and the tension between them blazed, brimming with unspoken emotion and frustration and hopelessness. His hands clutched the blanket pooled in his lap, his expression unreadable beneath the myriad bruises and abrasions. “I remember saying some things last night that were pretty tasteless.”

“It’s okay, Luke. Don’t worry about it.”

“I was stoned out of my mind.”

“It’s okay,” Adrian repeated, tension crawling through his muscles. He wanted to forget it, to move on. He wanted to forget that his best friend was no longer his best friend.

“But I wasn’t so stoned that I didn’t know what I was saying.” Lucien looked up, his throat moving as he swallowed beneath an obvious surge of emotion. “I don’t know why I came here. I shouldn’t be here, I shouldn’t be around you, and we both know it. I can’t do this anymore, Ad. I thought I could get past it, thought I could put you back 35

Shelby Reed

into that safe friend place where you’ve always been. But my heart won’t listen. And I just can’t do it anymore.”

Adrian’s pulse picked up speed, kindled by dread. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…you don’t need me in your life. And Ad,” he added, when Adrian opened his mouth to argue, “I don’t need you in mine.”

Adrian threw his hands in the air, a gesture of supreme frustration. “Here we go again. Fine, Luke. You want out of this friendship? Great. Crawl back to your real friends, the ones who feed you drugs and booze, the ones who beat the crap out of you and don’t care if you live or die. You’re right. There’s nothing here that can’t be swapped for a bigger, more satisfying return.”