The Lost Boys Symphony (13 page)

There was a tapping from behind him, close enough that it vibrated the hard wood he was sitting on and buzzed his tailbone like a tuning fork. He was cold. As his memory returned, he pulled his feet up from where they’d been dangling. He rubbed his ankles until the pins and needles subsided, then stood to face 80.

“We’re here,” said the old man. “But we don’t have to go anywhere.”

“I think we do,” said Henry, and he started back toward the house.

I
t was early
afternoon by the time Gabe got back to his house on Hamilton Street. Cal was gone and everything was quiet. Gabe lay down in his bed, pulled the filthy comforter over his face, and fashioned a little hole just big enough to breathe through. The sound of mid-morning traffic on Hamilton soothed him. It had rained a little, and he liked the sticky noise that car tires made as they rolled over the wet asphalt.

He wanted to sleep, but the previous eighteen hours had been the strangest of his life. His mind wouldn’t let go, so he ended up in a strange in-between place where his memories of that morning and the previous night were louder and more visceral than usual, like waking dreams.

Henry had said he was forty-one years old. He said that he was nineteen the first time he’d accidentally shifted himself through time. He said that the version of himself that Gabe was used to knowing was recovering someplace safe. He’d been removed from Gabe’s time in order to save his life. Gabe had just listened, dumbstruck and scared.

They got off in New Brunswick. Gabe’s senses felt unfiltered, as if his brain were trying to construct the world around him for the first time. As the train pulled away the rhythm of cars clunking over seams in the tracks meshed with the sound of feet descending the steel stairs. He tried to ignore the consonance, but it was impossible. Henry walked Gabe as far as the intersection of Easton and Hamilton. The walk was quiet. It was only about noon on a Sunday, late enough that the sidewalks in front of Cluck-U Chicken and Giovanelli’s Pizza had been cleared of empty beer cans and Styrofoam takeout containers but too early for there to be much activity.

“Don’t make me regret coming to you,” said Henry. The words themselves could have been made to sound threatening or caustic, but his tone was clear. It was a genuine, almost pleading, request, as though he had too many regrets already. “I’ll get in touch.” And then, probably because of the look on Gabe’s face, he said, “I’m all righ
t
.”

Gabe bit down on his cheek hard enough to hurt a little. Henry was not all right. He was sad and lonely, possibly delusional. He was hallucinating, believing insane things. But Gabe was, too, and he felt robbed of any authority to disagree with this new Henry.

It was getting hot under the covers, but Gabe needed the peace of the dark to concentrate.

Henry had asked him to accept the impossible. His only proof was that he looked like shit and that he could somehow force Gabe to hallucinate. Even still, Gabe believed him immediately and instinctively. But if Gabe believed that the Henry he had just been with was truly from another time, then he would also have to believe that this Henry knew things about Gabe’s own future. And then, though he knew it was trivial, Gabe’s mind wandered back to Val and her creamy white stomach, the way it tightened over her middle as she stretched. The image had impressed itself on Gabe’s brain with a crispness and clarity that caused a dull pain low in his gut. He tried to remember the smell he’d woken up to—he even lifted his T-shirt over his nose, hoping to find some remnant of her. And then he heard Henry’s voice.
It’s going to happen.
He was talking about Gabe having sex with Val like it was a foregone conclusion.
And when it does, you need to know that I don’t mind.

Two sentences, each one so simple, but when combined they formed a complex equation. He didn’t really care about that second sentence, or at least he couldn’t find the part of himself that cared enough to focus on it. That first sentence, though.
It’s going to happen.
The words stirred in Gabe a sexual frustration so profound that he could practically feel his testicles ascending into his abdomen. He had been holding the fantasy at bay since talking with Val the week before, but now he let it take over. He was back in her bed, looking at the spot on her shoulder revealed by the loose gray strap of her tank top. He touched her skin with the back of his finger and then went deeper. He imagined parts of her body that he’d never let himself imagine before. She’d always been off-limits, but now that he was lifting the ban, he explored her in his imagination with an almost grotesque fervor.

Then it was over and the realization hit him hard. He was a bad, backward person. Instead of pondering how he and Henry had gotten locked in the same delusion together, and rather than trying to figure out what it all meant, Gabe had gone home and jerked off while thinking about Henry’s ex-girlfriend.

When it happens, I don’t want you to think about me.

There was nothing Henry could have said that would have better cemented his presence in Gabe’s mind. Gabe wondered if that was on purpose, and thought back to one of the questions that he’d been pondering on the walk back from the train station. How much did he trust this Henry? He’d followed Gabe and confronted him after he left Val’s apartment. His actions seemed designed to disorient Gabe, to threaten him, and yet he acted as though it was all fated, thereby absolving himself of any real responsibility.

And then there was the very real possibility that the Henry he’d seen on the train and in the park wasn’t really there. Gabe was insane. The only alternative explanation was that Henry had traveled back through time to fuck with him, and that was no explanation at all.

Gabe laughed to himself under the covers, then threw them back. The cool air on his skin made him feel more present, more substantial. He stood up and took off his clothes, careful to keep the front of his boxer briefs from touching his legs. He heard the sound of his phone vibrating in the pocket of his pants. The pocket was twisted and the pants were inside out, so by the time he was able to get to his phone he’d missed the call.

It was Val. Gabe’s blood turned warm and acidic. He stared at the phone, wondering if he should call her back. She couldn’t see him, of course, but he was naked and he suddenly felt exposed. He put down the phone and picked up a mildewed towel, wrapped it around his waist. The phone vibrated again, just once, announcing that it had received a message. Gabe played it back.

“Hey, Gabe.”

His skin tingled at the sound of his own name.

“Listen, I wanted to talk to you, but maybe this is better. I guess I just felt like you left kind of abruptly, and I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry, you know, if it was weird. That you stayed over.

“I mean, okay, now this is turning into an epic message. But whatever. I just feel like you came over here for help, you know? But then we barely talked about Henry. And I was thinking, since you left, that maybe that wasn’t fair. Because I’m lonely here. I’m having fun, but when I saw you it made me really happy, like I was home and I could be myself, and I can’t do that with anyone else around here right now. But you came over to talk about Henry, and I guess I didn’t want to, and that was just weird. And unfair.”

Gabe looked down at his toweled body and recalled the way he’d been imagining her just moments before. He still felt ashamed, but it was obvious that she was confused too. It was a kind of absolution.  

“So, I don’t want things to be weird. Think about this and call me, okay? Or don’t. If you don’t want to talk about it I understand. I just…okay. Well, I’ll talk to you soon. Or, I guess, whenever you feel like it.”

Gabe imagined Val curled up on her bed, eyes rolling in frustration, biting her lip and shaking her head.

“Okay.”

She took a short breath, but a deep one from the sound of it.

“Bye.”

Gabe pondered what he’d heard. By instinct, they hadn’t spoken about Henry. Maybe Val’s message meant that she felt bad about that, that Henry was the real foundation of their relationship and that in avoiding him they’d just been kidding themselves. But she hadn’t actually said that she wanted to talk about Henry, only that she thought Gabe did. She was apologizing for not giving Gabe that chance.

But what if Gabe didn’t want to talk about Henry either? Would Val see him differently? Would she lose respect for him, having always seen him as the loyal friend? Or would it be a relief?

Gabe listened to the message twice more before getting in the shower. Then, when he was out and dressed, he listened to it again. It felt good. He didn’t want to call her back yet. He was too afraid that the intimacy would dissipate if she were actually on the other end of line.

He felt almost normal. The same way he’d felt when he was with her. All the doubt and confusion caused by the bearded man just disappeared. If it was really Henry, then Gabe had been given permission to think about Val however he wanted. And if he was just a figment of Gabe’s own imagination, then spending time with Val, hearing her voice—it seemed to make his burgeoning insanity disappear. The choice between trying to spend time with her and steering clear was therefore no choice at all.

W
hat do you
mean, you’re
gone?
” said Henry. “You’re right here.”

“No,” said 80. He was still on his knees, crying through clenched teeth.

Henry looked up at the bridge, its wooden planks brightened to a fiery golden hue by the bright sunlight above. Henry himself was still in the shade of the canopy. In his mind’s eye he could see 41 dancing to the woody clamor. He couldn’t see any vomit on the front of his clothing, but it was going cold on his back, adhering his skin to the fabric of his shirt.

“I’m not here,” said 80. “Not truly, not in this world.”

“Stop.”

“He’s—God, what is he doing? What has he done?”

Henry wanted to kick him. Just a day before, the bright green spastic low vibration had driven him from his mother’s house to the George Washington Bridge, where he’d experienced a hallucination of such intensity that it had knocked him out. He’d then been drugged and abducted by men whom he genuinely believed to be future versions of himself. Without even a moment alone to ponder any of that, he’d been paraded through the woods to this other bridge and abandoned by the one of his two companions whom he was beginning to trust.

Henry felt like a prop in some absurdist play, and the only person who could possibly help him make sense of what was happening was now kneeling on the bare earth, crying and muttering.

“I can’t keep it straight,” said 80. He sat up a little, raised both hands out in front of him, palms turned down as if bowing in praise. When Henry finally understood the meaning of the gesture, he grabbed the man’s wrists and lifted him to his feet.

“Stop,” said Henry. “Stop crying—what happened?”

“I need to sit down,” said 80. “I need to think.” He walked back toward the bridge. Then, using the guardrails for support, he slowly lowered himself to the walkway.

“But I just helped you up,” said Henry. He followed 80 out onto the bridge. “Where did he go?” he said. “Please. Think. You have to know.”

An asthmatic whistle mewled out of 80’s wide-open mouth.

“Hello?” said Henry.

“I can’t hear it.”

“Where did he go?”

“I can’t…But how?”

“He said I had set myself free,” said Henry. “What did he mean?”

“I can’t hear it,” said 80. “It’s gone, but how—”

“What did he mean, 80? Focus! What did he mean? He said I’d set myself free. Free how? From what?”

80 directed his fearful gaze at Henry. “From me. Free from me.”

“But I’m here with you, right now. I’m here and he’s— What did you do to him?”

80 stared down at the water. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Really? You don’t think so?” said Henry. “Because to me? Right now? It seems like maybe it does. It seems like it matters a lot, actually.”

“No,” said 80. “It was a different time. It’s over.”

“This is what he was talking about, isn’t it?”

“If you knew—”

“You’ll just hide shit from me, you’ll lie to me, right? No straight answers.”

“I’m not lying,” said 80. “It doesn’t matter what happened.”

“Bullshit,” said Henry. He walked farther out onto the bridge and looked upstream. He imagined jumping into the advancing water. It would clean his clothes, at least. It would carry him away. Better yet, there was a car at the house. He could leave 80 where he sat, get the keys, drive until he found a highway, and head back home.

But what would he find when he got back to his mom’s house?

What would he find if he went back to New Brunswick?

He charged back toward 80. “Where am I?” he yelled. “What time is this? Take me home.”

“What time?” said 80. “It’s…We didn’t…” He rubbed at his face with both hands. “You can’t go home. It’s—You need to stay here. We need to fix this.”

“Just tell me! If I find someone, ask them what day it is,
what will they say?
”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. Not to you. You can get yourself to wherever you want to go, can’t you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Not yet, then. Good. We have to fix this. We can fix it.”

“Fix what?”

80’s eyes were adrift, his face disturbing in its dispassion. “You need to understand. We need to be together on whatever comes next. 41, he’ll ruin everything. It’s you and me. You can learn. You can hear the music. You can do it, I know you can. 41 is proof of it. You have to listen. Listen for it, and then when you hear it, we can fix this.”

As Henry listened to the man’s sputtering barrage, the discouraging truth became clear. “You don’t understand what’s happening,” he said. “Not any more than I do.”

80 placed one foot beneath him, bent a knee, got the other onto the ground. Piece by piece he lifted his body first to all fours and then up to standing. He squinted, his mouth taut in a grimace as he straightened his back. Henry watched, and though he felt compelled by courtesy to offer to help, he kept his distance and enjoyed the satisfaction that came with watching the old man struggle.

“We can fix this,” said 80. “You need to stay with me.”

“And if I don’t? If I just leave?”

“41 knows what you’ll do. He remembers it all. He remembers this very moment, this conversation. He left you here to have it. If you leave, he’ll find you. He knows you’ll know that. He wants you to stay here for a reason, and we just have to figure out what that is.”

“But
you
don’t remember this,” said Henry. “You don’t remember me. If this is real, that’s—it’s not possible.”

“It’s not possible, no. But it’s the way it is. That’s what this is all about.” 80 took a step, but his knee buckled and he gasped as he fell forward. Henry reached out and caught the man’s upper arms, pushed him upright. 80 looked him in the eye, and as Henry looked back he couldn’t stop himself from marveling at the odd familiarity of the irises. Unlike every other part of 80’s body, the years had done nothing to change them. They were a mirror image of a mirror image of Henry’s own, and they held compassion and sadness and fear in equal measure.

“Help me back to the house,” said 80.