“Yeah,” Sean breathes through his hand.
And because he can, Mike says, “Yeah,” before removing his hand and kissing Sean to within an inch of his life.
He’s turning around and walking away only seconds later. Before he rounds the corner, he glances back and sees Sean still dazed against the side of the diner, cheeks slightly reddened from the scrape of Mike’s beard.
Mike grins to himself. And maybe he’s starting not to care what Amorea actually is, be it experiments when They Came from Outer Space or experiments when They Came from Eastern Europe Wearing Red or experiments when They Came from the Hospital Carrying Straitjackets. He’s got all he needs right here. He’ll make it work. Somehow.
MRS. RICHARDSON and the Amorea Women’s Club make an appearance just after lunchtime, as he thought they would. He saw them flitting up and down Main Street all morning, Mrs. Richardson barking orders to her minions as they scurried to obey her. He knew it was only a matter of time before they descended upon him with demands of pageantry and ideas for what he should wear.
“The store isn’t festive enough!” Mrs. Richardson cries the moment she dramatically throws open the door, bell ringing overhead. “Where is your Harvest Festival spirit?”
He thinks, I wonder about you. If you’re not real, like some of the others aren’t real, how did you come into being? How were you made in this dream to be so full of life, so demanding? If I’ve made you up, like everyone else (but not Sean, never Sean), how did I make you like this?
He says, rather dryly, “I think that you have enough Harvest Festival spirit for all of us.”
The ladies tut behind her.
She glares.
He’s repentant.
The glare lessens. “We do this every year, Mike. And every year you say, ‘Why yes, Mrs. Richardson, I would be most glad to assist you in this matter. Next year, you’ll see.’ And every year I’m here again and there is nothing done. Nothing done, Mike Frazier.”
He thinks, You told me about your husband. A great man, you said. He died in the war, you said. If I asked you his name, would you know? If I asked you how long you were married, would you be able to tell me? I don’t think you would. I don’t think you’ll know because I don’t know. Are you a figment, Mrs. Richardson?
He says, “And every year you come in here and do up the storefront exactly the way you want it. If I decorated, you would just come and complain that it wasn’t done correctly and then fiddle with it until it was to your liking.”
“I don’t fiddle.”
One of the ladies behind her coughs bravely.
The skin under Mrs. Richardson’s left eye twitches.
Mike waits, because he knows that one should never argue with a lady like Mrs. Richardson.
“Fine,” she says only a moment later. “And only because I’ve seen how you decorate. You should be ashamed of yourself. And you can bet we will be having a discussion on the state of your wardrobe before I leave here. I will not have you looking slovenly like you did last year.”
He’s not offended. After all, how can you be offended by something that might not exist? Why, that would just be madness. He says, “I’m sure the discussion will be most enlightening.”
She narrows her eyes at him, assessing until she’s sure he’s being serious. He keeps the straightest face possible, and eventually she nods and clucks her tongue, like she can’t even begin to imagine having to deal with someone such as him. She snaps her fingers once, a sharp, quick crack, and the ladies of the Amorea Women’s Club begin to move, hanging fancy sashes in the windows and placing cardboard cutouts of smiling pumpkins and scarecrows on each of the book aisles. It takes them only minutes, and by the time they’re done, it smells like apples and spice and there’s even a little bale of hay in one corner with autumn squash placed strategically around it.
Through it all, Mike doesn’t say a thing. It’s easier that way.
Before she leaves, Mrs. Richardson instructs Mike in no uncertain terms that he’s to wear the button-down shirt and dress trousers she made him purchase last year for the festival that he didn’t wear. Her voice is so full of reproach that he can’t help but feel a little bit guilty. That guilt is assuaged partially when she opens her purse and pulls out a pair of red suspenders, saying that he’ll wear these or face her wrath. He wonders just what else she keeps in her purse and decides it’s probably better if he doesn’t know. “The black dress shoes, Mike,” she says. “You shine them and you shine them good.”
They leave as furiously as they came, a storm of perfume and perfectly manicured nails, and he thinks, I’m conflicted. I’m conflicted because if you’re not real, it means you’re made up. And if you’re made up, how did they make someone like you? Or how did I make up someone like you? You are so much bigger than this world and I don’t know how someone like you can exist.
IT’S AFTERNOON when he sees Doc passing by on the sidewalk. He looks in and waves at Mike. Mike waves right back, a big smile on his face.
He thinks, Don’t come in here. Don’t come in here.
Doc doesn’t. He just keeps walking right on by.
Must be all those sick people keeping him busy, Mike thinks with a laugh.
HE DOES brisk business that day, and it keeps him busy. It’s still not enough to keep him from watching the clock, counting down the hours. There’s a thrum of excitement under his skin, and he catches himself remembering how Sean looked pressed up against the diner, lips slick with Mike’s spit, face a little raw from Mike’s beard. Mike is a gentleman most times, but even gentlemen like things best not spoken of in public. He’s recommending The Grapes of Wrath to Mary Joyce, but he’s thinking about Sean spread out in his bed, skin slick with sweat, muscles straining as Mike takes him apart piece by piece. Surely Mrs. Joyce would be scandalized by such thoughts, which is why he’s relieved she’s not a mind reader.
Or maybe she is, maybe all of them are, but he finds he just doesn’t care.
(There is a part of him, a rational part—a part slowly suffocating under the weight of everything—that says that if Mrs. Joyce isn’t real and if Mrs. Richardson isn’t real, if none of them are real, then Sean can’t be real either. He kills that voice before it can speak further, because of course Sean is real. Mike knows it. Mike feels it.)
(He thinks, Please, please, please, please.)
It’s a quarter past four and the shop is empty for the first time since that morning, and Mike allows himself to take a breath. He thinks he’ll probably have a straggler or two in the shop, but for the most part, it’s over. People will be either at home getting ready for tomorrow or at the park helping set up for the events. Most of the businesses close early the day before Harvest Festival. Mike thinks he might too, but Sean won’t be done until right at six, given that Walter’s prepping food for tomorrow. It’s the same thing every year. Walter—
(Oscar)
—will begin the day before and will be up with the chickens the next morning, cooking up a storm. The diner won’t be open for breakfast, and Walter will kick everyone out, saying he needs complete and utter solitude in order to create his culinary masterpieces.
He thinks, Maybe we could sleep in tomorrow. We’ll need it. I’ll make sure we’ll need it. I can’t wait to see the way—
He reacts. It’s fight or flight. He does the only thing he can.
Because she’s right there with a goddamn knife.
He kicks his foot out. Hits her right underneath her breasts with his expensive Italian loafer, one of a pair that she made fun of him for buying. You really need six-hundred-dollar shoes? she said. Jesus Christ, Greg, there are children starving in Alabama. Or Zimbabwe. I don’t know which. He laughed at that, even though it was an awful thing for someone to say. And it’s weird, because he can hear her talking about starving children, but he can also hear another voice saying, The black dress shoes, Mike. You shine them and you shine them good.
Something cracks in her chest and her eyes go wide,
and she just flies backward, much farther than he expects. Her back hits the railing and there’s another shriek of metal, of bolts ripping from their moorings. It’s not as loud as he’d have thought it’d be, something this catastrophic, this monumental. The knife falls to the floor of the balcony, and there’s a brief moment when their eyes meet, hers wide, his panicked, and then the railing gives way nine stories above the streets of Washington, DC. One moment she’s there, and then she’s gone.
She doesn’t scream on the way down. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s too fast, maybe she’s too shocked. Or maybe, just maybe, she mercifully blacked out in sheer horror and was unconscious before she hit the—
He breathes. And breathes. And breathes.
He says, “Jenny.”
He can’t pick himself up. Oh, he tries, sure. He pushes himself up to his knees, wincing at the glass digging into his palms, and tries to stand, but his legs have decided not to work, that they just can’t possibly support his weight at the moment. He’s on his hands and knees and he’s fucking crawling toward the edge of the balcony, part of the railing still hanging off, squeaking obnoxiously in the breeze, back and forth, back and forth. He can hear the traffic below him, the usual horns honking, trucks and taxis idling. But there’s more to it, there’s shouting and screams, and he thinks, I did that. I do believe I caused that.
He makes it to the edge of the railing and tells himself to just take a quick peek, just a little look. He’s not afraid of heights. He’s just afraid of what he’ll see.
He lies flat on his stomach, hands gripping the edge of the balcony. He pulls himself forward, stomach scraping against the ground. There’s glass there too, but he ignores it. He looks over the balcony to the scene below.
He sees people moving, people running toward his building. There’s the restaurant across the street, that annoying place that has live bands playing after midnight on the weekends. There’s a crowd gathering out the front of it, people with their hands over their mouths, talking to each other, pointing. Some have their phones out, recording, because that’s what people do in this day and age. They’re shocked and horrified, but they were there, and they have to show the world that they were there. He doesn’t like people like that, not very much.
He looks away from them.
Looks straight down.
She landed on top of a parked late-model SUV. The roof is dented in where she landed, the windshield shattered. She’s lying on her back, legs hanging off toward the passenger side of the SUV, one arm curled under at an angle so odd that it can’t be natural. He can see her face, but it’s too far away to make out the expression, but he’s certain her eyes are open, maybe even bulging from her head, because he can see the whites of them, like she’s just shocked something like this could happen, shocked that Mike could ever do such a thing. He almost expects her to get up, to shake her head in that way she does when she’s disappointed in him. She’ll say, I can’t believe you, Mike, I really can’t, and he’ll say, Yeah, I don’t even know what that was.
He waits.
She doesn’t get up.
She just lies there as people scurry around her.
He thinks, She came after me. Right? That’s why this happened. She came after me. She came after me. She came after—
He’s on his back, and the machines are screeching around him, and he’s trying to move, trying to do something, but he can barely breathe around the fucking thing shoved down his throat, and he’s choking, he’s choking, can’t anyone see he’s choking to death, and he hears, “We need you to calm down, we need you to calm down, okay? Someone get Malcolm in here right now! I don’t care where he is, just do it. That’s it, you’re fine, just breathe, Mr. Hu—”
He opens his eyes.
He’s in Bookworm. The sun is shining.
Mrs. Richardson is across the street, setting a pumpkin in the doorway of the hardware store.
It’s normal.
Everything about this is normal.
It’s just Amorea, after all.
Except it’s not normal.
He takes a step toward the window.
There are starlings.
Thousands of them.
All sitting on the edges of the rooftops of all the buildings across the street.
He doesn’t understand why everyone in Amorea isn’t pouring into the streets. The noise from the birds has to be echoing up and down Main Street.
He pushes open the door to Bookworm.
The birds are dead silent.
He can hear the ruffle of their feathers, yes. The way their feet scrape against brick and mortar.
But they do not sing.
People wave at Mike as they pass by him on the street.
“Great to see you, Mike!”
“Nice day, isn’t it, Mike?”
“We’ll be seeing you tomorrow, right, Mike?”
“You okay, Mike? You look a little pale!”
Yeah, he’s okay. He’s just seeing things, after all.
He’s not surprised then, when the birds lift off almost as one, the great cloud rising up and over Amorea. And yet, somehow, they still don’t sing. They still don’t call out. The beating of their feathers is furious and it sounds like rain that never reaches the ground, but he’s the only one who can see them. He’s the only one who can hear them. Even as their cloud begins to block out the sun and the shadows stretch, he’s the only one who knows they’re there.
“How’s Sean, Mike?”
“Should be a gasser tomorrow, eh, Mike?”
“Save me a dance, Mike, if it’s all right with Sean!”
“You ready to go, big guy?”
The starlings are gone.
The sky is turning pink and orange.
The sun is in the west.
He’s in front of the diner. Sean’s in front of him. He looks a little tired, a little worn, but in a good way, like’s he’s just put in a hard day’s work and is proud of it. He’s already divested himself of his apron and is wearing a white V-neck and jeans. His hair is sticking up, like he’s been running his fingers through it. His eyes are bright, and they’re trained on Mike.
Mike wants to say, I don’t know how I got here.
Mike wants to say, Did you see the birds?
Mike wants to say, Please tell me you saw the birds.
Mike wants to say, I can’t be the only one who sees them. Who sees all of this.
Mike wants to say, I need you to be real. Please, oh please, be real.
He doesn’t say any of that, though.
He says, “Yeah. Yeah, I’m ready.”
And he smiles.
The smile he gets in return is blinding.
XIX
EVEN WITH everything going on around him, even with the way he thinks he’s being pulled in a million different directions, even with the thoughts of kicking a woman to her death off a balcony, it starts between the two of them the moment they walk away from the diner.
At first it’s just a little thing. It’s the way Sean walks close to him so their shoulders bump together. It’s the way he curls his hand around Mike’s elbow and squeezes and squeezes, not enough to hurt. His hands aren’t as big as Mike’s, and Sean would never hurt him regardless. But it’s enough pressure to make sure Mike knows he’s there, like he knows Mike’s almost ready to fly apart. It keeps him grounded. It helps to clear the cloud in his head.
He looks over at Sean as they walk. Sean looks up at him. Their gazes crash and then skitter off, and they both chuckle, Mike’s face hot, Sean wearing his just-for-Mike smile. They’re indulgent, these moments, but Mike can’t find it in himself to give a damn.
It escalates when they get to Sean’s house. Sean’s at the door, getting ready to push it open, and he just happens to glance over his shoulder back at Mike. There’s a fire in his eyes, something burning that Mike’s only seen in passing before. They’ve taken this slow, so goddamn slow, and that’s about to end.
Mike can’t stop the growl t
hat rumbles in his chest and throat. He’s right behind Sean then, pressing up against his back. And Sean’s hand is on the doorknob, but he’s not pushing the door open yet. He’s just standing there, chest heaving. He tilts his head back, letting it rest on Mike’s shoulder. Mike watches as he swallows thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. His eyes are closed, his lips parted. There’s a quick flash of his tongue as he wets his lips and Mike drags his gaze down the long column of Sean’s throat, the skin pale. He lets himself have just a moment, because any longer will ensure he takes Sean where he stands.
He bends his head, letting his lips trail against the side of Sean’s neck. He takes his time, sure of himself, at least in this. Probably only in this. He moves his mouth up to Sean’s ear and just breathes into it. Then, “Open the door, Sean.”
Sean shudders against him but does as he asks. It takes him a moment to walk through the door, but he goes.
Mike follows.
They don’t speak, but Sean’s moving slowly, glancing over his shoulder again and again like he’s trying to make sure Mike’s really there. That Mike’s really following him. Every time he looks back, Mike looks back at him, and there’s a little stutter to Sean’s step. He keeps flexing his hands at his sides, like he wants to reach for something but is holding himself back. Mike’s okay with that for now. He’s doing the same thing.
He thinks maybe he should wait in the den. Or the kitchen.
He follows Sean to the bedroom. Sean goes to his closet and stands at the door, leaning against the frame, arms crossed over his chest. Then Sean switches on a light and blushes, averting his eyes.
“Should just take me a little bit, okay? Just gotta pack some stuff. Are you sure you want me to stay with you? I don’t have to. I don’t want to impose. I know how you can get sometimes, Mike. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I don’t want—”
“Sean.”
Sean nods, blushing and rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, big guy?”
Mike takes a step toward him. Sean looks up, eyes wide. He tells himself to just do it now, just take him here, but he’s got plans. He’s got plans for tonight, and he needs this to go a certain way. The way he intended. It’s control, and he needs that right now. Everything else is spiraling, but this? This is his.