Dandelion Wine

Table of Contents

TWO BOYS. ONE SECRET. A BROTHERHOOD SHATTERED.
WILL THE TRUTH SET THEM FREE?

Author’s Note: I wrote this short novel in college in 1979 for an English creative writing course (language and sex included). I wanted so badly to write fiction around Starsky and Hutch, but I didn’t think I had the right to use someone else’s characters. So I created my own characters—using the ESSENCE of who I believed our boys to be—and put them into a story completely foreign to the stage from the show (to keep from being found out by my writing instructor).

I earned three A+ grades for the story, and was told by the professor (a commercially published author himself) that I should try to sell it because it was both a ‘page-turner’ and a ‘unique premise,’ particularly, he said, regarding the unprecedented bond between the two (straight) men. I didn’t have the courage to tell him, even after the semester ended, that I’d stolen the relationship from a television series that had ended in May of that year.

Fast forward a few more years and I updated the digital details in the story (to computers, etc.) before allowing another commercially published writer to read it (he, the author of 1995’s K-PAX, the first in a novel series eventually produced as a major motion film starring Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey). My acquaintance, too, encouraged me to sell it. I remember asking him what genre I should pursue for the story (crime? mystery? psychology?) and he blinked, shrugged as if it should have been obvious to me, and said, “Why, romance, of course.”

I never did try to sell it. I’ve never been interested in publishing so much as I’m interested in writing. But it would be more than a decade before I would meet Flamingo and she’d drop the bombshell on me that there was this thing called Starsky and Hutch fan fiction—and permission was granted me to never hide behind other-named characters in other-types of stories in order to enjoy Starsky and Hutch as I see them. I chose Dandelion as my pen name from the title of this INSPIRED BY story—and the rest is history: Dandelion (the author) was born (and long before she discovered slash).

[If you read my stories, you may recognize the original version of Dr. Jade, here under the name Dr. Kamm.]

So, without further adieu…

* * *

PROLOGUE

“Are you obsessed with Simon because he threatened to kill you? Are you hung up on someone who would do you harm, is that it? Is that why you’re here?” Dr. Robert Kamm hadn’t gotten a single answer from his new patient, so he threw several questions at him at once to provoke him instead—but that didn’t work, either.

Michael heard the repressed frustration in the doctor’s voice and silently chastised himself for not being more articulate about why he’d sought Kamm’s help. He leaned, unmoved, against the window frame, and fixed his gaze on the sidewalk below. From the third story window he watched a robin search the lush green grass at the base of a tree for food. After a minute, and no longer badgered by questions, he felt too drained to speak, so he lifted his eyes and scanned the horizon. The sky was crisp blue and pristinely clear, as if the past winter had cleansed it so thoroughly it would take centuries to muddy its canvas again.

“The sunshine makes it look not so cold out there,” he finally commented to the doctor, mostly to kill the silence in the room. “Is it true Denver had a rougher winter than usual?”

When Kamm purposely didn’t respond, Michael turned around and pressed his back to the wall to look at him. He saw Kamm the way he’d last noticed him: he sat comfortably behind his big desk, with his chin still propped in his hand, and a keen, maybe even a wary, eye on his newest patient. Michael thought Kamm looked intrigued, though, too. Perhaps he was.

“Maybe you like my company,” Kamm eventually remarked when he realized he had the young man’s attention. He leaned back in his chair, as relaxed as he felt. His eyes didn’t leave Michael’s. “Feel a little lonely here in a part of the country where there are more cows than people? Or maybe you’d like to talk about why you’ve stopped by, so I won’t have to guess any longer and waste your time.” He returned to his forward position and tapped the desktop with a pen to express his need for answers. “You said a friend of yours threatened to kill you. I assume you meant Simon and you haven’t corrected me—”

“I have no other friends,” Michael quietly admitted. “If I say a friend did anything, I’m talking about Simon.”

“But he was more than a friend, wasn’t he?”

It was Michael’s turn to be intrigued. “More than a friend, in what way?”

“A boyfriend,” Kamm guessed.

Michael chuckled at the notion, but only sadly. “Why would you even think that? Because I’m ‘hung up’ on him?”

“Partly.”

“What’s the other part?”

“You’re a single young man, alone here in Colorado, but thinking about some guy.”

It was warmer where Michael stood near the wall furnace. The hardwood floors and wooden bookcases and cabinets of the office gave him a nature vibe, and one he liked. He hadn’t been in Denver long, having spent nearly the past year in a rented cabin outside Estes Park as a means of escape from the pain of his loss, but he’d returned to the city of his roots in the hope he’d have more success there. He’d found a comfortable apartment, furnished it with the minimum living requirements, and planned to stay—at least, for a while. Hiring Robert Kamm was simply an impulse. He didn’t know how many sessions he’d purchase, but he was willing to spend a few months’ worth so he could at least say he tried. He turned his gaze to the outside again, to where it was cold and brisk, to the fading of an unusually bitter Colorado winter—and he loved the view.

“My exact words were that he wanted to kill me,” he corrected the doctor, barely audibly, “he didn’t just threaten to. Still, I should have said he tried to kill me, made the effort, I mean.” He looked at Kamm again. The doctor was old enough to be his father, but his brown eyes seemed more alive. Actually, upon reflection, Kamm might indeed be a grandfather; he had a kind of sage patience, the sort that came only with age, and he looked comfortable with himself, maybe even consoled by life’s trials instead of terrified by them. Michael envied him.

And such a perfect picture, he mused: the consummate professional at his cluttered desk surrounded by equally cluttered bookcases. The educated man. Michael framed an image in his mind as he studied the doctor and his tools of the trade.

Kamm distracted him from his composition. “My plan is working then,” he noted with humor.

“What plan?”

“To misread you so you’ll feel a need to clarify—and actually talk to me.”

Michael bit the inside of his cheek, amused by the doctor’s effort.

Kamm reworded his question. “And just how did Simon try to kill you?”

Michael searched his memory, but was so numbed by the collage of jumbled images he found there that he couldn’t answer. More and more lately, things just didn’t seem as clear to him as they had in the past, and trying to remember them only gave him headaches. Or maybe they had never been clear. He stared at the doctor in silence.

Kamm shook his head, expressed his borderline amusement with a slight smile, and posed his original question as if it hadn’t been heard the first time. “Are you obsessed with Simon because he wanted—tried—to kill you or were you already consumed by thoughts of him long before he tried? Are you stuck on someone who would want to hurt you, is that the problem, Michael? Or stuck on him, period? Is that what you’ve hired me to help you figure out—or overcome? Or both?”

Michael dryly imagined that no one could erase his decade-long obsession with Simon; no doctor had such talent. But despite the impossibility, he had still sought this man’s help. He looked away from Kamm to stare at the sky a while longer, wordlessly, and was disappointed in himself for having made the effort.

“Talk to me, Michael,” Kamm firmly encouraged him. “You’re not paying me to watch you watch the sunshine. Tell me something. Tell me anything. Tell me how you make your living.”

The question was safe. Michael first thought he’d reply sarcastically, but then decided to be serious. It was time. He sank his hands into his pants pockets and continued to look outside as he answered. “I take pictures.”

“Of?”

He didn’t realize Kamm wanted him to be specific. “Of anything that attracts my eye. Offbeat stuff, mostly. But it’s my animal stuff that gets all the attention.”

“I take it you sell your pictures?”

“I do.” He realized all over again how fortunate he was to get paid for what he loved most. “I sell stock photography, but occasionally I land something big, you know, like a magazine cover or a poster.”

Kamm was impressed. “It pays the bills?”

“Most of them. Whatever I couldn’t pay, Simon would.”

“And what did he do for a living?”

Michael turned around again and settled against the wall at his back. There would be no avoiding Kamm’s questions about Simon, so he surrendered to answering them. “He ‘did’ what he still does. He sells songs.”

“Songs.”

“You know, music. Things he writes with a piano or a guitar.”

“I take it he’s better at selling songs than you are at selling pictures?”

Michael understood how Kamm had come to that conclusion, but despite the fact that Simon often gave Michael the money he needed, the truth was still undeniable; Simon was just that good. “He’s more charming than I am, too.”

Kamm pressed deeper. “In a boyfriend kind of way?”

Michael was instantly frustrated. “Why do you want to go there?”

“Because you didn’t answer me the first time I asked.”

“I’m tired of that question,” he sighed.

“I’ve only asked it one other time.”

“I’m tired of it from everybody.”

Kamm’s patient definitely had his attention then. He momentarily didn’t know what to ask next. “Why do you think people think that about you and him?”

Michael shrugged. He studied the floor boards and their patterns for a minute. Then he looked at Kamm and said, “Because I spent so much time with him and because I was close to him and, I guess, because I’m always thinking about him.”

“Always?”

It was, admittedly, an easier question than the direct ‘boyfriend’ one, and it enabled him to answer. “A better question,” he sarcastically replied, “would be: When am I not thinking about him?” It was actually a rhetorical question, but just the same it didn’t prevent the doctor’s inquiry.

“So when aren’t you?”

Michael stepped to the window again, stared at the ground outside, and reflected into his life. “I can remember one time in the past eleven years when I wasn’t thinking about Simon, when I wasn’t living every single moment of my pathetic life around his existence.”

“And when was that?”

“When I was fucking his wife.”

He heard Kamm exhale, and knew he’d shared the unforgivable, the crass, and packaged in added sarcasm, no less. The robin on the grassy ground momentarily caught his attention. He watched it hop energetically to the curb before it disappeared behind a car tire.

After a lengthy silence, Kamm’s voice broke the stillness. “Why are you so sarcastic?”

Michael lowered his eyes to the windowsill to contemplate the why. He shrugged one shoulder. “It protects me from the guilt I feel, I guess.”

“That’s a fair assessment. So when you told me Simon tried to kill you, you meant that literally. He actually, physically, tried to kill you, apparently for betraying him.”

Michael pushed at the window’s casing in a failed effort to subdue his guilt when the painful memory of Simon’s violence broke through his earlier guard. The impression of that brutally physical exchange wounded his pride and annihilated his dignity all over again. “And he would have been justified had he succeeded,” he finally admitted.

“Which is why you’ve come to a shrink instead of the police for rescue.”

Michael faced Kamm and locked eyes with him as he searched for a way to explain it to the elder with the least amount of words he could use. In the end, all he could find was, “Right.”

Kamm clasped his fingers behind his head and momentarily pursed his lips. “Have you paid your debt for what you’ve done, or do you feel you owe him more?”

“I’ll always owe him. What I want is to stop …” He couldn’t finish his sentence, but it was just the thing Kamm wanted to explore.

“You want to stop what? Wanting his forgiveness?”

“I want to stop …” He found more appropriate words than Kamm’s, “wanting him.” He was certain the emptiness Simon’s loss had left in his life would eventually destroy him completely. “I want to stop wanting him,” he repeated in a low voice, mostly to hear himself.

“I trust he’s no longer a friend of yours.”

“No.”

“So you want to stop wanting someone whose friendship you’ve already severed.”

“Like that.”

“I’ll ask you again: Were you and he lovers?”

He appreciated the doctor’s candid question that time; it sounded empty of any judgmental tone. “No,” he answered, “though, short of the sex we never had, maybe we were. Is there such a thing as sexless lovers?”

“Did you want sex with him?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so? Meaning maybe you did?”

“I don’t think I did.”

“But you’re not certain.”

“Maybe I did and just don’t know I did. But I don’t think I ever did.” He couldn’t remember ever having such a thought.

“Is Simon an attractive man?”

“Very.” Michael could vividly see Simon in his mind then: the man’s kind face, his playfulness, and his sensuality. “But not in a conventional way.”

“Meaning?”

“His appeal lies in his manner, you might say. You wouldn’t necessarily look at him and think, ‘Nice looking guy.’ But if you studied him for any length of time, say, a few minutes, you’d find yourself drawn in by his arresting charm—and even if you never spoke to him, you’d be intrigued. There’s just this way about him. I can’t explain it.”

“I think you just did. Were you attracted to him?”

“As anyone would be, because he’s the way he is.”

“And how else is he?”

Michael relied on his initial impression of Simon, eleven years earlier. “Seemingly unaffected—even though he’s not—in a way you wish you yourself could be. But was I—or, rather, am I—attracted to him as I’d be attracted to a woman? No. I haven’t ever thought he might be good in bed, if that’s what you mean. But I am drawn to him, to his charismatic and self-assured way.”

“Are you roughly the same age?”

“He’s four months younger than I am.”

“Both in your early 20s?”

“Closing in on 25 this year.”

“And would you say you’re an attractive man?”

Michael had always been comfortable with his look, but never saw himself as handsome, nor anywhere near as charming and intriguing as Simon, who had less of a conventional appearance than he did. He presented himself by removing his hands from his pockets and opening his arms. “What do you think, doc?” he quipped.

Kamm studied him a moment. Michael was tall with a slender, healthy, well-proportioned build; he had translucently blonde hair and strikingly blue eyes, and he sported a warm, inviting, clean-shaven face. “I would look at you and think, ‘Nice looking guy,’” Kamm admitted.

“So, do you want sex with me?”

Kamm chuckled. “Hardly, but I get your point. So define the nature of your friendship with Simon; let’s find out where the ‘catch’ lies.”

Michael abandoned the idea for labels due to his resentment of them and explored a description instead. “We met when we were about fourteen, fifteen, somewhere in there. We were comrades,” he said, still thinking aloud. “Blood brothers. Inseparable. We were lost without each other and still are. I am, anyway,” he said on second thought. He then speculated, silently. Unrequited lovers. He wondered if that would be the conclusion the doctor would reach, but that didn’t explain his sexual appetite for women. And when he remembered the pain he and Simon had caused each other, he wasn’t certain any longer that he wanted the man at all in his life on any level or for any reason. “Maybe I just need him,” he supposed. “Maybe there’s no want in there.”

“And why would you need him?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been taking care of myself a long time. My needing him is just the way it is, I guess, the way it’s always been.”

“But for no reason.”

“None I can think of. Perhaps you’ll come up with something,” he added dryly.

“You say now you need him, always have. I can’t help you stop wanting him if it’s needing him you feel. Do we rule out wanting him?”

Michael looked sharply at the doctor when he realized he’d changed his purpose without knowing it. He then explored it openly. “Wanting him? Wanting his friendship, his brotherhood? Hell, yeah, I want him. Like that. Or wanting him sexually? No, not sexually. I don’t think so, anyway. But I suppose I want him this badly because I also need him.”

“Is this want-need you have for him a natural thing, in your mind?”

“It’s abnormal.”

“Because it’s obsessive or—”

“No.”

“—because he’s a man?”

“Because he’s a man.” Michael was certain of it. It wasn’t natural for him to be needy for a man, especially to the degree he was needy for Simon.

“Would this want-need you feel be abnormal if you felt it for a woman?”

He thought a moment. “If I felt obsessive love for a woman, that’d be pathetic, but not abnormal, no.”

“So men don’t feel obsessive love for other men.”

“No. They don’t. They shouldn’t, anyway. Well, not straight men. And I’ve been with a few women and enjoyed it very much, thank you. Maybe I’m confused; maybe I go both ways. Hell, I don’t know.” He hugged himself tighter, felt his sweater pull, and looked at Kamm for a bail-out.

Kamm forced a smile at him. “So now the issue is that you love Simon.” It wasn’t a question.

“Did I say I love him?”

“We talked about ‘want’; then you used the word ‘need,’ and now ‘love’—in its obsessive form. Maybe I shouldn’t assume. Let me ask it instead. Do you love Simon?”

Michael answered impulsively. “Love. Want. Need. It’s all wrapped up together; it’s all what I feel for him.”

“Did he love-want-need you?”

Michael ran his fingers through his hair and bent over for a moment. He felt frustrated and cornered. After eleven years he thought he should have those answers without having to think about them first. He opted not to examine his memory. Following his instinct and his impulse, he replied, “Yes.”

Kamm was relieved to finally get somewhere with his patient. He wanted him to know what he’d learned. “So here are two men who love-want-need each other, but are not lovers, at least not in the sexual sense; one of them, for some reason—some reason perhaps you’ll eventually share with me—betrays the other by having an affair with his wife, almost loses his life over it, and now, despite everything that’s gone down between them, still needs to find a way to stop loving-wanting-needing this other man. Do I understand your dilemma, Michael?”

Michael was relieved by the summary. “You’ve got it, doc. The question is whether you can help me do anything about it.”

Kamm patiently studied Michael while he examined whether he could. “It depends on how far you’ll allow me to visit the why—or the whys—you love-want-need this man in the first place,” he argued, “and you seem reluctant to tell me anything without my concerted prying.”

The memories Kamm threatened him to relive caused Michael to swallow, abruptly and hard, and his heart to race. He bit the inside of his cheek to repress his inexplicable urge to scream, and stared at the doctor. Then he rescued himself with nervous laughter and a question of his own. “So you don’t have some magical, stop-thinking-about-Simon pill you could prescribe, huh?”

Kamm ignored Michael’s evasiveness. “Tell me this much: Are there ‘family’ secrets that go back more than a decade, secrets that only you and he share?”

Michael straightened. He could continue to keep them to himself, he thought, or he could begin his recovery and answer with the truth. “Yes,” he confessed. “At least from nine years ago.” And he felt enormously relieved when the sky didn’t fall upon his admittance of such a thing.

Kamm drew in a breath. “Then let’s say we bypass the pill for something more effective, and you begin by telling me what first attracted you to Simon all those years ago when you were only boys.”

* * *

BROTHERS ALL THE WAY

“Hey, Mike, mind if I have a look?”

Michael was startled by the boy’s unexpected question and fired a blank stare at him. He’d seen the student in the photo classroom after school on a number of occasions in recent days. The youth and a few of his friends would gather around a desk to study and discuss pictures they’d taken, but he and Michael had never spoken—at least, not till that moment. The boy was so much more comfortable in a crowd, which made Michael feel uninvited and nervous because of it. Yet there the kid was then, engaging him in a dialogue, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“Those pictures,” the boy clarified, throwing his chin toward Michael’s desktop, “would you mind if I had a look at them?”

Michael’s attention snapped to the photo album he had open before him. Images he’d seen hundreds of times, composed, cropped, and carefully organized, flooded his visual senses and helped to bury his initial apprehension in their wake. “Sure,” he said. He turned the album toward the student and gestured to him to help himself.

The boy, who Michael decided was his own age, pulled a desk closer, sat in its chair, and leaned forward. “I’m Simon Nelson,” he introduced himself—and in a warmer tone of voice than Michael would have expected from him. “You’re the next Ansel Adams, I hear,” Simon said with a laugh. “Whoever Ansel Adams is.”

Michael chuckled; he knew who Ansel Adams was. “Except Adams shot landscapes of fantastic places I’ll probably never see in person,” he solemnly said.

They were alone in the room of empty chairs and desks in disorganized rows; the school day had ended and only the two of them had remained behind after the frenzied exit of their classmates. The Photo Expressions course was Michael’s favorite part of the day and he hated to leave the room. His lengthy stays were welcome; the craft was something at which he was highly gifted, and both his parents and his teachers were impressed by the art he’d mastered. They encouraged him to produce a school exhibit, and he had seriously considered it when Simon broke through his thoughts. He leaned back in his chair, locked his fingers behind his head, and studied Simon more closely as his new acquaintance slowly perused the thick portfolio of images.

Simon’s slightly chiseled jaw, his comfortably set lips, his aesthetically appealing profile, began to take a composed shape in Michael’s mind. Black hair and brows framed Simon’s face with its dark eyes, often with a bit of squint to them; a black-and-white finish would be his choice for a portrait, Michael decided. Simon was dressed in a black tee-shirt under a deep-blue jeans jacket; he wore a non-descript leather band tied around his wrist. Michael wondered how Simon’s expression might appear if a smile emerged, how it would change the lines on his face, whether it would soften the furrow in his brow, but he didn’t expect to see one. The boy was quite serious.

Simon unexpectedly lifted his eyes to Michael’s and startled him a second time—because the young man’s expression seemed to beg desperately for the answer to an unheard, unspoken question. It was a look of both sheer bewilderment and excitement. Michael’s lips involuntarily parted when the dark, searching eyes met his, and he had to consciously close his mouth and swallow his rush of apprehension. He waited for Simon to speak, despite his urge to ask, “What?” for maybe he’d misread the urgency on that face.

Simon’s expression abruptly softened. “This guy is your dad, maybe?” Perhaps he’d sensed Michael’s suspicion of an emotion he wished to hide and hoped to further mask it with small talk. “I’m guessing this one’s your little sister … and this your mom. So that’s your dad?” He pointed again to focus Michael’s attention on the picture and off himself.

Michael looked at the album. A portrait of his father filled the page, a black-and-white photo he’d taken almost a year earlier, a candid shot, perfectly cropped, close up, and one that captured what he thought was the essence of the man. “Yeah, that’s my dad.” If only he’d had his camera in his hands; he could have shot Simon’s face then, his inexplicable alarmed expression, despite how fleeting it was, and immortalized it forever. The kid who seemed so comfortable in a crowd had been momentarily lost.

Michael relaxed—he had nothing to fear from Simon. And never again would he feel socially inadequate in his presence. Comparing the two of them, in that passing moment, Michael was the stronger one. “What do you think of it?” he asked him to press him about the photograph.

“I’d guess you’re the Ansel Adams of portraits,” Simon observed. “And your dad seems …” He lowered his head and didn’t finish his sentence.

Michael waited, but not long. “Old? My dad is old?”

“Cool,” Simon corrected him. He raised his head and looked at Michael. “Like he’s got it all together, ya know?”

“He does look that way, doesn’t he?” Michael agreed, upon reflection. If he stepped back far enough, he could see his father objectively, the schooling behind those eyes, his worldliness, even his kindness.

“He’s a good guy,” Simon further imagined, but he seemed to want confirmation, too.

“I’d say so, yeah.”

“What’s he do?”

“He’s a professor,” Michael answered, more interested in why Simon was curious than he was in the conversation’s details. But he obliged with answers to Simon’s questions. “He teaches college biology. We moved out here from Colorado about two years ago and he works at UCLA.”

Simon studied the picture a little longer in private contemplation. “And your mother?”

“She’s a dance teacher.”

“No wonder you’re this talented,” Simon mumbled. He abandoned dialogue then for closer study of the immortalized faces.

Michael held his breath. He watched Simon slowly turn the pages and study every photograph as if each one were a reflection of his own life and not Michael’s. Michael took the opportunity to sweep his eyes over Simon’s posture and quickly found the aesthetic angle he sought. It lay in the way Simon leaned forward on the desk, how his legs straddled the chair, right down to the style of his black leather shoes and the color of his worn blue jeans against the wood grain veneer of the furniture. In the right light, with just the perfect background texture, Michael knew he had his next portrait. There was something behind those dark eyes, something foreboding, and he was certain it was recordable. He sought more intimacy with Simon. “And what about you? What do your folks do?”

Simon’s stare didn’t leave the pictures when he answered in a disinterested tone. “My mom’s your basic housewife, I guess. My dad … he … he’s …” He was interrupted by an unexpected image. He abruptly dropped his forehead into his palm and shielded most of his face from Michael. It was then Michael realized Simon had stumbled across the pictures of the pig factory.

He himself could still hear the noise from the late morning he’d shot inside the warehouse, the incessant crying the packed animals made, and he could still smell the stench they emitted, feel the oppressive heat of their bodies, and the weight of their terminal confinement on his conscience. He wondered if such details were ever conveyed in the images, and waited for Simon’s verbal reaction—if it would ever come.

“Is this how they do things in Colorado?” Simon finally asked, with sarcasm. He didn’t look up for the answer.

“That’s the way they do things everywhere,” Michael corrected him. “I took those in a factory north of L.A. when my parents visited some friends up that way. It’s a small place, really, that hog farm. They’re six to ten times as big in the Midwest.”

Simon whispered “Jesus” under his breath and slowly turned another page to find more pig factory pictures. “Tell me why they’re penned like that, all crammed in there like dead fish.”

“The more they can cram into a small space, the more money they make.” He keenly watched Simon and tried to read what motivated his lengthy interest in the pigs, but he couldn’t fully see Simon’s face so his attempt was futile.

Simon finally sat back in his chair and closed the photo album in disgust. He didn’t finish looking at the portfolio. He rubbed his face with both hands and exhaled, long. “Is it just me, Mike, or is the whole world fucked up?” He didn’t expect an answer. He glanced past Michael momentarily before he locked on his eyes. “Do you eat bacon?” he asked, sounding accusatory.

Michael didn’t feel defensive; he didn’t need to. “Hell, no, man.”

Simon thought a moment, surprised by the answer, as if he’d hoped for a different one, one that would have given him a valid excuse to vent his anger. “Does your dad eat bacon?”

“No.”

“Your family is vegetarian?”

“Yeah.”

“How long you all been like that?”

Michael chuckled at Simon’s choice of words. “My whole life. My parents raised me and my sister ‘like that’ from the time we were born.”

“So you’ve never had bacon?”

“Or ham or pork chops. Or cows or chickens or any other animal.”

Simon silently studied him.

Michael was on the receiving end again and didn’t like it. Simon could leave the classroom and he might never run into him elsewhere on the school grounds. He attempted to make friends another way. “So, hey, it’s Michael, not Mike, but how did you know my name in the first place?” He realized he hadn’t shared it.

Simon looked at him and feigned puzzlement about why his newly-found comrade was clueless. “You’re the guy who took those pictures,” he said, and he nodded toward the classroom’s walls where many of Michael’s images were displayed. “Everyone knows who you are.”

Michael raised an impressed eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware of that. I mean, I see them look at the pictures, but I didn’t know they knew who did them.”

“We want to be like you. I’m taking Johnson’s Basic Darkroom Technique. You know: ‘How to destroy a roll of film in three easy steps,’ and I’m passing with flying colors. I see your stuff and realize this ain’t my thing, you know, so why am I wasting my time? And who uses a darkroom anymore anyway? Do you?”

Michael laughed at the idea. “A Mac,” he said.

Simon threw out his hands. “Well, there you go.”

“So what is your thing?” He was certain his new friend had a passion; anyone who could see talent had to know it himself.

Simon sized up what might be Michael’s reaction to an unusual request before he asked it. “If you’re interested,” he said, “you could give me copies of some of your pictures and I’ll make a short documentary for you—with an original score. How’s that? I’ll do something with those pig pictures, if you want.”

“A filmmaker,” Michael guessed. The concept intrigued him. He had considered the career himself.

“I like the music part of it better,” Simon said, “but some say my lyrics are too dark, too heavy, especially for, you know, someone our age, so I’d like to try writing music to pictures instead. And you’ve got some dark and heavy ones in there; we’d both be happy. What do ya say?”

Michael pushed the album toward him. “Take it with you, if you want.” It was the perfect way to see Simon again, but next time he’d have his camera in his hands and not in his locker.

Simon rose to leave the room and picked up Michael’s portfolio. “Next time bring it on a disc,” he joked. Then he added, “Your dad looks like a good guy.” He turned toward the door. “I’d like to meet him sometime.”

That wasn’t unusual. Michael’s father was adored by his students and they often spent time with him outside the class.

“And what about yours?” Michael shot at him as Simon closed in on the doorway; he hoped to stall him long enough for more personal conversation. “Tell me something about your dad.”

Simon faced Michael as he took the knob in his hand. “What can I say?” He searched the air for an elusive answer and then settled on one. Before he opened the door and left the room, he looked Michael squarely in the eye and said, “He’s a pig-eater.”

* * *

“Was it the pig factory,” Kamm asked, “or your father, do you suppose, that captivated him most?” He himself then scanned Michael’s most recent portfolio, open across his knees.

Michael hung his leg over the chair arm to get comfortable. He was more at ease in the doctor’s office that second time, but only after he decided Kamm wasn’t going to crucify him for his private disclosures. Kamm had offered to see him weekly, at a specified time, but Michael wanted a more frequent schedule, so he asked if they could meet twice or sometimes three times a week; he didn’t have anything else to do in Denver, and having made the decision to seek professional help gave him a sense of urgency. Kamm accepted Michael’s request and promised to squeeze in the extra hours at the end of his usual workday on Tuesdays, and during lunch on Wednesdays, if Michael didn’t mind the back-to-back sessions. Michael could already tell the frequent visits would enable him to decipher sooner whether the therapy would be effective.

He contemplated Kamm’s question to which of his photographs Simon had been most drawn. He had taken thousands of images since that childhood photo album, so there was a lot to remember. He didn’t feel he hid anything from Kamm, but he thought the doctor might think he did, so he allowed his insights to flow more freely just to prove his elder wrong. “I think the pictures of my dad and the pig factory affected Simon equally, but for different reasons,” he said.

“But it was the ones of the pig factory that he used in the music video, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Does he like animals?”

“He identified with them.”

Kamm set the photo album on his desk and browsed its pictures from there. “In what way?” he casually asked.

Michael carefully chose his words. “He often felt helpless—as they are,” he said. He hoped the doctor wouldn’t pursue it, but knew—too late—it was just the fodder Kamm wanted.

On cue, the doctor closed the album, picked up his pencil and tapped his desktop with its eraser, a little habit Michael noted he had while he contemplated his next line of questions. “Simon wasn’t a happy kid?”

Michael liked to talk about Simon; it kept him from having to scrutinize himself, but he’d have to proceed with caution. Simon’s personal life wasn’t anyone’s business. “He wasn’t all that happy,” he admitted. But then he remembered the woods and the dandelion meadow, and added, “Except when he was …” He interrupted himself; the answer could be misread, he decided, so he didn’t end the sentence. So much for free-flowing insights.

The doctor finished it for him. “Except when he was with you.”

The accuracy of Kamm’s intuition made Michael abruptly laugh and forced his surrender. “Yeah, except when he was with me. When we’d hang together, he seemed like a relatively happy kid. And, for the record, so was I.”

Kamm flashed a touché expression. “So you boys were happy when you were together, and when you weren’t? You were both unhappy, or just him?”

“No, not like that.” He shifted in his chair to get more comfortable as he sought a way to explain it. “Simon felt helpless in the world and didn’t like the feeling. I was a loner, relatively, but didn’t mind it. I also didn’t mind his company; there was something about him from the beginning that gave me a sense of belonging somewhere.”

“His loneliness was alleviated when he was with you and the compliment boosted your ego, made you feel all the more comfortable in your own skin.”

“Exactly. So, naturally, when we were together, he liked the not-being-alone feeling and I enjoyed the ‘vote of confidence.’”

“But Simon, you said, was comfortable in any crowd. Didn’t he have other friends? Did he feel as happy when he was with them, too, or was his friendship with you somehow special?”

There wasn’t any doubt in Michael’s mind. “It became special.”

“To both of you, not just to you?”

“Yeah. To both of us.”

“And how did it become so?”

Michael scanned the bookshelves behind the doctor’s desk. There were many years to retrace, as many memories to relive, it seemed, as there were books in Kamm’s collection. He got sidetracked on purpose. “Have you really read all that shit?” He left his chair and crossed the floor to the doctor’s library so he could see the titles more closely.

“Most of it.”

“Did it teach you anything of any significance?”

“Most of what I’ve learned about human nature I’ve learned from living, from life, from listening to others.”

“You get something out of that, do you?”

“Probably the same thing you get out of watching people and taking pictures. Human behavior is quite fascinating, I’m sure you agree. I can feed my interest in the human condition and help people along the way at the same time.”

Michael looked at Kamm, impressed. “That actually sounds noble, doc.”

Kamm shrugged away the praise. “As I said, I get something out of it. And I can’t always help everyone.”

Michael laughed, but sadly. “Some of us are beyond reach. Am I one of those?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“People who want to help themselves usually find a way to do just that.”

“That’s promising.”

“Did you want to talk about my profession because you’re having difficulty talking about Simon?”

Michael wandered back to his chair and stood a moment with his back to the doctor. “No,” he finally said, and then he sat down. “I guess I was just subconsciously wondering what Simon’s childhood has to do with my inability to let him go—even though he’s made it plain to me that’s what he wants.” He rubbed the small, raised scar on his cheek and it triggered his last memory of Simon in its feel.

“I’m not interested in what he wants,” Kamm clarified, and not unkindly. “But I am interested in where and how this ‘special’ friendship got started because it is related to how you feel about him today.”

Fair enough, Michael thought. He revisited those early years and shared his initial memories with the doctor. “Our friendship became special, I think, because we enabled each other to pursue the things that gave us a sense of ourselves. Simon never once asked me to put down my camera, even though I had it trained on him a lot of the time. He was a natural subject, casual, himself, in front of the lens. Maybe he liked the attention, I don’t know. He just never fought it. And with his unusual look and way about him, I got enough award-winning pictures to hold an exhibit at the school that year. That show alone made me feel pretty important.”

“Special?”

“That, too.”

Kamm smiled. He liked Michael’s story, seemed fond of it; the evidence was there in his paternal gaze and the way he listened, intently, as if his interest was more than professional. When there was a quiet pause, Kamm asked, “And what made your friendship special for him?”

“I encouraged him to get back into writing lyrics to his music, to not be restrained by the opinions of others. It upset him when some people called his work ‘dark’ and ‘heavy’ and suggested that he spend his time on more positive things. So what? I told him. It was him, his soul, and he shouldn’t hide or alter it simply because it was over the heads of most of the people around him. He ended up taking my advice.”

Michael was suddenly fond of the memories himself. Images of Simon opening his soul swam pleasantly in his mind. He verbalized them for the doctor. “It got to where he’d come to class with his guitar—though he was also really good on a keyboard—and sit in a corner, on a beanbag chair, and play. And the students would read or take a test while he played, or sit with him on the floor there in the room, and not even the teacher would ask him to stop.”

* * *

“You know this is your calling in life,” Michael told Simon one early spring morning when they were fifteen. “This gift you have is going to take you places.”

“Is it?” Simon asked. He shrugged away Michael’s prediction in the hope he’d hear more. At least, that’s how Michael described Simon’s resistance to praise.

They had stopped on a foot bridge that overlooked a swift-flowing creek. The snows had melted and the runoff was furious over the rocky bed below. By then, they’d hiked for nearly an hour while they talked about aviation and sports and music, before they stopped to rest.

Michael framed the canyon in his viewfinder and released the camera’s shutter. Then he reframed and shot another. “You can interrupt a class without any consequences,” he said, “yet I’ve been told to put this thing away a number of times—or else.” He held up his camera.

Simon didn’t look. He rested his chin on his forearms, crossed on the bridge rail, and stared into the frothy stream below. Instead, he said, “Listening to music is just their excuse not to teach class.”

“Oh, I see. It’s a laziness thing.”

Simon turned his gaze up the canyon, but was wordless.

“Maybe you’re right,” Michael facetiously agreed. “Like today, Mr. Johnson actually put his feet on his desk and closed his eyes. And there I was, thinking he was enjoying it, but all he was doing was taking a break from the hard work of assigning yet another chapter in our history book.”

Simon turned his head and looked at Michael. He was surprised to learn that Mr. Johnson had actually done as Michael had described. Then he responded to his friend’s sarcasm by punching him in the shoulder. “But what do you suppose he thought about my lyrics?”

“Dark. Heavy. For sure.”

Simon grunted and looked back into the canyon. “Well, if he thinks what he’s heard so far is dark and heavy, all the more reason never to share the stuff no one’s heard.”

* * *

“I take it you hadn’t heard all of Simon’s music by then, either,” Kamm imagined.

“No.”

“Did it hurt your feelings to learn Simon had written music he hadn’t shared with you?”

“At first, but my pettiness didn’t last long.” He exhaled slowly, and hoped Kamm wouldn’t ask about Simon’s earlier songs, but, on cue, that’s exactly what the doctor did.

“What did you learn from them that you hadn’t known before?”

“That he was in serious trouble at home.”

“And Simon’s trouble, I assume, was related to his father.”

“Why would you guess that?”

“Because the day you met Simon, he showed an interest in your father.”

“Okay. So you win.”

“Was his an abusive relationship? Did his father beat him?”

“His father beat his mother.” He remembered the startling new songs Simon had played for him, alone together, there on the mountain on that overcast Sunday. “And Simon felt helpless, the kind that could only be alleviated by his writing. I mean, that’s where he could safely vent it. But the loneliness and fear he lived with spilled into the rest of his songs, into the rest of his life—except, it seemed, when we’d hang out.”

“You were his escape.”

“Me and his music, yeah, I think we were.”

“Does Simon have children now?”

“No.”

“Siblings?”

“No.”

“But you have a sister.”

Michael was inexplicably jarred when he had to remember her. He felt unusually light-headed then, too. “My little sister.”

“And her name?”

He answered despite being annoyed. “Jennifer.” He wanted to talk about Simon instead; discussing his sister was a sidetrack he wasn’t prepared for. “But she’s got nothing to do with him.”

It was the way Michael answered that made Kamm take note of his annoyance, but he didn’t address it. “Any other siblings?”

“No,” he said firmly, “unless you count Simon, and I count Simon. He was my brother, not by blood, but my brother just the same.” He didn’t like to talk about the people who had no connection to his friendship with Simon, even if they were his own family, and especially when he was so engrossed in exploring how he and Simon had become friends.

“No need for hostility,” Kamm smiled. “So you were the only normal family Simon had.”

Michael was relieved to be back to talk about Simon. “Pretty much, yeah.”

Kamm crossed his arms and cocked his head. “Were you the only person he told about his mother’s situation?”

“As far as I know, I was. He was afraid, I thought at the time, that if anyone else knew, they’d take his father away, and his mother and he wouldn’t have a means to care for themselves.”

“And what do you think now?”

“That he was ashamed.”

“Did he ever spend time with your father?”

“Oh, yeah, way more than once. All the time, in fact, at least, in the first couple of years he and I were friends.” He couldn’t remember if Simon was around the house much during their high school years. He had to think hard to remember, but only empty thoughts came to him. But when they were younger … “He liked to sit with my dad on the front porch of our house and just talk about stuff, you know, not about anything in particular, just, I think, to be—using that word—‘normal.’”

“Did your father like him?”

“Everyone likes Simon,” Michael said. He’d been struck long ago by Simon’s popularity at so early an age despite his tragic home life. He shifted in his chair again to get comfortable. “In fact, now that I think about it, even my little sister liked him.”

* * *

“Michael’s been sharing your CDs with us,” Michael’s father, Henry, told Simon. The three of them sat on the front porch steps of Michael’s house and sipped lemonade. They’d been there a while; it was a hot day, late in summer, and they savored the refreshment. “You’re a very talented young man,” Henry added. He sat next to Simon; Michael sat to Simon’s opposite side. “I trust your family’s banking on a scholarship.”

“They’re not expecting me to go to college,” Simon replied. He rolled the cool glass along his cheek and only then realized what he’d said to a college professor.

Henry didn’t judge. “What’s the trouble?”

Michael wondered if Simon would tell the truth about his home life. Would he feel safe enough with his dad to share the details? But he could tell by Simon’s careful glance at him that he didn’t plan to.

“My grades aren’t that good,” he said instead. It wasn’t a lie, it just didn’t explain why they weren’t.

“Why do you suppose that is?” Henry asked. He set his glass on a porch step, leaned back on his hands, and crossed his ankles. He wasn’t an intimidating man.

“I guess I spend too much time with my guitar,” Simon answered. “I do play it a lot.”

Michael sat forward, elbows on knees, and looked across the lawn to the roadway, an uncountable number of yards from the porch. He could guess what his father’s answer would be, and he would have been right.

“With that talent,” Henry said, “I don’t think you could ever spend too much time playing your music. But maybe what your grades need are better study habits.”

“Maybe.” Simon looked at Michael and got a shoulder shrug in return. He could tell Michael was disappointed in him for not having come clean with the entire truth.

“I’d be happy to teach you some study skills,” Henry suggested. “Why don’t you come around on Saturday and we’ll go over some of them?”

Simon said he thought that was a good idea, but Michael knew he agreed to it because Simon would give anything to spend more time with Henry, whether it helped his grades or not.

Jenny came onto the porch and climbed onto Simon’s back. He held her little hands in his and bent forward to give her a brief ride. She giggled, then stood behind him and embraced his neck when he straightened.

“So what’s on the agenda today?” Henry asked the boys.

Michael watched Simon play with his sister and knew his friend didn’t have anywhere else he’d rather be than right where he was, doing just what he did. So he answered before Simon could. “Nothing,” he told his father. “Just hanging out here is our only plan.”

* * *

“Simon needed to be liked,” Michael said. “But very few people knew him, his soul, I mean.”

“Outside of you, who?” Kamm asked.

He shrugged. “Maybe his mother.”

“So just two people, not a few. But not your father.”

“No, they didn’t get too deep into conversations. Simon just wanted a regular dad was all.”

“And because you didn’t tell anybody about Simon’s home life, your father never knew.”

“I may have given him reason to suspect as much, but he never officially knew anything.”

“Were you jealous of your father’s and Simon’s friendship?”

“Hell, no. His spending time with my dad was a gift I gave him.”

“You really cared about him and from early on,” Kamm affectionately noted. “Because he was troubled, which only you knew, and because, outside of his trouble, he was a good soul, a great friend, one who empowered and inspired you in return, a likable and not just a lovable kind of person.”

Michael watched Kamm. It wasn’t that he distrusted him, but the doctor had a way of setting him up for another unexpected line of questions. He waited for a difficult inquiry to come his way, but Kamm never delivered, at least not then. The doctor studied Michael in return and didn’t speak.

So Michael opted to share more, unsolicited. “Despite his hurtful life, by and large, Simon never hurt anyone. He’s not abusive or obnoxious. He’s basically a pretty sensitive guy. He can be sarcastic—and often is—but I learned long ago that it hid what he didn’t want anyone to know: the real him. And often he didn’t even want me to know, but sometimes his pain went so deep he couldn’t hide it.”

* * *

“My dad’s on the warpath again.”

Michael caught Simon’s glance just as Simon rose from the computer chair and walked away. He could have followed him, but decided not to; it would only make Simon more elusive. Instead, he asked, “What’s it over this time?”

“Nothing in particular,” Simon mumbled. He reached for the dangling rope overhead, pulled down the trap door from the ceiling, lifted himself onto it, using the foothold, and disappeared into the attic. Calling back, he said, “It doesn’t have to be over anything; any excuse to be an asshole will do.”

Michael wasn’t certain Simon didn’t want him to follow, for he’d climbed into their refuge. They had been lucky to have the attic access in Michael’s bedroom; it was a perfect retreat when they were supposed to be in bed at their respective houses or when it rained and they wanted to be completely alone together. No one could hear them up there, let alone know they’d disappeared. They’d sit in the attic for hours and discuss music and photography, girls and school—and the plans they had for the future. Simon would play his guitar and Michael would dream to the music.

Michael waited. If Simon called to him again, he’d climb up, too; otherwise, he’d wait for Simon’s return and hope it wouldn’t be long.

Simon returned to the ceiling opening and stared down at his friend. “You don’t know how good you’ve got it,” he said. “Your parents actually like each other.”

Michael was certain they did. He’d become keenly aware of the affection in his family when he viewed it through his camera—or Simon’s eyes. He rose from the bed, took the rope, grasped Simon’s hand when it was offered, and allowed himself to be pulled as he lifted himself into their hideaway.

They carefully made their way along the ceiling beams to the window where they’d rigged a platform, but, on that particular day, Simon opened the window and crawled onto the roof, two stories up. Michael followed. Outside, the sun was warm and birds sang with a noticeable pitch. It was peaceful, far from the acts of family violence Simon had described to him over the two years they’d been friends.

“What do you suppose your dad is so pissed off about all the time?” Michael asked.

Simon sat on the shingles, his arms around his knees, and gazed out over the numberless acres of wildness that stretched beyond the yard. He wouldn’t look at Michael when he answered. “He’s pissed at me, period,” he said. It was a disclosure Simon had never even hinted at before.

“You mean always, in general, or just today?” Michael was certain his original question had meant to cover a lifetime, so maybe Simon had misunderstood him.

“Since I was born, he’s been pissed off at me.”

Michael sat beside him, cross-legged, and listened carefully. He was slightly behind Simon so he could see the young man’s profile. Beyond him, a perfect blend of greenery, and another unattainable shot. “You don’t really think that, do you?” He asked in as calm a voice as he could manage—because he didn’t want Simon to think he ever doubted him.

“I know it,” Simon argued, frustrated.

“All right, tell me how you know it. I don’t know it.”

“He has said so.”

“He has said you’ve pissed him off since the day you were born?”

“He never wanted a kid. And he certainly didn’t want a kid my mother would love.” Simon turned his head and his profile disappeared. He was silent a moment; then he lifted his arm and wiped an eye on his sleeve. “My mother says he’s been jealous since the day I arrived.” His words choked with emotion. “That’s why he beats her.”

Michael scanned the woods behind the house. He thought hard about what to say, how to say it, whether he should say anything.

Simon faced him again. “Do you know my parents sleep in separate rooms? Have I told you that? My father doesn’t want anything to do with her, not anything, not for years now.”

“Because of you?”

“Because of me. Because of the way she treats me, like I’m what matters most to her, from the time I was a baby till now. My father believes she loves me more than she loves him—and always has.”

“It’s just a different love,” Michael rationalized.

“That’s what she’s said.” Simon wiped his eyes again. “But he doesn’t listen. He wants to believe what he wants to believe. Everything is about him, about what he wants, how he wants it, when he wants it. And if things don’t go his way, there’s a big price to pay.” He buried his face in the bend of his elbow. “He almost choked her to death this morning,” he added, his voice muffled. “He’s going to kill her one day. I know it.”

Michael shifted uneasily on the roof shingles. What could he possibly say to something as horrendous an idea as that one? He put his hand on Simon’s back, the way he’d seen his father do when he drew Simon in for a more personal conversation. It was all he knew to do. He didn’t think Simon would mind if he touched him, and he didn’t seem to.

Michael could have told him he was sorry about the way things were, that Simon ought to just leave home, come live with Michael’s family. He could have told him to fight back, to throw punches whenever Simon’s father laid a hand on his mother. But none of that advice had any weight in the past and he was sure it wasn’t about to have any then.

* * *

Kamm rose from his chair to pause for thought. Then he walked to the front of his desk to stretch his legs, sat against it, and looked hard at Michael.

The doctor was dressed warmly in a thick sweater and corduroy jeans, contentedly comfortable, and he’d crossed his arms so he wouldn’t seem threatening, but Michael still felt intimidated.

“What’d I say?” Michael leaned back in the chair, hung his leg over it again, clasped his hands around his knee. “What did I just walk into?”

“This isn’t an interrogation,” Kamm reminded him. “I’m not out to punish you, despite what you might think. This is all very difficult stuff to explore, so you feel a bit defensive. Or maybe, because it all ended so badly, you feel responsible. But I’m not out to humiliate you.”

Michael knew he was right, and probably the truth lay somewhere in Kamm’s observation that he felt responsible. He’d always believed there was more he could have done to protect Simon. “So, on that promise,” he surrendered, “hit me with your next question.”

“I asked you earlier if Simon’s father had ever hurt him.”

Michael felt anxious again when he guessed where the doctor was about to lead him.

“Your answer was that his father hurt his mother.”

He remembered and confirmed it for Kamm with a slight nod.

“But I’ll ask again: Did Simon’s father beat Simon, too?”

Michael bit his lip and stalled.

Kamm explained his question. “Simon’s father’s resentment was for Simon. He beat up his wife for showing more love to her son than to her husband. Surely he expressed his resentment for Simon in the same vein.”

It was a natural connection the doctor had made. He couldn’t deny it. “Yes,” he said, holding back the emotion in his voice, “Simon’s father beat the shit out of him, too—as a matter of routine. But that’s confidential, do you understand?”

“By law, and not just by my own personal ethics, everything we discuss here is confidential.”

Michael knew it went without saying, but he still felt a need to say it.

Kamm continued. “Did you learn about his abuse from his songs and just not share it with me for some reason when we talked about them?”

“No, I didn’t learn about it from his songs. But, yes, I didn’t share it with you for some reason.”

“And what would that reason be?”

“Because Simon asked me not to tell anyone.”

“And that includes your therapist all these years later?”

“Yeah.”

“It was a lifelong promise,” Kamm surmised.

“It was implied, yes.”

“So will I have to guess if Simon’s father did more to him than beat him up, or can you share that with me now that I know about the other?”

Michael pressed his lips and stared defiantly at Kamm. He tried to swallow, but the lump in his throat choked him when he did.

Kamm tapped Michael’s foot with his own as if it would force his patient to speak, but the young man didn’t oblige. He asked the question directly instead. “Did Simon’s father sexually abuse him?”

“Why would you think one kind of abuse would precipitate the other?” Michael managed to ask.

“I don’t think one would. But his old man sounds like he was out of control much of the time, and I’m just wondering how far the abuse went.”

“Does it matter?”

Kamm gave Michael a momentary reprieve, then asked, “Did Simon’s father ever sexually abuse you?”

“No,” he answered with a laugh. He didn’t understand why he’d be asked such a thing. “I only met the man once and I didn’t give him time to lay a hand on me.”

“Did your own father ever sexually abuse you?”

“Hell, no.” He was further annoyed with the insinuation. “Ask me some other insane question, doc,” he suggested sarcastically.

Kamm had his answers. “You can tell me that neither Simon’s father nor your own sexually abused you—because they didn’t—but you can’t tell me Simon’s father didn’t sexually abuse Simon because he did, isn’t that right?”

* * *

It was the second or third pebble thrown at his window that caught Michael’s attention. He’d been engrossed in homework, his thoughts focused on the computer screen, when it sounded as if one of the stones had cracked the glass.

He bolted from his chair, pulled back the curtain, and found Simon on the lawn below.

Simon motioned with his hand for Michael to join him.

Michael was pleased to see him—as always—but he was puzzled by the object Simon held to his face. Michael opened the window and ordered Simon to “get your ass up here. What’s up with you, anyway?”

“You come down,” Simon argued, his voice subdued behind a cloth he’d pressed to his chin. He turned and walked away to prove his insistence, which made Michael call for him to wait while he scrambled onto the roof. He scooted along its ledge toward the back of the house and then dropped to the ground through the branches of the old mulberry tree.

“What happened to you?” he asked again. He was visibly alarmed when he caught up with Simon and noticed that the cloth Simon held to his face was actually red with blood.

Simon pulled away from Michael. “I got into a fight.” He walked toward the woods and Michael followed.

“With who?”

They hiked into the wooded area behind Michael’s house, along a narrow worn path they had created over the years, the one that led to a grassy meadow and, beyond it, Simon’s neighborhood, a place Michael seldom visited, and only when Simon’s father was gone—except once, by accident.

Michael thought Simon led him home, but Simon stopped short of the clearing to take a seat on a large boulder. “Tell me if I need stitches.” He allowed Michael to peek behind the rag. A deep, fleshy gash ran along his chin. It still bled.

Michael pushed the rag back to Simon’s face and then unbuttoned his own shirt. After he removed it, he bunched it into a ball and handed it to Simon to replace the rag he used.

“I think you need to see a doctor,” Michael told him. “What the hell happened? Who were you fighting with?” Simon wasn’t a fighter; neither of them were.

Simon bent over for a minute and held his knee with his free hand. “My dad,” he finally said. “He hit me with a golf club.”

Michael sobered. His stomach painfully tightened as his rage surfaced. He thought about what to do next, but couldn’t think of anything. “Did you get in the line of fire between him and your mom?”

Simon laughed at Michael’s naivety. “It’s the other way around. It’s always the other way around.” He straightened to look at Michael and spoke then to the bewilderment on his face. “You’ve never guessed?”

Michael didn’t want to guess. “You have fights with your father? You never said. I take you at your word.”

“My word doesn’t mean anything.”

“You fight with your father and your mother tries to stop it? That’s when he beats her?”

“He beats us, always me, sometimes her—when she gets in the way. But always me. He always has. Shit!” He bent over again and held his face with both hands. “I can’t go to the hospital. He’ll kill me.”

Michael’s heart pounded. “You told me your father beat your mother because he’s jealous of you. Is that true?”

“Yes!” Simon straightened again. “Yes,” he said in a calmer tone. “I just left some stuff out, that was all.”

“Why would you leave out that he beats you?”

“So you won’t get involved.”

“Fuck you. I was already involved.” He was deeply angry—at Simon, at Simon’s father, and at the helplessness he felt. “Sit back,” he told him. He encouraged Simon to lie on the rock, to hold his face up so the bleeding might stop. “Does it hurt?”

“Like hell,” he said.

“I’ll get you something.”

“No,” Simon replied quickly. “Don’t leave. Stay here for a few minutes. Let’s figure something out.”

Michael seethed with frustration. He stood motionless and watched Simon while he thought hard, but no clear thoughts came to him.

They were silent for a while.

Michael calmed himself. “Why haven’t you left?”

“I leave all the time,” Simon answered. He inhaled slowly. “I’m here now, aren’t I?”

“All these times you come to my house, you do it to escape him?”

“A lot of the time. Did you think it was to see you?”

Michael didn’t answer.

“I’m bullshittin’ you,” Simon said. “Who else would put up with me? Before we were friends, I’d just take a long walk.”

“But I mean leave, leave. Leave and don’t go back. Your mother would understand.”

“I think about that more and more,” Simon confessed. “I just need to find an escape route.”

“So today you fought back and things got—”

“Bloody.”

“Did you hurt him?”

“His pride maybe.”

Michael watched Simon lie on the rock and press the now-bloody shirt to his face. The songwriter, from whose soul often came hauntingly mournful songs, his comrade, the brother he’d never had, did have. “I can’t imagine what you’ve been living with,” he said. “I can’t imagine what goes on in your house.”

Simon began to quietly cry. “No, you can’t,” he insisted. “But if you could imagine the worse things to happen to a person, you might get the idea.”

Michael took the last step to the rock and sat on it beside Simon. The day was overcast, threatened rain, and suddenly felt all the gloomier. He stared at the mossy ground, studied the color of tree bark and sand, watched a beetle for a minute. He couldn’t picture his own father even raising his voice, let alone his hand. His father was an educated man; maybe that was the difference. Henry adored Michael’s mother as much as he adored his children. It was unnatural to harm them.

It was immoral.

He listened to Simon’s heartbreaking sobs and felt deeply sorry for him. “Your father belongs in jail,” he said.

Simon eventually quieted. “To put him there,” he carefully replied, “I’d have to talk about shit I can’t talk about.”

“Like what?”

Simon’s eyes were closed when Michael looked at him, and he used both hands to hold the shirt in place. He grimaced, which made Michael think the pain was unbearable, but instead Simon spoke two words, and they were more difficult to confess than any wound he’d suffered.

“Sick stuff,” he managed to say. He began to cry again and rolled onto his shoulder, away from Michael.

Michael’s heart pounded harder. His palms sweat. What could be more terrible than being beaten by one’s own father? He could only think of one thing. “God, Simon, you don’t mean what I think you mean, do you?”

Simon didn’t answer.

“He doesn’t fuck you, does he?”

Simon abruptly quieted. In the silence, Michael had his answer, yet he couldn’t believe it. The idea was too shocking, too outrageous. And how could Simon have kept something as disturbing as that to himself all that time?

“It’s not like I let him,” Simon finally said to confirm Michael’s suspicion. “I’ve been trying to fight him off since I was seven. I won this time is all,” he added dryly, and then sadly laughed at the consequences of his success.

Michael got to his feet. He trembled with rage, overshadowed only by his pity. He walked around the rock and knelt in front of Simon, but Simon hid most of his face behind the bloodied shirt and shielded the rest with his forearm.

“So let me get this straight,” Michael said. “Your father beats the shit out of you, rapes you, and then puts you on the bus. And you come to school, sit right beside me, and act like nothing happened?”

Simon reluctantly and sarcastically answered, “Something like that.”

“This is fucking unreal.” He tried to pull Simon’s arm away so his comrade would acknowledge him, but he wasn’t strong enough without possibly hurting him. “You can’t tell me this shit has been going on all this time,” he said, “and I can’t do anything about it.”

Simon lowered his arm as he raised his voice. “What are you gonna do? Call the police? His word against mine. What do you think you can possibly do?”

“Get you out of that house.”

“I’m out!”

“And you’re not going back.”

Simon laughed at him and rolled away again to not face him. “Your family’s a good family, man, but they’re not gonna take me in. And I’m not going to any foster home, not if—”

“So it’s better to stay and take it?”

“I don’t know!” he said heatedly. “I don’t fucking know!”

“Well, if my parents knew about this, they’d—”

Simon spun back and interrupted him. “No one is going to know about this, do you hear me? Not anybody. This is a reflection on me, too, don’t forget.”

Michael stared defiantly at his brother. “This isn’t about you at all,” he argued. “This is about him and what he’s been doing to you. He fucks you, man.” Then he imagined worse things. “Does he make you suck him off? Is that the kind of sick shit he does? Is that the kind of sick shit you go back to all the time?”

Simon was then visibly shaken by the idea that Michael had judged him. “You think less of me already.”

“Why would I think less of you? For what? For being abused by him?”

“For the things I’ve had to do.” The urgency of Simon’s silent prayer shone in his eyes while he audibly begged for a denial to his notion. “You won’t want me around anymore. You’ll see.”

“I don’t care what you had to do,” Michael insisted. He was filled with a genuine empathy, despite his pounding rage. “I mean, it doesn’t matter to me what you’ve done; it only matters that he made you do it. He’s wrong, Simon. Parents aren’t supposed to treat their kids like that.”

“But maybe I could have stopped it sooner.”

“Maybe. Look what’s happened to you now for trying. Sooner? Sooner you were younger. You were no match for him. You barely are now.”

“You can’t tell anybody,” Simon pleaded with him, his eyes rimmed with tears. “You wouldn’t do that to me, would you?”

Michael stared through the trees toward his house—and heavily exhaled his frustration. He clenched his teeth, balled his fists momentarily, and then lowered his eyes to Simon. “We need to get you to a hospital. We’ll tell ’em we were horsin’ around out here and you got hurt. But someday—and someday soon—you’ve gotta tell ’em. You’ve gotta tell somebody, do you hear me?”

“I’ve told somebody,” Simon argued. “I told you. Just now.”

“Not the same. You tell somebody who can stop your dad.”

“When I’m ready then, okay? But don’t you tell anyone for me.”

Michael bit his lip.

“Promise me,” Simon implored him. “C’mon. Brothers all the way, remember?”

* * *

“I promised him years ago I wouldn’t tell a soul.”

“You didn’t,” Kamm reminded him. “I guessed.”

“Not even his mother knew. And now I’ve told you something else I shouldn’t have.”

“Shouldn’t have? Or promised not to?”

“Promised not to.”

“And you still feel a need to keep that promise, all these years later, even though Simon has finished with you, gone as far as tried to kill you?”

“I guess so.”

“And why, Michael, would you keep a promise like that?”

He looked past Kamm through the window to the outside. On the horizon he scanned the clouds, their formations and color. Colorado had a pretty sky … He felt the doctor tap his foot again, and his attention came inward. “Because maybe someday things will be like they were,” he said.

“Like the way they were before you had an affair with his wife?”

“Yeah.” He hung his head. There would be no such time again, he knew, so why did he wish for it? He’d destroyed the one thing that could have held Simon and him together: their trust. The desire to be friends with Simon again in light of what had transpired between them made him feel stupid and weak.

“Is it that you think it’s possible,” he heard Kamm ask, “that your bond all those years will eventually overcome your more recent indiscretion?”

“Maybe,” he answered, hopefully. “I want it to. Sometimes I think it will.”

“And when don’t you think so?”

“When I remember what I did.”

“And by what you did, you mean the affair with his wife.”

“With Emily.”

Kamm backtracked. He planned to talk about the affair another day. “How far into your friendship did he share with you that he was being sexually abused?”

“A couple of years, I guess. It was a pretty intense time, I remember.” A flash of raised voices passed through his mind. “Police. Hospitals. I think he had no choice but to tell me what was going on—especially after he got hit in the face with the golf club.” He paused because he was confused and had to think hard to clarify the mental images and voices. He could see himself and Simon as boys while they stood at a payphone; Simon talked to someone. It was raining. Cold. And Michael was scared. Was it Michael who was scared? He pressed his temples with his fingers and tried to clear his mind’s vision.

“Tell me what you’re thinking,” Kamm encouraged him.

“I’m remembering something, a picture of us.”

“Tell me what you see.”

A new image caught and puzzled him. “I’m in a hospital bed, I think,” he said, “and I’m looking into the hallway to where Simon is standing. He’s got his back to me and he’s talking to the police.”

“You’re in the hospital bed?”

Michael pressed his fingers to his forehead then and squeezed his eyes shut to push the image into better view, but it dissolved before he could. “No, that can’t be,” he corrected himself. “It had to be him in the bed and me in the hall talking to the police.”

“What were you telling them?”

“I don’t remember.” He looked at Kamm, pressed his lips together, and shook his head. “I suppose I was telling them what had happened.”

“And what had happened?”

“Simon’s father had beaten him up and cut open his face.” He guessed that’s what he would have told them.

“So the police then knew about the abuse?”

“Just the beatings, not the other stuff.”

“They knew Simon’s father had beaten him with a golf club?”

“I think so.”

“Were charges pressed?”

“Pressed and dropped, I think. Actually, I’m not really sure the guy got charged that time. I can’t keep track. He was in and out of trouble with the law a lot of the time.”

“For what he did to Simon’s mother.”

“To Simon’s mother, to his co-workers, to his own sister. He pulled a knife on a superior at work and once punched his sister in the mouth. He did a little time for those things over the years. Then he’d get out and get back into trouble.”

“Did anyone ever suspect he was sexually abusing Simon?”

“I don’t remember anyone asking.”

“And Simon never wrote about it, never hinted at it publicly.”

“Not the sexual abuse, no. And not even really about the beatings, though they were often one and the same. He—”

“The sex and the beatings were often connected?”

“But he didn’t write anything specific about any of that. He wrote more about his feelings of being unloved, about his aloneness, his feelings of helplessness. Unless you knew, you wouldn’t have guessed what his songs truly meant.”

“Were these songs ever published?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s sung them all over this planet. Some of them are even hits.”

“But only you know, so only you, even to this day, grasp the depth and meaning of his music.”

“I guess that’d be one way to look at it.”

“Getting back to the golf club incident, if the police were involved, then your father—who’d taken Simon and you to the hospital that day—also learned about Simon’s physical abuse, is that right?”

“No, he never knew.”

“How could he not have known?”

Michael felt the headache again. “I think I’m confusing that particular incident with police involvement. I think Simon and I told a good story about how Simon got hurt and there hadn’t been any police that time; I must be remembering the police from another time.”

“So you and Simon were just really good liars that day?”

Kamm’s crack actually sounded like a compliment. “Simon lied only to protect himself,” Michael explained, “but he never lied to me; he didn’t always tell me everything, but he never lied. I think my father was a bit put off at first that we were roughhousing so much Simon had to get stitches, but he didn’t follow up on it that day. At least I don’t remember that he did.” He couldn’t visualize the rest of what happened on that overcast afternoon so he abandoned the effort.

“Did your father ever suspect? I mean, he’d learned about Simon’s poor grades and I assume he had a special interest in that. Did he pursue any suspicion as far as you know?”

“A couple of weeks before Simon got smacked in the face, my dad said something that hurt Simon’s feelings. I think that’s when he got a bit suspicious about Simon’s home life. He tried to get Simon to talk about it,” he added, remembering that his father’s effort was too little and too late, “but Simon wouldn’t bite.”

* * *

Henry shot the basketball right into the hoop from a good distance away. He had always been the athletic type and did well in sports, owing his energy and quick reflexes, he’d say, to his vegetarian diet. Michael had acquired his creative talent from his mother’s side of the family, they had decided, so it was in his DNA, and no diet in the world had a bearing on his artistic brilliance. Still, on that particular afternoon, Henry was quite pleased with his basket.

“Now if I just had a couple of jocks to play with me,” he commented. He dribbled the ball in front of Michael, who leaned on a porch rail, and Simon, who sat and watched from a step. They were outside the back door, near the driveway, where Henry had rigged a basketball hoop, but he usually only played with visiting colleagues because his son refused to get into the game. “You guys wouldn’t happen to know of any jocks, would you?” he prodded them.

Michael thought his father’s wish was completely harmless because he knew where it had come from, but Simon was offended by it. “That’s a shitty thing to say,” he told Henry.

Henry caught and tucked the ball under his arm. He faced Simon and exchanged a glance with Michael first as he pondered the boy’s hostile comeback. “Hey, I didn’t mean anything by it, Simon. I was just teasing Mikey here because he’s so disinterested in ball sports. It’s an inside joke, that’s all. Sorry.”

Michael imagined that Simon felt a mix of emotions at that moment. No adult had probably ever apologized to him for hurting his feelings, and yet he probably also felt insulted and disappointed to have heard what he thought he’d heard from a man he’d grown to respect and be fond of.

Simon lowered his head to stare at the two steps below him and avoid Henry’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter,” he muttered. “It’s just a sore subject at my house.”

Henry dropped the ball and took a seat on the step beside him; he sat close and spoke with caution. “What exactly is a sore subject at your house?” When Simon didn’t answer, he tried humor. “Basketball?”

Simon didn’t laugh, but he felt safe enough with Henry to say, “My father thinks ‘Mikey’ and me are queer.”

Henry straightened and looked to the edge of the porch where Michael leaned against the rail. He silently asked his son, with a raised eyebrow, to explain.

Michael responded with a nod, to say, “It’s true. Simon’s father thinks he and I are gay, but ask Simon about it; don’t look at me.”

“Why does your father think that?” Henry asked him.

Michael thought it was the opportune time for Simon to reply, “Because he makes me perform like I’m gay,” but Simon’s answer wasn’t as telling. “Because he’s queer,” he said instead, in reference to his own father.

“Your dad thinks you and Michael are gay because he’s gay himself?”

“Why else would he think that?”

“So you don’t know for certain if your dad is or isn’t? You’re both just guessing about each other.”

Simon looked across the yard to avoid the dialogue, but then he stared at the driveway asphalt when he felt Michael’s presence beside him suddenly and wanted to avoid him, too.

Jenny came onto the porch and made a giggling beeline for Simon, but he got to his feet before she reached him. He didn’t look at anyone as he mumbled, “I’ve said more than I should have said,” and then he abruptly walked away. Jenny called after him, but he didn’t turn around.

Michael was disappointed; first, because of the way the conversation had gone, and then, of course, because of Simon’s departure. He sat on the step next to his father.

“Is he all right?” Henry asked.

“I suppose,” he lied.

“Sounds like his father’s an asshole.”

Michael watched Simon walk toward the woods. “Simon’s got trouble,” he said, easing into his words.

“With his father,” Henry assumed.

“The man’s got a mean streak, I hear,” Michael added. He hadn’t forgotten his promise to Simon to keep Simon’s home life a secret, but he hoped he could say enough to put his own father on the trail.

“Does his father physically hurt him?” Henry asked, on cue.

The right answer for Simon was the wrong one for his promise. “You’d have to ask Simon,” he finally replied. He heard his father heavily exhale beside him and knew he’d frustrated him, but what else could he say? Or maybe he’d given Henry an answer without realizing it.

“Have you ever met Simon’s dad?”

“Once,” Michael said. “And he was all right—sort of.”

“Sort of?”

“He seemed like a suspicious guy. I didn’t much care for the way he looked at me, either.”

“How so?”

Michael shrugged a shoulder as if he couldn’t explain it, but found a few words just the same. “Like I was fresh meat.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t go over there anymore.”

Michael didn’t divulge that the plan had already been in place, but that they’d made a mistake that one time. He just nodded to show his father he’d heed his advice.

“If you think he’s hurting Simon, there are things we can do about that,” Henry said.

Michael had to stare toward the woods where Simon had disappeared to avoid his father’s eyes. He’d give anything in his power to follow up on Henry’s offer to help Simon, and cursed silently at himself for that promise he’d made. His rage forced a vicious comment instead. “His dad’s a fag,” he muttered.

“What’s a fag?” Jenny asked. She pushed on her brother’s back to get his attention.

He grabbed her and pulled her into his lap. “Fag is a bad word,” he said. “I shouldn’t have used it, so if I ever catch you saying it, I’ll stop taking pictures of you for your princess album.”

She squealed with a giggle. “I won’t say it! I won’t say it!”

Henry got to his feet; his demeanor had considerably sobered. “Tell Simon for me, willya, that, if he ever needs to talk, I’ll listen.”

Michael heard him. “I will.”

* * *

“Did Simon and your father make amends?”

“They did,” Michael said. “When I told Simon my father’s comment had just been part of this joke my Dad and I had, you know, me being the creative son and him being the sportsman, and it hadn’t meant anything besides that, Simon stopped taking it personally.”

Kamm ate a sandwich in between his questions. He’d agreed to stay through lunch for Michael, and his patient didn’t mind the intrusion in the exchange, so he guiltlessly indulged himself. “Did you ever tell Simon your father was willing to talk to him about whatever troubled him?”

“I never got the chance.”

“In the months that followed, you never got the chance to tell Simon that?”

“I guess it just didn’t come up again, you know?”

Kamm studied Michael for a silent moment and slowly chewed. “End of story? Your father never followed through on his suspicions?”

“We had another little talk about it,” Michael remembered. It made him smile because it had ended cheerfully. “We were having some irrelevant conversation, and my father explained to us that a lot of the world’s leading photographers and musicians were straight guys.”

“Why would he tell that to you and Simon?”

“He wanted to open a door to talking about whatever troubled Simon, I guess, and he used the gay thing as a way in since Simon had already brought it up. He also wanted him to appreciate that just because Simon played the guitar or wrote music didn’t mean he was gay, no matter what his own father thought. But the tactic didn’t work because I blew the conversation by saying something like, ‘Explain Van Gogh then,’ and my father replied, ‘He’s a painter.’ And it struck us so funny we laughed so hard, we had to leave the room. End of conversation.”

Kamm chuckled and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “It does sound like you had a good time together. No wonder Simon enjoyed your family.”

He fondly remembered them himself. “Yeah. They’re cool.”

“You’ve said that only you knew about Simon being sexually abused. You don’t think Simon’s wife knew about the abuse?”

“I don’t think Emily knew, no, but maybe she did.” He felt a pang of guilt upon saying her name, but it was a short-lived emotion and ended as abruptly as it began when Kamm asked his next question.

“What makes you think she didn’t know?”

He shrugged and tried to remember the reason he’d come to that conclusion, but he couldn’t recall specifics, so he opted for a generalization. “She said things that made me think she didn’t know all there was to know about him, things like, well, if you want me to be explicit, how she enjoyed me sexually because I wasn’t as ‘hung up’ as he was.”

“In what ways did she enjoy you more?”

Michael released his knee and subconsciously rubbed his ankle. How much was he allowed to share? “She said there were things I was willing to do that he wasn’t and she didn’t know why, because they weren’t things a normal guy should be adverse to, she said.”

Kamm sipped a soda. “Such as?”

“Fellatio.” He lightly laughed when he spoke the word because it wasn’t one he would have normally used; he remembered it from that board game she and he had played that fateful night. He added, “It was pretty ironic to me that she thought of me as less ‘hung up’ than he was because you couldn’t have met a more fucked up guy than I was—or am, for that matter.”

“Screwed up in general because of your obsession with Simon or screwed up sexually, no pun intended?”

“Fucked up in all ways, doc,” he said with a laugh. “Fucked up because of my obsession with Simon, and fucked up ‘sexually’ because I can’t handle the relationships that come with the dirty deeds. If you need to know how much?” He sought a way to explain it in the least amount of words. “Women have just been a means to an end for me; I didn’t love but one and she belonged to someone else.”

“And that was Simon’s wife, Emily,” Kamm concluded; he didn’t wait for a confirmation. “When did you boys lose your virginity?”

“He lost his earlier than I did,” he remembered. “Maybe he was sixteen or so—after he’d left home. And I lost mine when I was nineteen.”

“Why did you wait so long?”

He shrugged. “I guess I wasn’t in the mood till then. Does that seem odd to you?”

Kamm answered sincerely. “I don’t think you’re the only young man on earth who waited that long—”

“Just in the top five, though,” Michael countered, dryly.

“And what you’re saying is that, when you got around to having sex,” Kamm continued, ignoring his patient’s sarcasm, “you did it because of the sex, not because of the girl.”

“Exactly. And now I know why we pay you the big bucks.”

Kamm smirked and tossed his sandwich’s wrap into a nearby waste can. “That’s not abnormal, to be in it for the sex,” he said. “I mean, men are hard-wired for sex. What do you think is so screwed up about that?”

Michael laughed again, that time at himself, but it wasn’t sincere. “That’s pretty much the only way I’ve ever had sex, for the sex, not for the woman. Sex is an end in itself. I felt that way at nineteen and I still feel that way at 24. I’ll probably feel that way when I’m 50. Or your age.”

Kamm mocked a threatening squint at him, then asked, “But that’s not the way it was with Emily.”

“No,” he answered in a low voice. “Same means, maybe, but a different end.”

“Which was?”

“Emotional. With her, sex was an emotional experience.”

“And so I can conclude that you were 24 when you had your first emotionally-invested sexual experience.”

“Yep,” he quipped. “Good deduction.”

Kamm didn’t pause. “Have you ever paid for sex?”

“No.”

“Would you ever?”

“No.”

“Because that would be beneath you or because a good-looking guy like yourself doesn’t need to?”

“Because I was taught to respect women; buying it only degrades them.”

Kamm raised an eyebrow. “So using a woman as a means to an end and not paying her isn’t degrading.”

“Cheap shot,” Michael said.

“Is it?”

“You’re right,” he answered on second thought, and felt ashamed. “I’m a hypocrite.”

“So, these women you’ve used, how did they feel about it?”

“There haven’t been that many,” he defended himself. “Women tend to confuse sex with love and inevitably got hurt playing around with me. So I became more discriminating and therefore had fewer experiences than perhaps someone else my age.”

“What were your criteria?”

Michael was tired. The questions only served to make him look bad. He rubbed his face for a moment, but when Kamm didn’t fill in the silence with another question, he felt obligated to answer it. “I chose women who lived in other parts of the country,” he said. “And women who were …” His guilt stopped him. Or maybe it was shame. He never could figure out his feelings.

“Married?”

He was relieved the doctor had asked so he didn’t have to use the word himself. “Yeah. That way. Women already in relationships.”

Kamm didn’t appear to judge him, but his questions were still direct. “And so Emily wasn’t the only married woman you bedded.”

“No.”

“The only trouble was she was married to Simon,” Kamm noted as he took a sip from his soda can.

“That was her only fault.”

Kamm didn’t acknowledge the humor. “Did Simon know about your women?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did he know some of them were involved with other men or were married?”

“Yes.”

“So it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch for him, in the end, to suspect your affair with his own wife.”

“No.”

“And did he?”

“Only afterward.”

Kamm studied him for a moment longer than he should have and it made Michael think the doctor wasn’t totally convinced. But he was wrong in his assessment because Kamm said instead, “So, despite your lack of relationships, you were probably a ladies’ man. And Simon was hung up sexually because he was asked to do things he’d only learned to feel degraded by.”

Michael didn’t answer, even though he knew that no response was an answer in itself. He merely met the doctor’s eyes and then said, “My problem has been infrequency—alleviated occasionally and only by need. I’ve never had any problems with the idea or the act of sex. My only ‘hang up’ has been with feeling emotionally close to the woman I’m having it with.” He thought about Simon. “At least his neuroses were valid.”

Kamm watched Michael in silence. He twirled his soda can on the desk and carefully studied him. Then he said, “That was a heavy burden you bore, his secret, a profound responsibility you had.”

Michael shrugged. It hadn’t hurt him. At least, he didn’t think it had.

“A tough life for both of you,” Kamm added. He sounded genuinely sorry for them.

“We had our good times,” Michael defended himself.

“Good to know. What say we leave some of this ‘dark, heavy’ stuff for a bit,” he suggested, “and you tell me about one of those times.”

* * *

Michael stood beside Simon at the edge of the meadow. He hadn’t given the outdoors much of his attention that day because his focus had been on Simon; it had been a few days since they’d seen each other and Michael was more tied to the reunion. He wordlessly tousled Simon’s hair and received a playful punch in the upper arm before he finally turned his eyes to the field. The view made him catch his breath because the meadow was covered in yellow flowers warmed by the early afternoon sun. He allowed nature’s invitation to that secluded paradise to draw him forward into its sanctuary. Wildflowers stretched in every direction. He laughed as he sat among them and immediately came into contact with the insects and the breezes that made the field their home.

Then he picked a dandelion and lay back in the grass as he lazily ate it. As he gazed into blue sky overhead, he thought, ‘And on the sixth day, God made this place.’ He closed his eyes, felt gravity pull at him, tightly press him to the earth, and listened to silence, deafening and yet absent, so quiet he could also hear Simon’s footsteps on the grass as he slowly approached Michael.

When the cushioning sound stopped, Michael opened his eyes and looked up at Simon.

“Didn’t I tell you I’d take care of you today?” Simon asked.

Michael squinted at him from under the arm he rested on his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun. “You did.”

Simon sat beside him, picked a flower, and handed it to him. “Dandelions are weeds, you know,” he reminded Michael. “Yet you eat them like M&Ms.”

“One man’s weed is another man’s meal,” Michael cracked. While he chewed the flower’s petals, he reminded Simon that, “You said my black-and-white photos of them were good.”

“No,” Simon corrected him. He retrieved the packaged kite from the grocery bag he’d brought along. “I said they were great. But maybe we should find a way to make wine out of dandelions. Then they’d be the rage.”

Michael laughed. He enjoyed Simon’s spirit. “You know I don’t drink. What say we make pies out of them instead?”

“Well, maybe you would drink,” Simon suggested, “if wine was made out of dandelions.”

Michael grunted. “Maybe.”

He finished eating the flower and watched Simon unwrap his kite. The grown man’s effort reminded him of that little boy at Christmas who fought with the plastic on his new action figure, but was too excited to be frustrated. He watched Simon read through the kite’s instructions and then carefully follow them. Simon paused on occasion to lift his eyes to the meadow, to make certain, it seemed, that the outside hadn’t gone anywhere since he last looked.

The sun was warm, not hot, on them, but it was bright, too, and Michael was shaded, in part, by Simon who sat so close by. He rolled forward onto his side and propped his temple in the palm of his hand to get a closer look at the progress Simon made.

The bright red kite was dolphin-shaped. Simon held it up after he’d properly braced it and Michael nodded to let him know he was impressed by Simon’s kite-building skills.

“But are dolphins red, I wonder?” he quipped.

Simon laughed. “You would say they are, wouldn’t you? All that dolphin killing you tell me about, you know? Blood-red water and all that?”

Michael grunted again. His taunt had backfired. “You sure know how to take the wind out of my sails.”

“I’ll put it back in for you. Wait here.”

Simon got to his feet, lifted the kite to the breeze, and jogged toward the edge of the meadow. It caught momentarily on the wind current he’d created, dipped, and then rose again, and when he turned and picked up his speed, it flew higher yet, and higher still as he tugged on its tether.

Michael watched him from his quiet vantage point. He could feel the exhilaration of the freedom in the red dolphin. Simon skillfully kept the kite aloft while Michael picked and ate another dandelion.

Then he closed his eyes to listen to the silence.

He didn’t know how long he’d mused about other matters, other things that actually didn’t matter, but he felt Simon’s presence and he opened his eyes to look at him.

“Okay, so dolphins aren’t red,” Simon agreed. “But they also don’t fly in the sky, either, so what can we make of this?”

“That you’re not firmly rooted in reality.”

Simon sat beside him again so together they could watch the red kite against the blue sky. Michael rolled over, onto his back, and lifted his arm to shield his eyes to look at it for a few more minutes.

The kite danced, first to the right, then to the left, then back again as they watched it, wordlessly.

Then he studied Simon without the man knowing he did. Perfect profile. And such a perfect face, too, he thought, pleased to see it totally lost on the kite line, far from the abuse, humiliation, and fear that had shadowed Simon’s young life.

Michael then felt his own frustrations and his loneliness and his constant battle with depression give way under it. He couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, doing anything else.

With anyone else.

And, in those minutes alone in the meadow together, he didn’t think Simon could imagine it, either.

* * *

SECRETS & LIES

“If Simon were here, he’d know how to rig this thing,” Michael observed for Kamm. He tried yet another connection to the doctor’s ancient video system, but it didn’t work, either. “You know about digital video players by now, don’t you, doc?”

“If Simon were here,” Kamm replied, thoroughly enjoying Michael’s demeanor that afternoon, “I’d just pose questions to him directly.”

“And he’d tell you to fuck yourself and your Panasonic.” Michael was too frustrated to fail at another configuration and had another idea. Kamm’s television was more modern; it had a large screen and RCA video inputs. “We’re in luck because I’ve got a portable player in my truck. I think I can feed it through to your TV, which is the only thing in here I can work with.”

“My kids gave it to me last Christmas,” Kamm answered, pleased with himself to be among the hi-tech crowd on some level.

“You have kids, do you?”

“Three. And grandkids,” he added. “But before we discuss that, how about you get your portable and we get this on the road before I—and it—age another hour?”

Michael thought it a good idea. He left the office, hurried downstairs, and retrieved his camera bag from his truck, using the opportunity to take another drink of fresh cold air in the journey. Maybe he’d stay in Colorado; never return to smog-filled Los Angeles. Here, at least, the sky was blue—and certainly cleaner. The sun was warm, too, despite the brisk morning. But he was about to spoil the day’s mood when he agreed to look at Simon—on video—after all that time they’d been separated. It made his stomach anxiously tighten and sped his heart rate enough to notice.

Still, he climbed back to the third story of the building. When he returned to the office, Kamm poured them glasses of pineapple juice. The picture of Kamm doing something domestic amused Michael and alleviated some of his apprehension. “So where’s the popcorn?” he asked.

“I was just about to make some.”

“I was kidding.”

“Ah, but I wasn’t.”

“And now you’re the father I never had,” Michael mumbled. He removed video cables from his bag and proceeded to connect them for viewing.

“Your dad isn’t a smart-ass?”

“He was actually a nice guy.” He found a wall outlet and plugged in the iPod charger when he heard the doctor’s strange question.

“Is he still a nice guy?”

Michael straightened and locked eyes with Kamm. “Yeah,” he insisted. “He’s still a nice guy.” His forehead felt suddenly tight, or maybe he felt light-headed; he wasn’t certain which. He must have risen too quickly. “I didn’t mean to imply you’re an asshole,” he defended himself. “I was being facetious.”

“I got that,” Kamm said. “You’re a facetious sort of guy.”

Michael took a seat with his iPod. He used the doctor’s remote to turn on the television, and facially expressed that he was impressed that it worked. At least something in the doctor’s viewing system was up to speed. Then he browsed his iPod playlists, the ones he’d long ago made of Simon’s body of work; there were a number of videos to choose from and he wanted Kamm’s first impression of Simon to be a positive one.

He heard the doctor call his name and looked up. Kamm handed him a glass of juice, which he set on a nearby table, but Kamm remained close and caused Michael to look at him again.

“I’ve discovered,” Kamm carefully said, “that when you’re sarcastic, you’re usually hiding something.”

“Am I?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Was I being sarcastic?”

“You were.”

“About your low-tech electronics?” Michael cracked.

“About your father.”

“What about him?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“I’m lying about him?” Michael guessed. He motioned for Kamm to take his seat. “He’s really an asshole?”

“Is he?”

“No,” he firmly answered. “Not hardly.”

“Why did you even mention the word ‘father’ when I teased you?”

“Come again?”

“When I told you I was serious about making popcorn, you called me the father you never had.”

“So?”

“So … did your father tease you? Is that why you made the connection?”

Michael was bored and annoyed with Kamm’s questions. He wanted to watch Simon instead; that’s how badly he wanted to get away from the inquiry. “It didn’t mean anything,” he insisted. “You read too much into my sarcasm. My father’s not an asshole, I didn’t mean to imply you are, and I wasn’t a teased kid. Can we get on with this?”

Kamm squinted a moment at him before he surrendered and took a seat at the desk.

Michael then remotely operated his portable player from the armchair and brought video images to the large television screen. It caused his heart to race, both from excitement and apprehension, as he waited for Simon’s appearance.

The first minutes of the video were of an audience, a pan of raised hands, coupled with sounds of laughter that broke into applause and cheering. In the blue light, Simon and his band finally emerged on stage. The cacophony intensified, buried only by the growing rhythm of guitars and percussion.

And then Simon’s face appeared, as large as the screen itself. His sparkling eyes scanned the appreciative crowd and he couldn’t repress his wide, happy smile; it was apparent that he was high on an expressive emotion of joy. Those dark eyes, haloed by his black hair, and that charismatic manner about him, were as Michael remembered them. He watched as Simon lifted a microphone to his mouth and, on cue, brought his voice to the stage, warmly rich and purely given. Then he danced to elicit more cheers from the crowd. Simon had not yet lost himself in his music; he bathed instead in the exhilaration the responsive audience gave him.

Michael exhaled all he held inside him. To see Simon again wasn’t as painful as he’d imagined it might be, but the Simon he watched in those minutes was the Simon he remembered most, not the one who’d hurt him, nor the one he’d hurt. And, certainly, not the one he’d left behind.

But he did miss him, terribly. He realized then just how much. The sound of Simon’s voice, his smile, those dark, sultry eyes, the friendship they had, the secrets they’d shared all those years ago; they were rolled into every fleeting expression caught on Simon’s face. Michael forgot Kamm was even in the room. Instead, he buried himself in the look and the feel of his long-lost friend, in the style of Simon’s clothes, the top-unbuttoned, untucked shirt he wore, the weathered leather jacket, blue jeans, and comfortable shoes that completed his appearance, his hairstyle, brushed back yet mussed, like the way he dressed, a reflection of relaxation on stage.

Nothing about Simon escaped Michael, not the man’s voice, not the way he danced, not even the crease there on his left cheek, his unshaven face and the visible scar that interrupted his four-day-old beard across part of his chin, the way his eyes smiled even when his mouth didn’t, the shape of his fingers clasped on the microphone, his hand that kept rhythm against his thigh. He’d photographed that man so much over the years there wasn’t anyone who knew his physique better.

In mid-lyric, Simon stopped singing. The audience had taken up the song and he paused to hear the sound. Cheering erupted then and Simon laughed at its notion. He teased them further with a shake of his head at them, danced a silly step, and then sang again, much to the crowd’s appreciation.

Michael couldn’t help his own laugh at that moment, despite how often he’d seen that specific shot. He looked at Kamm when he wondered what the doctor thought of Simon’s playfulness, and caught Kamm already looking at him instead and not at the television.

Michael paused the video.

“The man I expected to see, I see,” Kamm said. “He does have a sensual way about him, just like you said. He’s charismatic. But the other thing I see,” he added, “is how absolutely fond of him you are.”

“There’s no hiding from you.”

“I think you know you’re the only one who knows what you know about Simon’s life. I think you know you’re the one he’s needed the absolute most in his lifetime. I think you know he’s there, in front of that crowd, in front of them, as happy as he is, making them feel good, because of your role in his life. And maybe that makes you feel all the better about who you are and the paths you’ve taken, however defective you may think you are.”

Michael released the pause on the video so it resumed its play. Kamm gave him more credit than he deserved, he thought, but he certainly appreciated the sentiments.

Simon had begun to sweat under the hot stage lights, but it didn’t dampen his enthusiasm or his mood. His voice was strong, his enunciation clear, showing its range, a crying soulful sound, despite the light of joy in his eyes. And he continued to dance, to smile, to make eye contact with individuals in the crowd and to acknowledge them with a nod or a broader smile, and get back more than he gave.

Kamm rested his chin in his palm while he intently watched. After a few minutes, he said, “Now if I can just figure out what it is that Simon knows that you’re not telling me.”

“What is it you think I’m leaving out, doc? The details of how his father sodomized him?”

Kamm flinched at the sarcasm.

“What might be missing,” Michael quickly offered to ease the blow of his former words, “is why would I—if I cared about him as much as I believe I did, and professed to have, and still do—have hurt him the way I did, especially knowing what I knew about his life? Why would I have done that?”

“Maybe because you got hurt in some way you don’t remember—or can’t remember—and therefore you needed him as much as he needed you.”

“And that would justify it?”

“It would explain it.”

“I can’t imagine needing him as much as he needed me.”

“Well,” Kamm observed quietly, just a hint above the music, “maybe that’s why you’re here, to come to a place where you can imagine it.”

“Or maybe I didn’t care about him as much as I thought I did.”

“That crossed my mind,” Kamm said. His words took Michael’s full attention. “But when I saw you lay eyes on him a minute ago, my doubt was put to rest.”

“So we take it to the other extreme? I’m in love with the guy?”

Kamm made a further observation. “There are smiles on the faces in that crowd, on the faces of people who don’t even personally know him. Maybe they don’t know how he was hurt, maybe they’ll never know, but I think they might suspect there’s a lonely, broken heart inside that man, despite his successes with women and music. They’re connecting with him. You see it. Are they in love with him? Can you be in love with someone you don’t know? Or is it something deeper than that, something more primal, something only lonely, broken-hearted people can know and feel?”

Michael watched Simon; he watched the faces in the crowd, those yearning smiles. Men, women, older, younger. Perhaps Kamm was right and Simon’s fan base knew more about him than even Simon knew they knew.

“Now let’s add to that equation,” Kamm continued, “someone who does know him, who does know all he’s gone through, experienced, felt. Further, someone who’s been there for him, who gave him—in the real world, not this one he escapes to—true love. And by true love I’m not talking about sex or ‘in love’; I’m talking about love in its purest form: unconditional, tireless. You gave Simon what he never had, not even what his mother could give him: you gave him unconditional, pure, unadulterated love.” He paused before he added, “Love that came without strings, without definition, and without a need for payback.”

There was no denying Kamm’s keen observation.

“So,” Kamm concluded, “let’s say we know why Simon needed Michael. And we have a hint of why Michael needed Simon, for the confidence boost, the ego maybe—but we don’t have all of it, I don’t think. We don’t know why, for example, Michael would give up feeling close to others and to women specifically in order to be in Simon’s life. We don’t know why he did what he did to betray Simon unless his own need was so great he got confused.”

“Meaning maybe I wanted to fuck him, not her, that night?”

“I’m not sure it’s as superficial as that. If the lonely and broken-hearted can see Simon’s soul, and there are enough of them out there to fill a stadium, as is evident, then maybe Michael is also lonely and broken-hearted. He just doesn’t yet know why.”

“Or maybe they all merely want to fuck him, too.”

Kamm frowned.

“I’m not trying to be hard about this—or maybe I am,” he said on second thought. He laughed at his choice of words, despite the doctor’s scowl. “I’m saying maybe it is as superficial as that.”

“But why Simon?” Kamm asked. “Why him and him alone? You must have known the members of his band.” Kamm pointed out the drummer whose attractive face was just as large on the screen. “Why not him?”

“Because I knew Simon first.”

Kamm wasn’t amused. “And you’ve hung onto him all these years in the hope he’d change horses midstream?”

“Maybe.”

“I might believe that if you and he had experimented sexually with each other when you were boys. Did you?”

“No.”

“Or maybe you don’t remember.”

“Or maybe you don’t believe me.”

“I will if you want me to.”

Michael watched Simon for a minute and tried to remember any such sexual experimentation, and then said, “I want you to believe me because it’s the truth; we never experimented sexually with each other.”

“Did Simon want you to ‘wait’ for him?”

“Wait for him?”

“You know, wait for him to come to terms with his own sexuality?”

“He never said such a thing.”

“Did he convey such a message without words?”

“I never got a feeling from him that he wanted me to hold out till he came to terms with his self-oppressed homosexuality. Is that what you’re wondering?”

“Kind of.” Kamm smiled briefly. “Do you think he might have enjoyed some of the things his father had done to him?”

“No,” Michael insisted; he couldn’t escape how terrified and troubled Simon was growing up under his father’s meanness. “I think Simon was quite clear about his preference—especially those we talked about while we looked at naked girl porn magazines in my attic.”

“So you just didn’t get close to anyone else, including women you were intimate with,” Kamm argued, “because you just aren’t fond of other people in general.”

Michael was puzzled by the doctor’s comment, but then realized he’d been baited. “I didn’t get close to women because I didn’t want them falling in love with me.”

“As women had a tendency to do when they slept with you.”

“When they sleep with any man,” Michael defended himself. “I think that’s just the nature of most women; it’s in their DNA, their chemistry, something to do with female endomorphines. It wasn’t me, specifically, they loved; it was the intimacy.”

“And you didn’t want them falling in love with the intimacy—aka you—because you weren’t going to fall in love with them, and therefore not complicate your life.”

“Right.”

“But why not fall in love with them? So what if you complicated your life—at least you would have one.”

Michael drew in a breath. Hard questions. He knew the answer, though, and reluctantly shared it. “Because I didn’t want to get sidetracked from Simon, I guess.”

“Exactly. But why not? You say you weren’t in love with him, nor he with you, nor were you each waiting for some magical moment in time when you could uncloset yourselves and get on with your lives together. You just didn’t want to let go of Simon, but why?”

“Because we just had too much between us, and—”

“The secret of his abuse? That’s what you had between you?”

Michael was frustrated because he couldn’t explain it. “There was more to it than that.”

“Not that that isn’t a lot,” Kamm agreed, “but what else was there? I could see why he might put his life on hold so as to not lose a friend like you—you were the closest thing he had to family—but why would you?”

“I care about him.”

“I don’t doubt it for a second. But that’s a lot of caring, Michael. Why? Was he covering some secret of yours in return?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Or you don’t remember,” Kamm suggested again.

“I would remember something like that.”

“Then maybe it’s something you don’t want to tell me.”

“I’ve already told you—and him—my secret.” He rubbed the scar on his cheek again. “You took it in stride,” he added, insincerely amused, “and he tried to kill me.”

“Having an affair with his wife is a recent secret,” Kamm noted for him, preventing the emotional escape Michael sought. “I’m talking about some childhood secret, one that kept you from fulfilling your life the way any other attractive, talented, healthy young American male might have done.”

Michael listened more closely to the ballad Simon sang. He didn’t think he had the answers the doctor looked for and chastised himself for ever thinking he would. His was a complicated friendship with that wounded soul on the screen.

“Maybe it’s that I couldn’t have him the way I wanted him, and I wanted him in ways I didn’t know I did—or still do, for that matter.” Michael wasn’t terribly certain about his observation, but he was willing to free-think with the doctor; it was the reason he’d sought professional help in the first place.

“But you had him in ways no one else on earth had him,” Kamm reminded him.

Kamm was right about that: He had Simon in ways no one else had or perhaps ever would. There was no reliving that childhood, so every moment of it had been theirs and theirs alone.

As Michael watched the smile brighten the eyes of an otherwise long-ago sad face, he wasn’t altogether certain he wanted out of his predicament. His fondness for Simon was immense despite the bittersweet memories, and his need for the man’s friendship that great—

“Right there,” Kamm interrupted him, hoping to capitalize on his patient’s unconscious change in expression, “and without thinking about it, tell me what comes to mind as you look at him this very second.”

As the doctor instructed, Michael impulsively replied, “He loved me.”

* * *

Michael dreamed about having a cigarette, how it might feel to sit alone in his hot tub, submerged in steaming hot water and smoke one. But smoking was an unwise endeavor, he knew, so he thought about something else.

He sank lower in the porcelain tub. The lights were dimmed and warmly reflected from the brass knobs and mirrors in the bathroom. A floor-to-ceiling aquarium highlighted the room, lush also with tropical plants and skylights—sky and water everywhere. He loved the outdoors, particularly rivers and streams, oceans and trees, and he brought as much of them inside with him as was possible.

He closed his eyes then and pictured whales.

But he came alert suddenly when he heard a muffled noise downstairs, the click of the front door lock, the turn of the handle. It was a momentary panic he felt, one triggered by a vague and distant memory of an unwelcomed visitor. He loathed the rapid heart rate and adrenalin rush it gave him.

He relaxed when he realized it was Simon. No doubt the man wondered about Michael’s pending sale, a high-priced image he’d taken years earlier, for the possible upcoming cover of a national art magazine, and had come to find out.

“Are you home?” Simon yelled up to him.

“I’ll be right down,” he called back. He dressed in a terry-cloth robe and then stood for a few minutes at the top of the staircase to watch a trio of silver-scaled fish in another aquarium. They turned to study him in return and he admired their eyes, their large black pupils, and their gills, which opened, then closed, slowly and then again; their tiny, nearly transparent fins treaded water, and he thought he’d never tire of looking at them, let alone photographing them.

Downstairs, Simon had began to play the piano Michael had bought for him and the music that crept up from the living room danced with the water-bound creatures in rhythmic waves. Michael would never regret his purchase of that very expensive and space-invading instrument because, over the years, there’d been a musical aliveness in his own home that he could never simulate, despite all his electronic equipment. He tied his robe around himself and descended the stairs.

A small lamp burned on the piano. Simon had his back to him as he bent comfortably over the keys and poured out music as if it had filled him to bursting and he had no choice but to release it. Michael sat across from him on a sofa and rested a bare foot on the coffee table. He studied Simon’s profile and inwardly smiled. Since he was a teenager, Simon had been talented with a keyboard, later trading it and his classical guitar for electric ones, for acoustics and percussion. But at Michael’s house, he was forced to return to his roots, recall a different language in his fingers—and one he had apparently never forgotten.

The melody was as compelling as it was mesmerizing. Michael closed his eyes and imagined gliding seabirds atop the open ocean. He chided himself again for spending too much time indoors, for not taking advantage of his modest wealth, and owning a piece of the shore in a rugged area of the northern Oregon coast instead.

The music stopped. Michael barely noticed until he heard Simon rise from the piano bench and approach him. He collapsed his thought-filled images and opened his eyes.

Simon smiled. “Hey, you.”

“I should rig a sound-activated recorder in this room,” Michael suggested. “You write your best stuff when you play that thing.”

“Was that a compliment?” Simon didn’t expect an answer. He went around to Michael’s side of the coffee table and took a seat on it in front of him. “Or was it a slam against the work I write elsewhere?”

“You know better than to ask me that question, Young Boy Genius.”

Simon leaned forward and squinted at him. It was a friendly, pleased expression, one Michael had often photographed but he never tired of seeing those dark brown eyes. Simon nudged his leg with his own when Michael didn’t offer the information. “C’mon. Did you sell it?”

Michael refocused: His picture sale. “Another one bites the dust.”

“I get tired of congratulating you—”

“Then don’t.”

“So, are we celebrating tonight? Looks like you can now afford to take me to dinner. You won’t mind if Emily comes along.”

“No, but you’ve got better things to do with your time than spend it with me.” He baited Simon into countering him.

“Do I?”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Well, since I’m not so sure, you’d best take advantage of my time while you can still get it. I’ve got another two-month tour on the not-too-distant horizon.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Then come along. Bring the piano.”

Michael grunted despite his enjoyment of Simon’s suggestion. “I’d go if I didn’t think the tag-along wasn’t a weakness.”

“Who knows but us?” Simon realized he’d unintentionally confirmed Michael’s self-deprecating crack, and quickly apologized. “I mean, who cares?”

Michael thought about it. He had a heavy work schedule himself. “Two months is a long time.”

“Then come and go. I’ll have Scott keep you posted about my schedule and you can visit me wherever I am when the mood strikes.”

Michael liked that idea better.

“In the meantime,” Simon added, pressing his leg against Michael’s to demonstrate his sentiment, “I’ll stay in touch.”

Michael enjoyed the contact.

“I promise,” Simon reassured him.

“I won’t be in your way again, like last time,” he promised in return.

“You weren’t in my way,” Simon argued. He didn’t leave the physical contact between them. “C’mon, don’t be like that. Besides, you might even enjoy my absence and the independence it’ll give you.”

Michael hadn’t the courage to tell Simon just how impossible that would be for him. And he was so embarrassed and ashamed of his weakness that he couldn’t look at Simon then, either; he stared across the room instead and searched for his strength in its four walls.

Simon stood. “Let’s go buy me a drink,” he encouraged him. “I have a toast to make.”

* * *

Kamm raised an eyebrow. “You liked it when he touched you,” he observed.

Michael wasn’t ashamed. “Yeah. So?”

“You enjoyed his physical affection.”

“There wasn’t much of it, but I did, yes. I think because it was the only real affection I got. But it wasn’t sexual—”

“Were your parents demonstrative?”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t the same.”

“Sounds like you did need him, then, as much as he needed you.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I needed him as much, but he cared about me more. Or maybe he needed me more when we were kids and I needed him more when we grew up.”

“Why?”

He took another guess. “Because he’d survived his childhood, went on to have a life, like you said, and I was stalled somewhere along the way, and didn’t have one. I made up the emptiness with his friendship.”

“It all makes sense,” Kamm agreed. “But what stalled you?”

Michael offered up the only answer he had: “I didn’t want the friendship we had to end, I suppose.”

“But it did end,” Kamm reminded him. He turned in his chair and made it squeal momentarily by the action. “It ended the night you decided to covet your brother’s wife.”

“That it did,” Michael conceded. He felt embarrassed and guilty and deeply disappointed in himself when he thought back to those final days in Los Angeles.

“Why did you do it?” Kamm asked. “Why would you give up something that important on a whim?”

“I was lonely.” He picked at one of his shirt buttons, then stared, unseeing, at his hands.

“For a woman?” the doctor asked.

He reluctantly lifted his eyes and looked at Kamm as he confessed. “For him,” he said.

* * *

Two cats. Salt and Pepper. “The only salt in the house,” Michael liked to say. The black one met him at the front door, rubbed against his legs, softly mewed, and awaited dinner. Salt sprawled on the marbled entryway, contented, but alert. She rolled over when Michael passed her, then leaped to follow them into the kitchen. The cats then waited on the counter, paced and meowed loudly, until he opened the pet food cans and poured the contents into their respective dishes.

He patted the animals before he left the room, satisfied that he’d obliged their desires. Then he picked up the DVD movie he’d dropped on the foyer table on his way in. As he passed the hallway-length aquarium, he tucked the disc under his arm and hoped, by watching a few brightly colored fish through the tempered glass, that the emptiness he felt would dissolve in their bubbles.

His cell rang a couple of times, but he ignored it, except to use it to order dinner, and then he immersed himself in the movie he’d rented while he waited for its delivery. After it arrived, he ate in the silence of his kitchen, one cat in his lap, the other on the table beside him. He killed the rest of the evening similarly; he read through the evening paper, played with a crossword puzzle for a few minutes, and then retired to the upstairs bedroom for some mindless television.

The phone rang again. That time he recognized the number as one that originated from Simon’s house, so he answered it. Emily was on a search for Simon, and Michael wasn’t certain, after a moment, whether he should have told the woman that her husband wasn’t with him. “You tried the studio, I take it,” he surmised.

“Yes.” Her voice sounded deeply concerned. “They told me he left an hour ago. I thought he was with you—or, rather, I hoped he was. You don’t think he’s …”

Michael closed his eyes and listened to the silence on the phone line while he wondered how it felt to be her, to be Simon’s woman, and not know where he was. “No,” he finally answered perceptively, “I don’t think he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be. He probably took Jeff home and they got to jammin’, and he’s gonna wish by morning that he didn’t have that last drink.”

“That’s the thing,” she said. “He’s been drinking a lot lately, hasn’t he?”

Michael opened his eyes, mildly startled by her disclosure. “I hadn’t really noticed, but if he’s not home in another hour, call me again, okay? We’ll hunt him down together.”

Before her voice broke into a cry, she thanked him, and he went back to his television, despite the hollow stab he felt in his stomach. He’d worked hard that day on a slide presentation he’d been commissioned to finish by summer’s end; it kept his mind preoccupied with production deadlines and stimulating visuals. And then he escaped to the quiet of his soul-reflecting rooms to spend time alone. But the solitude didn’t hurt him. It was the hollowness, the knowledge that he could change it if he wanted, coupled with his resentment because he didn’t want to change it, because he didn’t have the courage to change it even if he wanted to.

He pressed the mattress with a heel and the water rolled gently beneath him, its motion sustained by a simple elbow nudge. The cats lay with him, one tucked under his arm, the other pressed against his calf, while the television flashed bluish two- and three-second images, erratically pulsating its light onto white walls in the dark of his bedroom.

He reheard Emily’s trembling voice in his head and felt sorry for her. She had always been kind to him. She baked him pastries one afternoon because Simon had told her he’d lost a sale he’d wanted, and she brought them over fresh from her oven, still warm. She also brought television programs to his attention, obscure things she said he might find interesting—and always he did. And when Simon wasn’t around to take his call, she was more than an answering service: she talked with him, sometimes just small talk, but mostly she seemed curious about him, as if she cared about who he was and what he did in a day. Perhaps she understood that Simon’s best friend would have to be someone special; he was, after all, special to Simon, and therefore he would be special to her, too.

Michael wanted to hate her. He wanted to blame her for the insecurity he always felt. If she hadn’t taken Simon from him on a certain level, he wouldn’t feel so threatened by her. At the same time, he knew that was absurd. Emily could give Simon life experiences he couldn’t. He knew that. He understood and even forgave it. Any woman of Simon’s would make him jealous. Any woman could pique Simon’s interest and Michael would feel threatened because he didn’t have Simon’s undivided, completely devoted attention.

He rolled over on the bed and took the cat with him. She didn’t seem to notice or even mind the waves that rolled with them. “I’m a fool,” he barely whispered, to no one—because Emily was all alone, too, in that big house of Simon’s, wondering where he was that night, and there Michael lay, feeling mostly sorry for himself.

He couldn’t afford the worry Emily felt. He couldn’t wonder about Simon’s whereabouts that night; such musings usually left him physically sick. Instead, he hit the volume on the remote near his hand and drowned his hint of nausea in sound.

* * *

“When I asked you to speak impulsively and share what you were thinking while we watched Simon on the screen, you said, ‘He loved me.’”

Michael remembered.

“So, did he?” Kamm asked. “Did he love you?”

“I think he did.” In his heart, at least, Michael was certain of it. He stared at the floor for a while from where he sat on it, near the wall furnace and the window, and embraced his knees. “If he didn’t love me, I know he cared about me, anyway.”

“Did he ever tell you he loved you? Did he use those words?”

Michael couldn’t remember. “He didn’t need to use them. He loved me just the same. It was a feel thing, not a word thing.”

Kamm sat with his feet on his desk, leaned back in his chair, appeared peaceful and comfortable, and enjoyed the relaxed nature of his client. “And why do you suppose he cared so much about you?”

Michael shrugged with his face and thought aloud. “Because I helped him to hear himself, to know in his heart that he needed to leave the house, to leave his father behind, to take back his body and his identity and his self-respect.”

“That’s what you did for him,” Kamm pointed out. “What I want to know is why Simon cared about you so much, why he loved you, not why he loved what you did for him. Or maybe that’s it? He loved you for what you did, not for who you are?”

Michael didn’t know how to explain it, but he made a stab at an explanation. “He identified with my creative talents, I guess. I mean, we didn’t share the same art form, if you will, but we understood and respected each other for the ‘masterpieces’ we created, but also for the sacrifices we each made because of our obsessions.”

“Such as?”

“Such as the amount of time we each spent with our respective ‘equipment’—him with a musical instrument and me with a camera—instead of girls.”

Kamm refocused. “You said Simon lost his virginity about the age of sixteen, after he left home. So he left home before he was of legal age, before he was eighteen?”

The floor blurred as Michael stared at it and tried to remember. “He left when he was fifteen.”

“And where’d he go?”

“He stayed with me. I took care of him.”

“He stayed with your family; they took him in?”

Michael frowned as he fought for the details. “I don’t think they had anything to do with it,” he recalled; his thoughts had come up empty. “We both left at fifteen. We took care of each other.” His mind flashed again to the payphone, the one at which he and Simon stood there on the street in the rain. He was cold, he remembered—and shivered. “Simon called the police,” he then said aloud. He heard himself and wondered why he’d said such a thing in the context of Kamm’s questions.

“And?” Kamm asked. “Why did he call the police?”

“I don’t know.” He guessed instead. “I suspect he called the police when we both left home to let them know we were all right.” That had to have been it because the police never looked for them. Had they?

“Why did you leave?”

Michael looked at the doctor and right into his innocently curious eyes. “What?” he asked, not certain he knew then what he’d been asked.

“Why did you leave home?”

“To take care of Simon.”

“Because your family wouldn’t?”

He rubbed his forehead. “They didn’t know.”

“They didn’t know you were taking care of Simon?”

“They didn’t know I was gone.”

“They didn’t miss their son?”

That didn’t make sense to Michael, either. He closed his eyes, squinted, and tried to force his memories into something more vivid, something tangible. “All I remember is they didn’t come looking for me.”

Kamm shifted in his chair which made Michael think Kamm was uneasy with the answers he heard. “So you and Simon took off at the age of 15 and no one went looking for you, either of you. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Did he remember that correctly? He thought hard. “Well, I know his father didn’t care that he’d gone and his mother was relieved that he had.”

“I got that,” Kamm explained and he sounded frustrated. “When you beat the shit out of a boy and sexually abuse him, I suppose you don’t want to involve the police when he disappears. And I understand and appreciate his mother’s position. But I’m asking about your family, about your parents, and why they wouldn’t look for you.”

Michael had to relinquish the effort to remember because doing so brought on another of his headaches. He could only make one last guess for the doctor. “Simon and I were inseparable since the day we met; I think they felt as long as we were together, we’d be all right.” He noticed the doctor squinted at him.

“So what did you boys do; how did you survive?”

“We picked up odd jobs here and there. We lived in a tent in the mountains in the summer and under any roof we could find in winter. I don’t know; what do young boys do with themselves anyway?”

“You tell me.”

Michael shrugged.

“Did you go to school?”

“Off and on, I think. But it didn’t matter. We already knew what we were going to do with our lives—and we’ve done what we set out to do.”

“So your two professor parents also didn’t mind that their son skipped school?”

“I don’t know, doc,” he answered, annoyed. “It wasn’t a time I remember too well. I’m sure they cared. And I’m sure I don’t remember it exactly.”

“But you remember sitting on a hospital bed, looking into the hallway and seeing Simon out there, talking to the police.”

The image flashed in Michael’s mind again. “Yes,” he said. But then it still didn’t make sense so he tried another explanation. “I think I was remembering something that happened to him, and that it was actually me in the hallway talking to the police, and he was in the bed, remember?”

Kamm nodded. “Do you have other memories from his perspective?”

Kamm’s question was odd; in fact, it was absurd. Michael had only made one recollection mistake; it didn’t have to mean he had confused his life with Simon’s overall. He shrugged at the doctor, unable to even dignify the question with a response.

“Were you ever hospitalized?” Kamm asked.

“Not back then, no, I don’t think so.”

“When, then?”

“I was in the hospital for a couple of days after he beat the shit out of me when he found out I’d had an affair with Emily. But that was just over a year ago. That’s the only time I remember being hospitalized.”

“And there’s no Simon standing in the hallway talking to the police in that memory?”

“No.” He was certain enough to answer quickly. “Simon was nowhere to be found after he tried to kill me. He disappeared into another one of his drug-and-alcohol binges.”

Kamm tapped a book on his desk with his pencil as if he could flush out the truth by doing so. “Let’s get back to your youth. Why would you leave home to be with Simon?”

“So I could take care of him.”

Kamm repeated himself. “Because your family wouldn’t—and if they wouldn’t, why wouldn’t they? Did they not like Simon after all? Did he do anything to lose their respect?”

That wasn’t it.

“Did they think you and he were lovers and felt ashamed—”

“No.” He quietly laughed at Kamm’s absurd notion. “They never thought that. But I don’t remember why we decided to run away. You’re asking me to go back nine years.”

“But I’m asking you to go back to a rather significant moment in time, too. Don’t you think it’s something you should be able to recall?”

Michael stretched one of his legs along the floor and rested an elbow on his bent knee while he held his forehead. “When I try to remember certain things,” he admitted, “I get irritable. I get headaches. That time in our lives was pretty rough—”

“Apparently.”

“—and I don’t like thinking about it.”

“And which part is so difficult? Remembering what your family did or didn’t do, experiences you had with Simon, the police involvement, what?”

He also didn’t like feeling cornered. “Parts of all that. And if you keep asking, I’m going to leave.”

“Well, let’s stay with Simon then, since he’s our catalyst. Do you think you may have had personal experiences with him during that time that you regret or feel so ashamed of that you have a hard time remembering too many details from that time?”

“As in sexual, you mean,” Michael clarified. He returned the doctor’s gaze. “You mean to ask me—again—if I had any sexual experiences with him.”

“Sexual. Emotionally private. Anything. Anything personally intense.”

Michael inhaled slowly, exhaled long, and rubbed his forehead to ease the pain. “We didn’t hide out in caves and jerk each other off, if that’s what you’re asking.” The annoyance he felt was measurable.

“Well, maybe it wasn’t so mechanical.”

Michael quickly stared at Kamm to unravel his meaning. “We loved each other, so we made love, like that, you mean? I told you we never sexually touched each other. You think we did and I just don’t remember?”

Kamm waited for Michael to deny or confirm his own question and when he didn’t, he asked instead, “Maybe Simon needed you to do things you wouldn’t normally have done so he could feel loved.”

Michael thought Kamm had carefully chosen his words just then and he nervously chuckled at them. To answer any of those proposed accusations made him uneasy. Yet he didn’t know how to not confront them. “Like, he only felt loved if someone beat him and raped him and forced him to suck them off. So I indulged him in those ways to make him feel wanted. That’s what you mean to ask me?”

Kamm waited again.

Michael then scanned the floor in search of what he knew to be the honest truth so he could put an end to Kamm’s obnoxious curiosity. He knew such behavior would have made Simon’s life all the more tragic. “I’m not a complete asshole, doc,” he defended himself. “I had an affair with his wife, which admittedly makes me somewhat of an asshole, but I never would have abused Simon even if he wanted me to. I’m not a violent person. I’m not a pervert. I would never have obliged him like that. And I never laid a hand on him anyway—not in the way you’re implying, especially not that way,” he added with conviction and annoyance. “Before the affair, I hurt his sensibilities sometimes, but I never hurt him.”

* * *

Michael took the fresh dandelion off the dashboard and twirled it in his fingers. “Is this for me?”

“To look at,” Simon grinned. When Michael put the flower to his mouth, Simon caught his wrist and stopped him. “To look at, I said. I got that one out of the yard.”

“Would that be the same yard you keep the dog in?”

“’Fraid so. But you could wear it.”

“I’m through that phase,” Michael joked.

Simon was at the wheel of his car and sped them toward the marina. They were dressed in shorts and tank tops, rubber soled shoes and baseball caps. It was a free day. “I brought an ice-chest full of garbage and some of that, you know, health crap you like to eat,” Simon said, “so no whining. What have you got there?” He reached, in vain, for the large manila envelope Michael held in his lap.

“Our next project.” He kept the envelope out of Simon’s reach. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Leave it to you to find something to work on. This escape is for fun. So what’s it this time? Underage mothers who eat Greek olives every hour on Tuesdays?”

“Not that exciting.”

“Have you taken me up on that porno suggestion?”

“Well, you could say it’s obscene.”

“I like it already.”

In the marina, anchored boats bobbed against the docks that groaned their resistance. It was a photographer’s paradise. An Oregon or Mexican coast would be more ideal, Michael mused, but still he wouldn’t trade the crispness in the air, the salty breeze, the seabirds overhead, or the sights and smells that piqued his interest in seafarers for anyplace without Simon. On the boat, Michael had Simon’s undivided attention; they would escape from deadlines and cell phones and live in the now.

Simon busied himself with gauges and fuel levels before he asked Michael to untie the boat from the dock while the engines reverberated. Michael hugged the guardrail as the yacht hummed them through the marina of boats and sunbathers toward the open ocean. He was overwhelmed again, as he was always, endlessly, by his fascination of speed and steel aloft the great sea, and then by the wonder of other nations in the ocean’s deep recesses. When they anchored not too far from shore, he leaned over portside and tried to touch the cool water with his fingers—but it was just inches out of reach.

“That’s one way to catch a shark,” Simon observed.

“If you weren’t so afraid of animals, you might like them,” Michael countered.

“I like ’em just fine.”

“Yeah,” he noted, watching Simon remove the steak he had brought for himself and prepare it for the barbecue, “you like to eat them. There’s a significant difference.”

“I thought about being a vegetarian.”

Michael approached him to encourage the remainder of Simon’s revelation. “But?”

“But then I looked at you and I thought, well, ‘protein is a good thing.’”

Michael nudged him as if to push him overboard. “You don’t know shit.” He opened the ice chest and searched for something to kill his own hunger. “Lettuce? You brought lettuce? You thought that would be enough for me?”

“That’s for both of us; I thought you’d make one of your famous salads. And I put a can of that imitation hamburger in the pantry. You like that, don’t you?”

“Hey Mikey!”

“Besides, I’ve got fruit and bread and olives and things in the refrigerator, so if you can’t take the heat, get off the boat.”

The water slapping the hull and the faraway cry of a lone seabird were the only other sounds to be heard as Michael sunned himself on the bench seat in the boat’s stern. He closed his eyes and exposed his face to the sky to absorb its healing warmth of sunshine. How he loved the open ocean.

And how he needed space with just the two of them in it.

After a while, he heard Simon fight with that can of imitation hamburger and mumble something about the ‘garbage some people will eat.’ Then he listened to him whistle a tune after he succeeded in his endeavor. Sometimes he just listened to Simon’s silence, imagining that Simon, too, was caught in the ocean’s vastness, in staring out over the sea to where the land met the sky, leaving life’s frustrations on the thin line of the horizon.

Michael dozed until Simon shoved a plate against his chest and woke him. “Soup’s on,” he said. He nearly dropped the plate on him because Michael hadn’t accepted it soon enough. “Eat up. I hear that stuff goes rancid if it’s not eaten five minutes after it’s cooked.”

Michael took the plate, squinted a drowsy glare at him, appreciated the hint of Simon’s affection for him disguised in his sarcasm, and then affectionately called him an “asshole.”

And Simon, who never missed the opportunity to return the sentiment, replied, “It takes one to know one.”

“We could do this every weekend, you know, like we used to. ‘Skip school.’”

“We could—if you hadn’t talked me into a contract with Music Box Records.”

“Blame me for your fame and fortune.”

“One day, I may. So, tell me about this proposition of yours.”

“Later.”

“Now. C’mon, tell me about it now. Let’s get past it so we can talk about something important instead—like sex.”

“You can’t say I didn’t try to stop you.” He dutifully retrieved the manila envelope and then gave Simon an overview. “I’d like to branch out into video, you know, produce a mini-documentary that represents, in a nutshell, things I want to tell the world, such as what humans do to animals—and I need a score, something to capture the mood, the extent of the kind of widespread, commercialized, institutionalized cruelty we inflict on animals. The pictures are, as they say, stories in themselves, so maybe you’ll want to wait until after you’ve eaten before you look at them.”

Simon set aside his plate with a steak and a fresh salad on it and held the photographs in his lap. He slowly browsed them while Michael watched him. A frown appeared in Simon’s brow, just as Michael suspected it might, as if Simon was more confused than offended. It reminded him of the first time Simon looked at his photographs, on that day they’d met, and with such an intrigued intensity.

Time slowly passed. The boat dipped and rolled. Silence cradled them. In Simon’s disconcerted expression, Michael saw the awareness, the step up in consciousness, that Simon experienced while he examined the photographs, the same moral dimension he hoped to reach in others by the documentary. He knew then that he’d chosen the most compelling images.

Simon lifted his head and solemnly stared at Michael. He didn’t smile. There wasn’t the usual sarcasm in his tone or even in his words when he spoke. “You did this on purpose.”

“Did what—I mean, exactly?”

“Handed me these while I was eating.”

“You wanted them. I warned you.”

“But, you knew what was here,” and there was a cry in his voice, as if he were angry at Michael for the hurt the pictures had caused him. “I had no idea.”

“So maybe you’ll listen to me next time.”

“This is …” He lowered his eyes to the photographs, then turned his head away again. “That’s a cow, isn’t it?” he asked. He shoved the pictures back into Michael’s hands.

Michael looked at the top image. “Yeah.”

“What are they doing to it there? I mean, God, man, it isn’t alive like that, is it?”

“It’s dying, but, yes, in that picture it’s still alive.”

“What’s with the hook in its face?”

“They’re making hamburger.” Michael was actually surprised by Simon’s reaction; Simon was the unaffected one—or so he’d thought.

“You’re saying that hook’s smack through its face like that and it’s still alive?”

“They have to control the animals in order to cut their throats.”

“Why don’t they just shoot them, you know, make it less cruel and all? Why does it have to be so barbaric?”

“Well, that’s the point some people are trying to make, you understand? At 300 animals per second in this country, there’s little time for ‘clean killing.’ And there’s no easy way to die, do you see that, too? Nothing with a face wants to die. The animals fight for their lives, every single one of them, and right up to the very end. They scream, kick, writhe, panic, and struggle because their very lives depend on it.”

“I don’t want to hear about that.”

“My point is that humans have devised means to overcome their struggles—like planting gigantic steel hooks into their living faces to hold their heads still so they can cut their throats. Did you think because you don’t see or hear the animals that they go willingly to the ovens?”

“I don’t think about it,” Simon admitted. “But I never thought it was like that, you know?” He stared at Michael. “Seals being clubbed, bloodied animals caught in traps, research monkeys with their eyes sewn shut—that’s some portfolio you’ve got there.”

“I told you it was obscene.”

“This is disturbing stuff, Mikey. I can’t see how you’d get it aired.”

“That’s why I need you. Your music, your name, your connections.”

Simon thought a minute, but didn’t commit. He rose from his chair and anxiously paced a few steps. “I know how badly you want to stop all the wrong in the world, but I think I’ve had enough violence in mine; I’m not sure I can look at what I think I’d have to see in order to do this for you. I don’t even know how you—of all people—can look at it. How can you care as much as you do about animals and look at that shit?”

“If I don’t look at it, I can’t do anything about it.”

“It’s shocking stuff, man. I thought there were laws against that sort of thing. I thought animal killing of this kind was something only uncivilized people do.”

“Reality check: killing isn’t civilized. And that’s why I want to produce this one. I appreciate why the pictures you’d have to look at—let alone in the parade of a slideshow mixed with some video—would disturb you, so I don’t make this request lightly. But I think the message is important, don’t you?” He really wanted Simon’s help and hoped to convince him. “So what’s wrong with trying to stop even a little bit of violence on this planet? In some roundabout way, it might make amends for some of the violence in your past. You can help me, Simon, or you can sit back down in your comfortable chair there and eat your beefsteak before it gets cold.”

“Cheap shot,” Simon snapped—and then he grabbed his plate and flung his steak as far as he could from the boat. “You’re a fucking asshole,” he then told Michael.

“To quote a friend of mine,” Michael replied, “it takes one to know one.”

* * *

Michael looked out the window from a chair he pulled to the center of the doctor’s small office because that was the only place in the room where he could enjoy the warm sun. If he looked hard and long enough, he thought he might be able to see all the way to California, but only a partly clouded sky blocked his view. He wondered then if his cats and aquariums were faring well, but he knew better than to be concerned; he’d made the most appropriate provisions and he implicitly trusted their caretaker. He sensed the quiet in the room after a while and faced his elder.

“Where were you just then?” Kamm asked.

He shrugged.

“Looking for Simon?”

“No, not that time.”

“Did you need a momentary escape from something?”

Michael stared at Kamm. “Something like that.”

“Why don’t you go home, back to Los Angeles?” Kamm suggested.

Michael laughed at the idea. “I’d feel lonelier there.”

Kamm puzzled over his patient’s answer and then asked, “You don’t think he’d try to kill you again, do you?”

Michael didn’t think so. “His rage ended soon after. But he hurt me a lot more with words than he ever hoped to hurt me with his fists.” Or that whiskey bottle he’d broken on Michael’s face. “At least when I hurt his sensibilities, I did it for a good cause.”

“He said things just to be mean?”

Michael scanned the skyline, the tall buildings and their silhouettes against the gray. Los Angeles was a lot further away than just by a thousand miles. “Sometimes.”

“You once said Simon found solace in drugs and alcohol,” Kamm reminded him. “What were Simon’s demons aside from the expected and the obvious?”

Michael lowered his stare to the floor. “Me, probably,” he answered with a sad laugh.

“You were the one constant in his life. Why do you suppose he turned to chemicals and fermented fruits to manage his troubles, especially when he had you?”

“I like the way you put that, doc.” He parted with a small smile. “It makes those things that destroyed him seem less evil.”

“I thought you’d enjoy a little sarcasm.”

“Simon’s demons,” he then mused quietly as he scanned the floor’s wood slats at his feet without seeing them. “I suppose he was afraid he’d get so far out there, publicly, I mean, that he’d lose that ‘ignorance is bliss’ lifestyle and the escape it gave him—both of which he desperately needed.”

“But, in the end, he did lose them.”

“The irony,” Michael noted. He stared out the window to the then-familiar skyline and wondered how Simon fared, and whether the man had ever gotten back any semblance of the life he’d wanted.

“Did you and he ever talk as adults about the abuse he suffered?” Kamm’s questions changed Michael’s thoughts.

“Yeah, actually, we did. A few times, in fact. I think he needed to talk about it so he could hear himself; listening to me was one thing, but to actually hear his own thoughts I think went a long way in his ability to understand that he wasn’t responsible for what happened to him.”

“Did he share details with you? Was he that comfortable talking about it?”

Michael flashed onto the two of them, alone on their boat, discussing Simon’s past. “It was pretty brutal stuff,” he remembered with a shake of his head. Without looking at the doctor, he talked without premeditation. “His father would beat him up, verbally degrade him, you know, call him insulting names and put him down for his poor schoolwork and such—and then, after he’d succeeded in demoralizing him, he’d rape him.” Michael felt nauseated by the images such memories gave him. “Simon said his father would restrain him to rape him, tie or chain him, in other words, and usually in their garage workshop where Simon’s mother couldn’t hear them. If Simon didn’t do exactly as he was told, his father would find some excuse that day to beat the shit out of his mother. And more than once he strangled her in front of him till Simon promised ‘to be a good boy.’ Can you believe that shit?” He looked at Kamm.

“But nothing like that ever happened to you.”

Something like that had, but Michael used humor to relieve himself of the pain. “Like father, like son,” he said. “Simon tried to kill me, remember? Do you think he learned from his dad that you handle your problems with your fists?”

“I think Simon had a natural reaction when he found out you’d slept with his wife, though maybe he went too far in the punishment. But I don’t think there are many men who wouldn’t have taken their fists to you.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” he surrendered.

“But that really wasn’t my question,” Kamm clarified. “What I wanted to know was, nothing like that ever happened to you? Your father never beat you?”

“No.”

“Never sodomized you?”

He was annoyed again to be asked such questions, but he answered nonetheless. “No, of course not.”

“Your father never threatened to kill your mother?”

“Never. I can’t remember a single time when my father laid a hand on me—or her. My parents weren’t the violent kind.” He amused himself further, and hoped to do the same with Kamm to get him off his irrelevant questions, by saying, “I guess that vegetarian diet did make them more passive.”

Kamm studied Michael for a moment and contemplated what he had just disclosed. Then he asked, “Did you pity Simon?”

“I did—and still do. I feel really sorry for what happened to him. I think he’s been able to forgive himself for whatever role he thought he played in that scene, but I know it’s not something he’s forgotten. He carries that weight with him every day of his life and I’m sincerely sorry for him because of it.”

“Did you ever tell him so?”

“A number of times.”

“Did he ever share with you how those experiences may have affected his adult life and, particularly, his relationships with women?”

“No.” He couldn’t remember any such conversations.

“So he didn’t tell you everything,” Kamm noted.

Michael thought about that; there was probably more truth in Kamm’s notation than he’d ever realized. It was the alcohol and then the drugs that became Simon’s demons, a deadly combination that caused him to behave in ways that hurt everything and everyone around him.

“As much as I’ve enjoyed battling wits with an expert,” Kamm said, breaking a grin, “maybe you really ought to stop this exercise with me and go back to Los Angeles, see if you can work it out with Simon instead. What you boys experienced together, what you privately shared, ought to be worth something, even to him.”

The floor suddenly occupied Michael’s full attention. He stared at its wood slats, studied how carefully they touched one another, how skillfully they had been laid and varnished. Reaching out to Simon would have made him anxious had he given it any weight, but he knew there was no going back and nothing left to work out. The damage had been done and it was considerable. “Aside from his desire to bury me six feet underground, there are still too many whys that I don’t think even he can explain,” he admitted to Kamm, “too much I still want to know about myself, about why and how my life ended up here in the first place.”

“Fair enough.” The doctor pushed away from his desk and took a more comfortable seat on the sofa along the side wall of his office, closer to Michael. He stretched out his legs and settled into the cushions. Then he said, “Let’s talk about Emily.”

* * *

“I worry about you,” she told Michael when she joined him on the patio and handed him a glass of fresh lemonade.

He squinted in the sunshine at her and thanked her as he accepted the refreshment. He’d been stretched on a lounge chair in the warm afternoon while he waited for Simon to reprieve him. But Emily had emerged from the house instead, offered him a beverage, and told him she worried about him. He didn’t take her words too seriously, but when she pulled a chair up beside him and sat close, he sensed that she was being more than polite.

“I’m doing all right,” he said.

She leaned close enough to him that he could smell her perfume and noticed her wedding ring’s glistening diamond.

“Simon’s on the phone,” she explained quietly. “He’ll be a while.”

“I can wait,” he answered, glancing briefly at her. She’d never made him feel uncomfortable before, but there was something about her proximity that made him uneasy. “You don’t have to babysit me, if that’s your concern.”

She didn’t commit, so he looked directly at her. Such beautiful blue eyes she had; he never tired of seeing them, either. But that time they seemed sincerely troubled for him. He studied the line of her face, the way her blonde hair curled along it, and the shape of her lips. She and Simon had posed for a few commercially appealing photographs, but he still thought he’d like to shoot a black-and-white portrait of just her. Her eyes were striking and would no doubt illuminate a grayscale image.

“What?” he asked when he couldn’t elude her fond scrutiny of him. “I’m really all right.”

“Are you?”

He took a sip of lemonade and enjoyed the taste. “What makes you think I’m not?”

She shrugged. “I’ve known you now almost three years and I’ve never seen you with anyone.”

He looked away, across the patio and the pool, toward the back fence of the fragrant yard. His heart rate accelerated, and he took another swallow of the refreshment she’d given him, only that time it was out of nervousness and not thirst. “You mean you haven’t seen me with anyone besides Simon,” he corrected her.

“No other friends and no lovers,” she clarified, “though I suspect you’ve had some of those, no?”

“And from all that you surmise …?” He swallowed more than the drink.

“That you’re lonely.” Her words weren’t accusatory, but empathetic.

And Michael couldn’t help but notice. “Does it take a lonely soul to see one?”

“Maybe,” she softly replied.

They looked intently at each other for a lingering moment. He couldn’t guess why she may have felt that way; she’d had Simon pretty much to herself for a few years. “We know why I might be lonely,” he said, “because, as you’ve noted—you’ve never seen me with anyone: no friends, other than Simon, no girlfriends. But why would you be lonely?”

She held his gaze. “He’s busy—a lot more than he’s ever been. And maybe I’m homesick a little, too.”

“What shall we do about this place we’re in, then?” He was certain there wasn’t anything he could do about his own predicament; his attachment to Simon spanned more than a decade and went as deep.

“We should go on a picnic,” she suggested—and then she smiled at him in a way that lit up her eyes all the more.

“Just you and me?”

She heard movement inside the house and spoke close to a whisper. “Yes, just the two of us.”

Simon emerged on the patio with his cell phone pressed to his ear. He intercepted Michael’s line of vision, forced his brother to look at him instead, and interrupted the private conversation he had with Emily. Then he nudged the lounge chair Michael sat on. “Would you mind if I took a raincheck?” he asked. “I’m actually going to have to work today.”

* * *

It rained again and made Michael long for the sunshine and the uneventful climate of Southern California, despite how he enjoyed the sound of the rain as it fell on the asphalt outside and against the window. Perhaps there was no such thing as summer in Colorado, but he felt unusually melancholic that day, and musing about such things didn’t help him.

Kamm noticed. “Is it harder for you to tell me about Emily because of where things led than it is for you to tell me about Simon’s abusive childhood?”

Michael shrugged. Maybe. He didn’t know.

“Tell me how you felt when Emily came into Simon’s life.”

He was ashamed to admit it. “I was jealous. I was embarrassingly jealous, like Simon and I had been a committed couple and he’d taken up with another lover or something. I felt rejected and betrayed, if you can believe that.”

“I can.”

Michael laughed at the doctor’s conviction. “You figure pathetic is as pathetic does?”

“Given how you felt about him, I can understand why you might feel jealous when he gave his time to someone else—and in this case, his love, too. How did you resolve your feelings?”

“Simon resolved them,” he remembered. “He went out of his way to make me feel included, to foster a friendship between Emily and me, short of having me move into their house.”

“And you became friends with her?”

He stretched his arms over his head and then clasped his hands behind his neck as he thought about the nature of his relationship with Emily. He didn’t know any longer how to define friendship, so he offered to describe it instead.

“We were polite with each other—up until she invited me on that picnic. I often thought she resented me for always hanging around, but she never showed it; in fact, as I said, she seemed to have a bit of an interest in my welfare and would do little things to please me—gifts she’d give me, things she’d tell me—you know, like that.”

“She was married to Simon for how long?”

“Two years. They dated first for about a year, long-distance. She was from Oregon and met him when he passed through Portland. He eventually talked her into moving to Los Angeles to marry him and live happily ever after. Only they never got that far.”

“She his age?”

“A year younger.”

“What did she do before they met; anything?”

“She managed a small bakery, I heard. As Simon’s income increased, he talked her into abandoning it to live with him, and I think that’s when she began to feel most alone. Bored, maybe.”

“And she was pretty, you say?”

“Very. In a natural way, though. Simon was never into the glamorous type. He liked women closer to nature.”

“And did you like women ‘closer to nature’? Was she your type?”

“I look at everybody,” he reminded Kamm. He flashed a brief smile. “I’ve even posed you a number of times—admittedly without my camera. But if you’re asking me whether I’m attracted to a particular type of woman, no, not really. Everyone fascinates me. But more pointedly, was I drawn to Emily the way a man would be to a woman?” He paused to recall the three years she had been in both his and Simon’s lives and to truly explore his more private feelings. “After she put her hands on me,” he said, “I was rather taken by her, but before that, no, I can’t say I was on to her. I thought she was pretty, she was kind, she was a good person—but she was also Simon’s wife.”

“But after she put her hands on you,” Kamm noted, “she ceased being that last part, didn’t she?”

Michael shifted uneasily in his chair again. He didn’t like to talk about his betrayal, but he also knew it was necessary. His nervousness made it easier to hear Kamm’s questions, but he corrected him, too. “She stopped being his wife after his drinking started to get the better of him, and then she began to leave him, in her heart. That’s when she really noticed me.”

* * *

“Have you got a cigarette?”

Simon leaned against the building’s smooth stone exterior and stared toward a distant freeway where a train of red taillights and white headlights had mesmerized him. The moonless night was dark, but the city lights eased off the blackness and reflected in his eyes.

“You don’t smoke,” Michael reminded him. He stood several feet from Simon, faced him, and watched how the breeze tousled Simon’s hair and slapped a jacket lapel against his neck. He wished they stood there under different circumstances so it would be appropriate to take Simon’s portrait in that high-contrast light.

“That’s not what I asked you,” Simon answered him, annoyed, his voice lowered and almost slurred. “I asked you if you had a cigarette.”

“I don’t smoke. You don’t smoke. We’ve never smoked, remember? So why would you ask me for a cigarette?”

“Because I’d like to have one.” Simon pressed his shoulder to the stone wall, and added, “I’ve been smoking for a month now. I thought you knew that. Everyone else does.”

“And so everyone’s got a cigarette for you when you want one?” The idea irritated him. When Simon wouldn’t answer, he gripped Simon’s chin to get his attention. “Did you hear me?”

“Get off me,” Simon barked. He knocked Michael’s hand away. “Just get me a cigarette, for crissakes.”

“Later.”

Inside the building, a few hundred voices called Simon’s name as they anticipated the end of intermission. Michael listened to them, bemused. They couldn’t know about their hero’s intoxicated emotional condition that night. He’d fooled even those who adored him most.

Michael contemplated Simon’s desire for a cigarette, how his voice dragged when he spoke, and how unusually tired and drained he seemed. “I’m amazed,” he said, “that you can do this at all and be drunk off your ass at the same time.”

“I’m not drunk,” Simon defended himself. “It was something they gave me. But you’re right: it’s working. I’m doing great out there. No kidding, huh?” He massaged the inside of his left arm at the elbow.

Michael’s heart noticeably sped as the rage in the pit of his stomach boiled. “They stuck you with something?”

“Guess so. I remember they did.”

“With your permission?”

Simon rested the back of his head against the stone. “Does it matter? I got out there without falling on my ass in front of all those people—and they love me. Listen to them.”

An undercurrent chant continued to call Simon’s name; it crept out from the stage hall onto the roof where they stood and overlooked the city.

“What did they give you?” Michael asked.

“Fuck if I know.”

“This is bullshit,” he growled. He pushed away from the wall and paced momentarily. “I can’t believe you’d let this happen to you. Haven’t you been fucked with enough?”

“That’s a shitty thing to say to me,” Simon snapped.

“It’s a shitty thing you’ve let them do.”

“Try for once staying out of my business.”

“You are my business,” he argued. He hit the wall beside Simon with a fist and startled him. “And I’m going to mind it till I can’t anymore.”

“Then get me a cigarette.”

Simon’s demeanor suddenly mellowed, but it wasn’t enough to cool Michael’s anger. “Fuck, no.”

Simon smiled then instead.

“What’s so funny?” Michael angrily asked.

“I love you, man. You worry so much about me. I’ll be all right. You’ll see. You’re taking all this too hard. And speaking of hard cases, why isn’t Emily here? Do I embarrass her or something?”

“Or something,” Michael replied.

“What does that mean?” He rubbed the inside of his elbow again where the needle had penetrated him.

“It means you don’t give her enough time anymore.”

“So she stays away and that makes it better, does it?”

“She’s jealous.”

“Of who? You? I give you even less time.”

Michael felt awkward and agitated by their conversation. Simon had almost an hour left in his concert; it wasn’t an appropriate time to tell him what he knew—or felt, for that matter.

“Is she jealous of you?” Simon asked again.

“No.”

“Well, who, then?”

“Them,” he finally answered and he nodded toward the closed door that, once opened, would lead Simon back before the crowd that impatiently awaited him.

Simon turned his head and stared out over the ocean of city lights. “Tell her I’m doing the best I can.”

Michael cussed silently at himself. Simon was depressed, he could tell. They definitely needed to finish the conversation on the other side of the show. “She’ll be all right,” he told him in an attempt to cut off their difficult dialogue. “She just wants some of the time you’re giving them, that’s all. She’ll be all right. I’ll talk to her.”

“Talk to her,” Simon echoed him. He locked eyes with him to drive home his orders. “Tell her I’m okay, will you, for sure? Tell her I love her, too. Tell her I’m doing the best I can.”

The door opened behind them and a male voice broke their intensity. “Show time,” it said.

Michael turned away from the wall, but Simon caught his arm and abruptly stopped him. “Take care of her for me,” he said, then firmly added, “I’m depending on you.”

Distant lights reflected in Simon’s eyes, but Michael also saw a flash of hurt and fear and loneliness in them, too, and it momentarily frightened him. He made a stab at alleviating it. “I’ll have a cigarette waiting for you when you walk off—despite the fact that you’re …” He didn’t end his sentence; perhaps it wasn’t a moment for affection, either.

But Simon had known Michael a long time; he knew what he’d been about to say and maybe even needed to hear it. He squinted at him. “You’ll take care of me,” he said, finishing Michael’s thoughts, “despite the fact that I’m an asshole, is that right?”

Michael surrendered. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Simon squeezed the back of Michael’s neck. “Well, thank God for you,” he replied, “because you’re the only one who’s ever given a shit.”

* * *

“So, they got him hooked, did they?” Kamm asked. “And you? You tried to reverse it.”

“I thought I could.”

“Everyone who knows an addicted person thinks they can fix it for that person.”

Michael relaxed into the conversation. He slumped in his chair and crossed his ankles. “I guess because Simon seemed to want me to fix it for him, know what I mean? For a long time, while this shit was going down in his life, he got rather hostile, and he withdrew, especially from me. But every now and again, when things were really bad for him, he’d reach out—or so it seemed.”

“I don’t doubt that he did,” Kamm said.

“I just didn’t know what to do for him,” Michael explained. “I didn’t know how to do it—so naturally everything I did was too little and not enough. And there I was, the sober one, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, find a way out of his maze for him.”

* * *

The sharp rap at the door jolted Michael from his sleep. For a moment he thought the sound had come from the television that he had, again, fallen asleep in front of. But when the rap sounded a second time, he lazily rolled off the sofa to oblige the intruder, and called out that he was “Coming!” As he neared the door, he heard Simon say back at him to, “Well, hurry up, then, goddammit.”

Simon stumbled past him when Michael allowed him entry into the apartment and awkwardly found his way into the living room as Michael trailed him. He stroked a cat as he passed her and sank into the sofa cushions before he finally acknowledged his host. “You don’t mind that I’m here,” he noted, but it was more of a narrative than a question.

“You’ve been drinking,” Michael noted.

“And you’re perceptive—as usual.” Simon closed his eyes momentarily and then opened them to squint at him. “Have you got anything for me?”

“I don’t drink.”

“Can you get me something then?”

“It’s late. Why don’t you sleep it off?”

“I’m hungry.”

“I can make you something to eat,” Michael surrendered. “That I can do.”

“But willya?” Simon mocked a plea. “That’s the question.”

He helped Simon to his feet and they went into the kitchen together. While Michael heated a frying pan, Simon squatted before the cupboards and rummaged through cereal boxes.

“Haven’t you got anything in here besides rabbit food?”

“I’m making you a burger.” He then removed a lidded plastic bowl from the refrigerator and handed it to Simon. “While you wait, eat this. The sugar will get rid of that craving you’ve got.”

“Hamburger, huh? I thought we didn’t eat cows anymore.”

“I didn’t say it was hamburger, but you’ll like it just the same.”

He watched Simon open the fruit bowl he’d given him and examine its contents before he took a seat at the breakfast table and sifted through it. After a minute, he ate a few grapes. “Have you got anything to drink?” he asked again.

Michael set an orange juice pitcher on the table before him. And then a glass to go with it.

“I meant, do you have anything to drink, man—you know, drink?”

“This burger will only take a minute,” Michael told him, ignoring Simon’s request. “Eat what I gave you.” He poured juice into the glass for Simon. “Drink this, too. It’ll get rid of that tremor.”

When Simon finally obeyed him, he realized he had accurately described the man’s internal condition. He watched Simon eat most of the fruit in the bowl and guzzle the juice without pause.

“So what’s troubling you, anyway?” Michael asked. He placed a meatless hamburger patty in the frying pan and listened momentarily to its sizzle. Then he tried to sound as naive as he could, despite what he felt he already knew was the answer or could guess, so that Simon would talk to him.

Simon shrugged. “Emily doesn’t understand the pressure I’m under.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

“They want to make me famous.”

“I think that’s already been done,” Michael noted.

“Well, I don’t like it.”

“Tell them what you do want.”

“It won’t make no matter.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “They’ll take everything I own, don’t you know? A contract is a contract. I didn’t know what I was in for when I signed it. I’m screwed.”

Michael wondered how much Simon was capable of understanding right then, or if he’d even remember their conversation in the morning. He removed the patty from the pan and carried it, along with a few condiments, to join Simon at the table. “They work for you. Do you understand that? You tell them what you want, not the other way around. You needed them in the beginning to get you out there, but you’ve got them now. Can’t you get that through your thick head?”

Simon was amused. He looked exhausted, drained—but he was still amused. “You believe your little fairy tale,” he grumbled.

“Your agent did this to you, didn’t he?” Michael asked.

“Did what?”

“Made you feel like you’re nobody without him—like your talent is something he created for you.”

“What talent? I fondle guitar strings. Big fuckin’ deal. Your baby sister could have done that. I just want to play my music, man. What’s with these posters—have you seen that shit? And those tee-shirts. Christ, what am I, anyway—a commodity? Or is it a condiment?” He laughed at his joke as he picked up the ketchup bottle and waited for Michael to put his burger together.

Michael didn’t honor the humor. “So your agent has that to his credit: posters, tee-shirts, and programs. He hires the photographers, books the concert halls, and negotiates the contracts. But he can’t take credit for the way you write a song, and he can’t take the cheers for the way you dance across a stage. And let’s face it, that’s what those kids want a piece of: you. And they want you because of the way you look and the way you sound. Can you see that?”

“So I’m a rush, huh?”

“For some people, for a lot of people, yes.”

“Sick motherfuckers,” Simon mumbled. He searched for the last grape in the fruit bowl. “Give me a drink, willya?”

Michael slid another glass of juice in front of him.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s all I’ve got,” Michael reminded him. He ignored Simon’s frustrated sigh and instead prepared the burger for him. He shoved the plate to him and watched while Simon poured ketchup on it and then ravenously ate it. Neither of them spoke for a while.

“You’ve got seven more months on that contract,” Michael reminded him when Simon finished the last bite. “When it’s up, we’ll drive over to Columbia or Sony and you can cut a new deal, on your terms.”

Simon pushed the empty plate away from him. “You’re full of shit,” he said.

Michael wanted to talk about Top of the Chart hits and sold-out concert halls—Simon’s leverage—but he feared Simon wouldn’t remember a word that next day, so he abandoned the lecture. “Yeah,” he said instead, “maybe. But just the same, you’ve got less than a year to deal with this shit, so try to hang in there, willya?”

Simon’s eyes were tired. He looked into Michael’s. “For you?”

“For you,” Michael insisted. “Hang in there for you.”

* * *

BROKEN PROMISES

The sun shone into the small room for the first time in a while, so Michael took a seat in the bay window along the wall that overlooked the parking lot and watched the goings-on outside. An older couple stood beside a vehicle of obsolete make and model, and though Michael found the picture appealing, he didn’t wish he had a camera. Instead, he wondered what they talked about that was so important it prevented them from leaving the lot.

“What’s on your mind?” he heard Kamm ask.

Without looking at him, Michael answered, “Not much.” He then stared at the mountain range that was dwarfed by the city’s skyline; certainly the scenery there was stunning. “But if I was thinking, I was thinking I might just get out of the photography business altogether and do something worthwhile for a change—like hibernate. I don’t know. I haven’t got too strong an urge to do all that much anymore.”

“All good things in good time,” Kamm said.

Michael looked off to the west where the sun was still high in the sky and imagined what it would be like to go home again. Whatever else it might offer, it wouldn’t be an inviting place. When he’d left Los Angeles, Simon had just been released from the hospital after his drug overdose and, despite Michael’s effort to get an ambulance to him in time, Simon didn’t want anything to do with him. He made that clear in one phone call in which he gave Michael a further piece of his mind and no time for a reply. He could tell the doctor about the overdose and Simon’s follow-up call, but it was a pain he didn’t want to relive at that moment. Before him, the pristine skyline was a blur—like he hoped his past would be one day.

Maybe Kamm had spoken to him for several minutes, but he didn’t hear him until his name was firmly said, as if Kamm had already tried a couple of times to get his attention.

Michael looked at him.

“What’s the matter?” Kamm asked.

He shrugged.

“Come on. You know what you’re thinking about, so tell me.”

“I keep thinking how sick Simon was then,” he said. “I keep thinking I should have treated him differently. I should have treated him like he was sick and not just sarcastic. He was headed for a wall, one he tried to keep from hitting—I mean, it drove him to a really bad place, you know? And all the while, I acted like he was just full of shit; my attitude was: ‘What’s your problem, pal?’” He looked away again because the shame was more than he could bear at that minute and he didn’t want to explain it.

“You feel you were responsible.”

“Wasn’t I?” he shot back. “I mean, what kind of friend was I? When he got hurt, his anger was a symptom of something deeper and I ran from it like a scared little boy. I abandoned him at a time when he needed me most.”

“Did he need you more when he was addicted—or when he was a boy being raped by his father?”

“I don’t know. Maybe his addictions were more dangerous.”

“People with addictions have a tendency to take other people down with them, and you simply chose to save yourself. But Simon came out of his, didn’t he? Isn’t he clean and sober now?”

“So I hear.”

“And he crawled out of it without you, didn’t he?”

“So?”

“Well, what turned him around? It wasn’t you. It wasn’t Emily; she was gone by that time, you said. Who did it for him? His road manager? His accountant?”

“No.”

“Who, then?”

“He did it on his own.”

“Exactly. Somewhere along the line, Simon was faced with a choice and he decided he didn’t want to be an addict anymore. And no matter what you could have said or done during that time, he wasn’t going to turn his life around until he decided to do it for himself. So, as much as you can’t take credit for his sobriety, you can’t take the blame for his addictions.”

Michael turned his gaze out the window again. His hurt hadn’t abated. “Maybe,” he mumbled. “Still, I could have treated him better.”

“Did he treat you with kindness? Sounds like he was pretty nasty there toward the end.”

“He was sick,” Michael explained, defending Simon, as he met Kamm’s eyes with defiance.

“So, you weren’t entitled to your feelings,” Kamm assumed. “You weren’t entitled to the hurt his hostility caused you, is that it? ‘Gee, Simon, you don’t feel well, so shit on me.’ I don’t think that’s how you felt. I think you were hurt by Simon’s illness. He hurt a lot of people; sick people hurt the people around them. I didn’t say he meant to, that he intended to hurt anyone—it’s just the nature of the beast. I mean, Christ, what are you? Made of steel? You loved this man and you were losing him; he was losing himself.” Kamm had raised his voice because he wanted his patient to understand how much of a victim—not an enabler—he had been.

The room grew awkwardly quiet.

“Still, I let him down, doc,” Michael finally argued, staring into the past. “It was me who made him close that door between us. Not drugs. Not booze. But me.”

* * *

The room smelled of stale alcohol, and the curtains were drawn, so Michael parted them enough to let in a shaft of light. Despite the musky air, the room was at least clean and uncluttered, though a collection of wine and whiskey bottles littered the desk. Simon was asleep on his cot, on his side, facing the wall. Michael paused to study a composition sprawled on the bed beside him, but there weren’t any lyrics to it yet, just the notes, and he couldn’t read music so it was pointless to be interested.

It was four in the afternoon, a fall day, and kind of dreary due to the overcast, but the light that came through the window warmed the room. Michael nudged the cot with his knee and waited. When Simon didn’t budge, he hit it harder until Simon stirred.

It was easier to remember the Simon he had lost than to see him hide in the dark like he did. Michael’s hurt was buried under the resentment he felt—for alcohol, for Simon’s managers, and for the circumstances beyond his control. But mostly he felt a resentment for himself for allowing Simon to fall into that trap in the first place. He should have known better; he’d seen it coming, after all.

Simon covered his eyes with his arm and asked who was there.

“Someone warm and kind and generous,” Michael replied. “You know, your favorite person on earth.”

Simon rolled away from him and mumbled, “Come back later.”

Michael jostled the cot one more time. “I’m not leaving until you look at me.”

“So I can get another lecture?”

“You’re not going to do anything about this, I take it?” His hostility seeped into his tone. “You’re gonna beat the shit out of yourself until there’s nothing left, is that it? You’re gonna let your woman walk out of your life—”

“Fuck off.”

That was the first time Simon had ever told him to leave. “You should have used those words when it would have done me good,” he advised him in an attempt to deter Simon’s wish. “How long are you gonna live like this?”

Simon rolled over and squinted at him in the dim light. “I told you to fuck off—and you can take your so-called good intentions with you.”

“Turn that energy on yourself, man—”

“Did you hear me? Get out of my life.”

“I can’t.”

“Cuz you still need a pacifier?”

“When have I ever needed a pacifier?”

“You know when,” Simon warned him. “It’s time you let go.”

“What have I done except try to help you get your life back?”

“Is that what you call it? I call it harassment. I don’t need your fucking lectures. I get plenty of them from everyone else around here. The last person I need them from is you.”

“I should be different? Pretend I don’t care?”

“It’s got nothing to do with caring.”

“Doesn’t it?”

Simon climbed to a seated position and raised his voice. “Don’t give me any shit about how much you care, asshole. It’s been me taking care of you all these fucking years. And if it’s payback you’re looking for, you’re too late. It’s too late. Fuck you and go to hell.”

Michael was warned by the burn in his gut that his actions could be self-destructive if he wasn’t careful. Simon wouldn’t back down, so he had to. In that heated, painful moment, he wondered if he really did care about Simon or if he was simply afraid he’d lose him, as if losing Simon would destroy him somehow—and for some inexplicable reason.

“I’m sorry,” Michael said. “It kills me to see you like this, that’s all, and I don’t know how to handle it, except badly.”

Simon grabbed the telephone on the stand beside the bed. He punched and lit a button on the keypad. “I told you to get out. Maybe now you’ll start taking me seriously.”

Michael felt a sudden urge to hold Simon then, to hold him the way Simon had held him years earlier, there in the attic on that rain-swept night, to make all the hurt in his life go away—but the door suddenly opened behind him and when he turned around, he found a security guard in the lit doorway.

* * *

“So you went to see Emily, yes?” Kamm asked.

“I went to see her because I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Did you begin the affair with her that night?”

“No. And when I did have that affair, I didn’t do it to spite him.”

“What did you do with her that night then, the night Simon threw you out?”

“She was the perfect hostess,” he remembered. “We sat on the patio, near the pool and talked, the way we had been doing for a while, about the things that troubled us.”

* * *

“What are you in such deep thought about?” He heard her voice behind him; she’d asked him about something he had to think hard to answer.

“I was just wondering how the lights in the pool would reflect color if they were just an inch or two higher than they are now,” he said.

“Do you always see things in frames?”

He chuckled. “Always.”

She joined him on the adjacent lounge chair.

“Everything is a camera angle,” he explained. “But if I could just direct reality …”

She laughed, but it sounded insincere.

He looked at her. She stared at the pool, caught in her own musings. “And you?” he asked. “What are you thinking about so seriously?”

“Not something anywhere near as romantic as photo angles,” she said with a gentle smile. “I was remembering how close Oregon is from here and wondering why I don’t just pack up and go home.”

“And why don’t you?”

“I keep thinking things will get better, that he’ll realize he needs and wants me more than he seems to, and that he’ll pull up in that driveway—instead of you.”

Michael locked his hands behind his head and stared at the light ripples on the water’s surface; they turned the water turquoise and translucent blue. He couldn’t help but feel he would be somehow lonelier if she left.

“What are you doing now?” she asked. “I mean, work-wise?” She was still interested in his life, despite the emptiness in hers.

“A lot of different things, really,” he answered, “but mostly, I’ve been working on this animal exploitation art exhibit, an exposé of our treatment of those who are the most ‘less than.’”

“I didn’t know you cared that much about animals.”

“My parents were social activists,” he explained. “I was born animal rights environmental leftist political lunatic fringe.”

She quietly laughed. “So, when will you be done with the exhibit?”

He couldn’t shake the realization that she’d been interested in his life since he had known her, yet he hadn’t been involved at all in hers. He answered anyway, though he felt consciously selfish. “Before the end of the year, I hope. It’s been difficult, you know, under these circumstances, to focus on work, and I’ve got a lot of research yet to do.”

She offered to help and he agreed to let her. “Let’s meet for lunch and I’ll fill you in,” he said. He then looked at her for a moment and didn’t realize how intently he had done so until she looked away, shyly.

“Simon leaves soon,” she said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“He’ll be gone for two months.”

“I know that, too.” Remembering it only hurt his stomach.

“I’ll go with him,” she said, assuredly, “because maybe he’ll find he needs me. I don’t want to go home without having tried,” she further explained.

‘Home’ was Oregon.

He nodded that he understood, though he didn’t like it one bit. “If you need me while you’re gone,” he said, and she looked at him, already desperately, he thought, “call me, okay? I’ll probably be needing you back.”

* * *

Michael noticed how the doctor sat comfortably in his chair, his head cocked, and watched him with that keenly interested expression of his. He wondered what Kamm thought of him, what judgments he had passed, conclusions he had made after all their sessions together. “Do you think I’m a bad person?” he asked.

Kamm raised an eyebrow, surprised by his question. “I think you’re a troubled person,” he finally said after giving his answer serious thought. “I think you put your safety nets under the wrong places to some degree—so that, when you lost your balance—you were without the necessary tools you needed to cushion your fall. Do I think you’re a bad person? No. I’ve never thought that. But I do wonder sometimes what your life will be like when you escape this prison you’ve created for yourself. Perhaps that falling out with Simon was the best thing to happen to you; it’s just unfortunate it had to break the way it did.”

Michael didn’t know. He thought about what Kamm said, then looked out the window again for a while and reflected into days past. Somewhere out there were the answers, he knew. But he liked hearing that Kamm didn’t think he was a bad person. He had grown fond of the doctor, looked forward to time in his office, even to his questions, and wondered all the while where they might lead him. He looked at Kamm when he heard his name.

“What happened when Simon and Emily went away?” Kamm asked. “How did you feel?”

“I remember getting sick,” he confessed. He silently chastised himself for his reaction; it wasn’t a healthy response for an adult, and it embarrassed him even then. “I mean, I got physically sick, know what I mean? I didn’t sleep. I didn’t eat. I couldn’t work. I was on deadline with a project, which I missed, but lucky for me I didn’t need the money. After a few weeks, almost a month, I got used to his not being around. I mean, I survived on the idea that each day got me closer to his return and that he’d be home sooner than he’d been gone—all I had to do was hold out just that little bit more. But, God,” he whispered, unable to look in Kamm’s eyes, “I never felt more alone. The holidays were up and coming and I never felt as isolated from the outside world as I did when Simon was gone.”

“Where was your family during that time? Why not spend it with them?”

Michael couldn’t recall why he hadn’t spent the time with anyone else; perhaps it had been because he was so despondent over Simon’s absence. “I don’t think I was up to flying home,” he replied. “I’m not much of a traveler.”

“I thought your family still lived in southern California, near where you’d gone to high school; you said your parents taught at UCLA. When did they move back to Colorado?”

Michael blinked when he realized his mistake. “They never went back to Colorado,” he corrected himself. “When I think about home, I think about Colorado, that’s all, I guess. It’s why I’m here in Denver talking to you—instead of some other high-priced city shrink. The point is, I wasn’t feeling up to spending Christmas with anyone. But a month into Simon’s tour,” he said, “Emily showed up unexpectedly at my door. She was crying and almost hysterical. She said Simon had spent every night on the road in a stupor and that she’d stay up watching late night talk shows with his crew. So she came back.”

“And she came to you?”

“She was exhausted and frightened and confused when she arrived, so I had her stay the night. After that, I don’t know, it just kind of evolved into her staying there with me so she wouldn’t be all by herself in that big house of theirs.”

“Sleeping with you?”

He shook his head. “She had her own room; we got her a bed. But it was odd having her there at first, I admit—I’d never lived with anyone, not since those days Simon and I spent wandering the country when we were younger—and yet, it was also very natural for her to be there. We went back to her house and got a few things—like her little dog from the pet sitter and clothes and stuff. But we just had this unspoken agreement that we were going to stay together until Simon came back. And it was during that time that I really got to know her. I mean, I started to feel close to her because of her, not because of him.”

“What kinds of things did you do together?”

“We watched movies and made dinners. We worked on that animal rights project; we had that in common, it seemed. Long before she lived there with me, she’d gotten into horseback riding lessons, and since it isn’t that cold in L.A. in the winter, we’d sometimes hang out at the stables together, too. And we did other stuff—we ate out a lot, took bike rides and dog walks, that kind of thing.”

“It was a whole new world for you, I take it?”

He laughed when he revisited his memories of her and their time together. “It was very different from being with Simon. With him, I just had to be, you know? With her, I had to be somebody.”

“But you never got to take her up on that picnic, I guess, given that it was wintertime?”

He answered with another laugh. “Actually, I did. As I said, the winters aren’t much to speak of in southern California, but we also had an Indian Summer that December—and a picnic was the first thing she wanted to do.”

“Did it turn out to be as exciting as you imagined?”

“Yeah,” he replied, “but not for the reasons you think.” He stared at a framed lithograph of a meadow on the doctor’s wall and into the past. “I knew I was headed down a road I shouldn’t have traveled, and yet I couldn’t stop myself.”

* * *

“I’m glad you didn’t think my suggestion was inappropriate,” Emily told him, “though it did take you nearly two months to accept the invitation.”

Michael chuckled. He lay on the picnic blanket, in the shade, one arm crossed over his eyes, the other behind his head. He enjoyed the unexpectedly beautiful weather, the near solitude, the soothing sounds of nature, the meal she’d prepared and they’d devoured. “Better late than never,” he said. “Or is it, never pass up a free lunch?”

She neared him and spoke quietly. “Now whoever said this was a free lunch?”

He opened one eye and squinted at her to find that she sat cross-legged on the blanket beside him and held a dandelion for him to take. Her expression was playful and her beauty brought it all the more to life. Michael lowered his eyes to the flower and abandoned his impulse to reach for his camera.

“Simon says you eat them,” she explained.

“I’ve been known to consume a few.”

“I don’t believe it.”

He took the flower from her, removed its petals, and ate them. It had been a while since he’d had one, but he still enjoyed the bitter taste. Then he handed her back its stem.

She giggled. “Why do you eat dandelions?”

“Simon and I went to camp one summer,” he explained, reflecting back to their childhood, “and we took a ‘naturalist’ outing where they taught us volunteer survivalists what to live on should we ever be stranded in the wilderness. I would have starved if I had to eat the termites, so I ate a lot of flowers. I guess I’ve never outgrown the taste.” He studied her face and the curious way she looked at him. “A better question, though,” he added, “would be: why would Simon tell you such a silly thing about me?”

“Because he likes to talk about you.”

“Does he? Not lately, I’d imagine.”

Emily didn’t answer, but he heard her just the same.

He clasped the back of his head to get a better look at her. “So what else would you like to know?” It hadn’t escaped him that she’d invited him on a picnic for a reason other than to explore his culinary tastes. The day had seemed perfect to join her; he had been emotionally strong all morning. The right sleep, a good meal, and warm company had made it possible, too, he thought.

“You love him,” she said, “I mean, a lot.”

“That’s what you want to know? How much I love him?” He never had any doubt or confusion about his feelings for Simon, but he didn’t know whether he should share them with her. He decided to let her tell him instead. “Is that why you brought me out here into the middle of nowhere, so I’d be isolated and defenseless, to find out what my intentions are with your husband?”

She laughed—as he hoped she would. Then she straightened, clasped her bare feet, and startled him with an unexpected question. “Have you ever loved anyone else as much?”

He nervously smiled, but before he could find the words closest to the truth without giving himself away, she interrupted him.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I know what happened.”

He frowned at her, not certain he knew himself.

“I know about Simon’s father,” she explained, “and the terrible things he did. So I know why you and Simon are special to each other.” She paused and then carefully formed her next words. “But you’ve been relatively alone all these years and I can’t help but feel you’re still very sad.”

Michael thought about the way she described him. Sad. It was a personal attribute he’d never really considered. Perhaps there was more than one way to see it. “Or maybe I’m sad,” he offered, “because I’m relatively alone.”

She flashed a pretty smile. “Or that, too,” she said. “In the end, though, Simon’s the only person you’ve really ever loved.”

Michael lowered the back of his head to the cushioning blanket and admitted, “I’ve pretty much limited my world to his existence, yeah—and to my work.”

“No long-term girlfriend relationships?”

He studied her again and wondered about her choice of words, as well as her curiosity, but he answered just the same. “None.”

“Boyfriends?”

He chuckled. “No, none. And what is it with boyfriends? If you don’t see a man with a woman, you automatically assume he’s drawn to men?”

“Certainly,” she teased. “Isn’t that the natural progression of things?” Then she pointedly asked, “What about the occasional special lover? You must have had those, I assume.”

She had gotten too close to his insecurities. He nervously gestured with his hand that there hadn’t been any of those either. “Male or female,” he added dryly.

“You’ve had one-night stands, though,” she said, as if she already knew that fact; something she’d probably learned from Simon, so there would be no denial of it.

But he posed a question for her. “Why so curious about my private life? Hasn’t Simon let you in on my comings and goings—or lack of comings?” he joked. “He tells you I like to eat dandelions. He’s gotta have told you everything else.”

“He said you have one-night stands because you have a hard time reaching out to others.”

“Okay,” he confessed. “But why does it matter to you?”

She pursed her lips prior to her confession. “I get sad when I think about you being sad, when I think about what happened to you and Simon, and how alone it’s left you. And these days, I feel sad as well for me, for feeling all the more distanced from him. And I thought maybe …” She stared at her toes for a moment before she finished her thoughts. “Maybe we could help each other to not feel so sad.”

When Michael imagined she just made a play for him, it made him all the more nervous. Simon must have also told her he’d bedded married women, too. He crossed his arms over his chest to emotionally protect himself. “In this case, I think you’re asking the wrong guy for an affair.”

“I’m not looking for an affair,” she corrected him. Her words caused him to make contact with her blue eyes again. “I thought maybe if you hadn’t had any closeness in a long while,” she explained, “you wouldn’t mind sharing a little with me.”

He’d never had a more generous offer. It pleased his ego and made him smile. “But, like I said, you’re asking the wrong guy.”

“I meant closeness—without the sex.”

Her notion surprised him. “What do you have in mind?”

She shrugged, but he imagined she already knew what she wanted. “We could just be close,” she said, “you know, beyond movies and dinners, and spend more times like this. Hold each other, maybe.”

Was she being completely honest with him? He wasn’t sure. “But no sex,” he reminded her.

“No,” she sincerely replied. “I wouldn’t want to put you in yet another bad place with Simon.”

He didn’t fully understand what she meant by her last comment. He could have asked her about it, but he was distracted by a different subject. “If there were no Simon,” he asked carefully, “would there be sex?”

She appeared coy. “If you wanted it.”

“But you wouldn’t want it.”

She shyly smiled. “It might be nice,” she confessed. “But that’s a moot point, isn’t it? There is a Simon in our lives.”

If only he could forget. “Well, I guess I’m game for semi-free lunches and hikes in the mountains, and if you trust me, I’ve got arms to hold you with, too. But no falling in love with me, all right? Seriously. Do we have a deal?”

“Deal,” she said. And then she asked him if he’d hold her right then and there on the picnic blanket; she desperately needed the intimacy.

He surrendered. “I hope you’re not disappointed.”

Her confidence didn’t keep his own heart from speeding or the sweat from wetting his palms. He was amused and scared, nervous and excited all at once. And he must have unconsciously cued her because she lay down beside him, rested her cheek to his chest beneath his chin, and hugged him close.

Michael stared at the tree-covering overhead, its leafy canvas, the specs of blue sky through the canopy. Still, he didn’t find any solace there. He was surprisingly awkward and embarrassed and thought his face had flushed. There was something very exciting about her and yet very taboo at the same time.

“This is all there is,” she said, “unless you’d like to put your arm around me, too.”

He thought he should since she suggested it, so he embraced her and felt her small shoulders and delicate waist in his arms. “Like that?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered, sweetly. “Just like that.”

Michael was pleased with himself. He exhaled slowly and tried not to be audible. He realized he smiled and he wasn’t sure why. “What next?” he asked. He thought in that moment that she could take him if she wanted; Simon’s punishment seemed miles away.

“Next you dream about something peaceful,” she whispered, amused along with him by his tentativeness, “and I’ll tell you when your heartbeat slows down. And after it does, we won’t just be holding each other, we’ll actually be enjoying it.”

He pressed her close to him, amazed by her intuition and pleased by her feel. Then he laughed. Who would have thought he’d ever hold Simon’s woman in his arms?

* * *

“Did she make you want her?” Kamm asked.

“From that moment forward,” Michael confessed, recalling that first embrace fondly. “She knew what she was doing.”

“Woman’s intuition,” the doctor noted.

“Not just a cliché,” he echoed.

“I’ve got some questions,” Kamm added.

Michael chuckled. “I thought you might.”

Kamm put his feet up on his desk and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms. “You said once that you didn’t think Emily knew about Simon’s abuse yet it sounded from your recollection that perhaps she did.”

“I think she knew about the beatings, but not about the sexual abuse. I think she suspected there was more than he told her, but I really don’t think she knew. And I say that based on the way she privately perceived Simon, but also because I knew—from conversations I’d had with him—how ashamed and embarrassed he was by that part of his past, so I don’t think he told her. I could be wrong about that, but that’s my take.”

“What prior ‘bad place’ had you been in with Simon?”

“How do you mean?”

“Emily told you she didn’t want to ‘put you in yet another bad place’ with him.”

“I think she referred to the time he threw me out of his office.” His friendship with Simon had been relatively close and untroubled since its beginning—despite the occasional skirmish. “Or maybe she meant Simon and I were together in a bad place,” he surmised for Kamm, “not that we were in a bad place with each other.”

“We know the bad place Simon was in,” Kamm replied, “but how would you have been in it together?”

“Because we were … you know …”

“What?”

“Soul mates.” He smirked. He felt that way about Simon then, but it didn’t mean Simon had.

Kamm ignored the attribute. He thought Emily’s comments went back further. “Simon’s father never hurt you, you say.”

“We’re back to that?”

“Well, let’s at least rule it out.”

“Okay. I can tell you that he never hurt me, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to.” He was still certain the man had never laid hands on him. He’d only met him once. “Simon decided early on that I should stay away from his house, so we’d sneak over there for whatever reason we may have had—and that was rare—whenever Simon’s father wasn’t home. But on one particular day, somewhere between my knowing he beat Simon’s mother and learning that he sexually abused Simon, we accidentally ran into him. I’ll kick myself, forever,” he added, “because I should have done something then, on my own, about the predator signs I sensed in that man—before that promise I made to Simon to not tell anybody—but I didn’t.”

* * *

“Who are you?”

Michael had been pacing in the gravel driveway outside Simon’s garage, impatiently awaiting his return, when Simon’s father suddenly appeared on the porch steps. The boys had both known he was home because his car was parked on the street, but Simon had thought he could get in and out of the house unnoticed. He’d gone in to retrieve $27 he’d saved; they wanted it badly enough to risk the wrath of his father to get it.

But Michael didn’t expect he’d ever meet the man, let alone have him lean on the porch rail and focus entirely on him, asking him who he was.

“I’m Michael,” he answered as he halted in his tracks. His heart pounded and he silently begged for Simon to bail him out.

“Are you a friend of Simon’s?” Mr. Nelson asked.

He sounded friendly enough, Michael thought, but it was the way the man studied him that made him uncomfortable; that, and Simon had already told him that his father had a mean streak. Michael managed to say that he and Simon were classmates.

“Why don’t you come in?” Nelson asked. He was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a tee-shirt, slightly bald, and appeared a bit tired, as if he’d already had a long day at work by noon and had quit early. “What are you waiting out here for?”

Michael unnoticeably trembled and had to think fast. “Simon said he’d just be a second.”

“Well, why don’t you come in anyway? Let me get to know one of Simon’s classmates a little better.”

Michael hesitated. He didn’t want to anger Nelson, but his instinct told him to stay rooted. He noticed again that he was studied from head to foot.

“I don’t bite,” Nelson added, watching Michael carefully, “despite what Simon may have told you.”

“Simon hasn’t told me anything,” Michael insisted. To cover for Simon, he took a few steps toward the house. Nelson straightened, pushed off the rail, and looked pleased, Michael thought, that this new boy approached him. It caused Michael to hesitate again.

Nelson gestured for him to come closer, saying as he did, “C’mon. You can tell me what class you’re in together and help me figure out how to help him get his grades up.”

Michael and Simon didn’t share any courses; they’d met outside of the school day, in fact, after Johnson’s class. Michael couldn’t afford to be caught in a lie, least of all for Simon, but he walked toward the house just the same and prayed Simon would intercept him long before he got there.

When he got to the steps, Nelson asked him where he lived, but he didn’t have to answer because Simon suddenly emerged from the house. He shot Michael an “I’m sorry; I didn’t know he was going to come outside” look, and scooted past the man.

Nelson slapped the back of Simon’s head as he passed him and caused his son to flinch. “You scaring your friends away?” he gruffly asked. Michael was certain Nelson tried to sound playful, but the way he hit Simon when he walked by him was more telling of his intent.

Simon didn’t answer and he didn’t look back. “Let’s go,” he told Michael. “I got the money.”

Michael didn’t even say goodbye as he dutifully followed Simon to the street. He also couldn’t help but feel that Simon would be in serious trouble upon his return.

“Nice to meet you; Michael, is it?” Nelson called after them. “Maybe next time you’ll come on inside.”

* * *

“Simon’s father later accused us of being gay, though his words weren’t that polite. He told Simon we were ‘nasty little fag boys,’” Michael said, “and he didn’t want Simon to hang out with me anymore. From that day forward, he referred to me as ‘the queer kid.’ ‘You seeing that queer kid against my orders?’ and snide comments like that. So Simon and I began to hide from him in earnest.”

“What do you think was the man’s game plan?”

“I think he thought I might be easier prey than his son was becoming, but when I didn’t fall for his bait, he opted to protect his investment better—by attempting to belittle me in his son’s eyes—and not pursue me.”

Kamm was momentarily speechless. Simon’s father had probably been an abused child himself, but it didn’t justify the things he had done to his own son; it merely explained them. “Did Nelson ever find out that your family had taken Simon to the hospital the day he beat him with a golf club and cut him so badly he needed stitches?”

Had he? Michael tried to remember. At that moment, he couldn’t even recall the trip to the hospital. He stared at the bookcases and hoped the answer would emerge from their shelves. He then looked at Kamm and a picture flashed unexpectedly in his mind. He was at the payphone again, in the rain, at night, shivering. “Maybe,” he managed to say as he struggled to see more. “Maybe Nelson found out that day. I see Simon again,” he added. “He’s wet; it’s dark and it’s been raining. We must have been in it a while; we’re drenched.”

“It’s nighttime?”

“Yes.”

“But you said Simon’s injury occurred in daylight, so what happened later that evening, Michael?”

His stomach suddenly hurt when he flashed again on the hospital and saw Simon in the hallway as he talked to the police. Had they been exposed that day, the day his family had taken Simon to the hospital? Is that why Simon talked to the authorities? Is that how Nelson had found out about his private friendship with Michael—because the police had followed up on Simon’s assault?

Michael needed to make sense of it because it made him physically uncomfortable trying to remember. He offered a supposition. “Maybe Simon got hurt late in the day and I just remember it having happened earlier. His father probably beat the hell out of him when he got home and he came back to our house; I ran away with him to a payphone that night, in the rain, to call the police.”

“Why would Simon call the police so many hours after the fact? Had he had enough? Got smashed with a golf club, got stitches, went home to yet another beating, and then decided he’d been punished enough; it was time to call the police?”

The images faded too quickly to grasp them. Michael inhaled slowly, then exhaled, alleviating his stomach cramp in the process and feeling relieved. “I guess. Or maybe he was talking to his mother. I remember something about his mother.”

Kamm was puzzled. “Why would he go to a payphone to call his mother?”

Michael’s stomach cramp returned. “I don’t know.”

“And if he was going to call the police, why not just tell Henry, tell your dad, a man he’d grown to trust?”

“I don’t know,” Michael answered, frustrated. “Maybe Simon was too embarrassed to tell my dad. I don’t remember every detail. Why is this so important to you?”

“Because you’re the one having images of the two of you standing in the rain, at night, at a payphone.”

“It doesn’t mean it means anything,” Michael argued.

Kamm decided not to pursue the fragmented picture Michael painted. He returned, instead, to the picnic with Emily. Perhaps the answer lay in there somewhere. “What did Emily mean, do you think, when she said she thought you were still very sad after all those years; sad about what?”

“Sad for Simon,” he guessed.

“And that sadness was so great you spent most of your life alone because of it?”

It didn’t make sense to Michael, either. So many things didn’t make sense anymore. He shrugged it off to settle his stomach. “I think my assessment was more accurate; I’d been sad—if sad is the right word to begin with—because I’d been alone.”

“And you’ve been alone, because?”

Michael surrendered with a laugh. “The question of the day, right, doc?”

Kamm nodded and was silent for a long while, almost a minute. His untelling demeanor amused Michael except he was certain Kamm’s deep thinking would be followed by harder questions.

“Suppose you’d been on that picnic with Simon instead of Emily?” the doctor asked, as predicted. “Suppose it was Simon you shared that intimacy with?”

Michael squinted at him to try to detect his direction. “I clearly remember having that experience with Emily, not Simon,” he protested.

“I don’t doubt it for a second,” Kamm replied. “But what I’m wondering about is an alternative. Let’s suppose it was Simon; how would that experience have played out?”

“If your hypothetical goes nowhere,” Michael suggested, finally amused, “we abandon this useless notion of yours once and for all. Deal?”

Kamm grinned. “Deal. But, let’s this once give it a try, okay?”

* * *

Michael lay on the picnic blanket, in the shade, one arm crossed over his eyes, the other behind his head. He enjoyed the unexpectedly beautiful weather, the near solitude, the soothing sounds of nature, the meal Simon had prepared for them and they’d since devoured.

Simon thanked him for taking the time for lunch.

“Never pass up a free meal,” Michael commented.

Simon laughed. “Who said this was free?”

Michael opened one eye and squinted at him. Simon sat cross-legged on the blanket beside him and held a dandelion for him to take.

“What’s a day without one?” Simon asked.

Michael took the flower from him, removed its petals, and ate them. He hadn’t had one in a while, but he rather enjoyed the bitter taste. Then he handed Simon back its stem.

“Let’s make wine out of this stuff, what says you?” Simon suggested. “It’d have to be better than eating them au naturale, wouldn’t it? I remember from that survival course we took in camp that they don’t taste all that great.”

“That’s your opinion.” Michael clasped the back of his head to get a better look at Simon. “What I remember from that survival course we took is that you’re not a very cultured man.”

“But you love me just the same, right?” Simon joked back.

Michael answered seriously. “I love you just the same.”

“Have you ever loved anyone else as much?”

“No, no one else.”

“It’s my fault,” Simon said. “You wouldn’t be so depressed and alone all these years if my father hadn’t—”

“I’m not depressed,” Michael argued. “I’m alone, but I’m not depressed. I have you, remember?”

Simon carefully studied Michael. “Maybe I’m the one who’s depressed, then,” he said. “And I’m depressed because you’re alone; figure that one out. It’s just that you don’t go anywhere or do anything unless it’s with me. You don’t really seem to want anyone. You don’t get to be close to anyone. I think that’s borderline tragic.”

“You’re the only one who thinks it is, then.”

“Don’t you ever want anyone, you know, to hold you?”

“You mean other than you?”

Simon punched Michael’s arm to get him to relinquish his play. “You don’t want me to hold you.”

“Don’t I? Like I said, you’re the only one I’ve ever loved. Would you have a problem just lying here with me, holding me?”

Simon laughed. “Yeah, asshole. A big one.”

* * *

“Not what you were looking for, right, doc?” Michael asked, amused and showing it with a grin. “Simon’s just not what you think he is.”

Kamm didn’t smile. “That’s your perception,” he muttered. He scratched his head and stared briefly at the ceiling. “Suppose Simon had wanted you to hold him?” he asked. “Would you have obliged?”

“What are friends for?” Michael quipped. “But would it make me gay?”

Kamm forced a smile. “No. But suppose I said I thought you were gay just the same?”

“It might explain a lot.”

“That it might,” Kamm said. “But it wouldn’t explain everything. Let’s get back to the woman.”

* * *

Emily lay on the floor at the foot of an aquarium. She rested her chin in her hand and lifted her head to watch the colorful fish swim past. The structure separated the living room from the hallway and foyer, and she found the carpet lush and comfortable and the fish mesmerizing.

Michael sat on the sofa with his feet propped on the coffee table. There was a fire in the fireplace for the first time that winter because it had turned cooler outside and Emily had asked him to build one. In his lap was his latest picture contract, but he found himself watching her instead of reading it.

He noticed the curve of her legs, her buttocks, how tiny her waist seemed, that her fingers were delicate. At first he thought he enjoyed her shape because a photograph formed in his mind, but then he wondered where her hands had been, how they must have touched Simon over the years and in what ways, and how that affection may have felt to him. He fondly remembered she’d even touched him that afternoon at the picnic and how her embrace had excited and disturbed him. Maybe all Simon ever felt with Emily was excitement. No fear. Michael was envious. Maybe even admittedly jealous.

Emily turned on her side to look at him and caught him watching her.

It startled him and he quickly looked away.

“What?” she asked, puzzled by his action.

He returned to her blue eyes. They innocently smiled at him like they could see right through him. “Nothing,” he lied. “I just noticed how interested in those fish you are, that’s all.”

She looked back at them. “They’re beautiful,” she noted. “I watch them and wonder why they do the things they do, and it makes me forget that anything else exists. That must be why you have them.”

“They’re a godsend for just that purpose,” he agreed.

She rolled toward him again, and he once more noticed the curve of her hips, how they dipped into her waist, but she distracted him that time with a question. “Is there anything you would like to do or are you really busy with your legalities there?”

“Did you have something in mind?”

“A movie, maybe.”

“Is there one we haven’t seen?”

“Probably not.” She rose to her hands and knees and crawled the small distance between them. “What about a walk on the beach under the moonlight?”

He smiled at the idea. “It would take us half an hour to find a beach, maybe longer to find the moon behind the lights of this city, but I’m game.”

“Or we could go to the horse stables—”

“And wake up the ponies?”

She shrugged, knelt a few feet from him, and sat on her heels. “I was trying to think of something different.”

He set aside the documents in his lap and crossed his hands over his belly. “I’m not very creative about these things myself,” he confessed. “I spend most of my time in here, with them, the fishes and the cats, doing this kind of shit, and when I’m out ‘there,’ I’m usually taking pictures. I wouldn’t know what else we could do; I’ve been relying on your ideas.”

“Funny, isn’t it?” she reflected. “All my life I wanted to leave Oregon and see the city—and now that I’m here, I’m like you: I don’t have much desire to spend time in it.”

“I guess we only want what we don’t have.”

She looked at him till it made him uncomfortable and caused him to ask her what was really on her mind.

“We could …” She didn’t finish her sentence.

“We could what?”

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled and looked at the floor.

Michael noticed how her sweater hugged and outlined her breasts, how sensually she sat there before him, in her denim jeans, with her hair pulled back and her wedding ring reflecting the firelight. He wondered how she’d feel to touch.

“Why are you sorry?” he finally asked.

“We could play cards.” She didn’t answer his question as she looked at him again and that sparkle returned to her eyes.

“Why are you sorry?” he repeated the question.

“Sometimes I feel …” She hesitated, looked away, toward the fire, but he didn’t think she saw it.

“C’mon, if you’re gonna start to tell me something, tell me. Don’t leave me hanging. What do you feel?”

“Lonely.”

He didn’t fully understand her meaning. “Lonely? Like you miss him?”

She braved the words. “Like … I miss … a man.”

He felt suddenly uneasy and just a little excited, and he smiled at her to ward off her assertiveness, or what he perceived as her assertiveness, when, in fact, he could tell she was nervous and apprehensive just from the way she answered him.

“You’re looking for sex, after all,” he contended, not asking. And he delivered those words as if he had full control over the apprehensive emotions his thought caused him.

Their eye contact lasted a while—until she braved her reply. “At first I didn’t think I wanted sex, and maybe I didn’t then, but now I do.”

“With just any man?”

“Of course not.”

“But you know you could get it anywhere.”

“I don’t want it with just anyone,” she repeated.

“You want it with me.”

She answered him with another apology. Then she rose to her feet. “Really, Michael,” she begged him. “I’m sorry.” She laughed, embarrassed. “I’ll go to bed now and we can talk about it tomorrow.”

He called her name when she turned to leave the room and made her pause. “You’re wanting sex with me, right?” he asked again.

“But it doesn’t mean I should have it,” she reminded him.

* * *

“But she did want it with you,” Kamm observed.

Michael stared at the floor, into that night when he actually found the guts to ask her such a thing. He chuckled at his own nerve. “That, she did.”

“And what did you two lovebirds do about it that night, specifically?”

“That night? Nothing.” He inhaled deeply and completely exhaled before he spoke again. “But there it was.”

The room was quiet for a while. Michael figured Kamm was busy dreaming up new questions and he himself got lost in his own thoughts with no interest to express them. He remembered how alone in the world he’d felt, even though Emily had been with him, what a lonely Christmas that last one in Los Angeles had been, what a painful memory, one he hoped he could eventually bury. But the pain choked him even there in Kamm’s office, despite how badly he fought it, and he wondered again if he would feel that emptiness for the rest of his life.

He slowly realized that the hallway outside Kamm’s office was quieter than usual. He wondered what day it was, whether some holiday had crept up on him and sent the building’s office workers running off earlier than usual. Or maybe it was Friday, and they had gotten the jump on the weekend. He checked the wall clock. It was only a quarter to three. “Should I still be here?” he asked.

Kamm turned his wrist slightly and glanced at his watch. “Did you have someplace to go? You don’t have to stay.”

“Oh, I want to stay,” he said. “I just thought maybe it was time for me to leave.”

“We’ve got a while. What’s on your mind?”

“Two Christmases ago.”

“Tell me about it.”

Michael stared at a frame-cluttered wall covered by medical certificates he had read enough times to memorize. “Simon was due back in L.A. near the middle of January,” he said. “Emily thought she could wait for him, but she was getting lonelier by the minute. She told me she was going home, you know, to her family, to spend Christmas. She said she’d stay Christmas Eve with me, but the next day she’d go and she wasn’t coming back.”

“And did she leave that next day for Oregon?”

“She did.”

“Did she ever come back?”

“She came back when she heard I’d been hospitalized.”

“So you did see her again.”

“Under completely different circumstances, yeah, I saw her again.”

“So was that Christmas Eve two years ago the night you finally shared a bed with her?”

“It was.”

“Since she left the next day, do I understand it correctly then that it was the only night you slept with her?”

“Yeah—but it was quite a marathon.” He didn’t say it proudly. “I figured if I was going to get in trouble for it, it had better be worth it.”

“And what about Simon that night; what were your thoughts regarding him?”

“There was this big hole in my life,” Michael explained, “a hole where Simon used to be and was no more. It was like trying to bury someone who wasn’t quite dead. All I had left was her.”

“Is that why you crossed the line?”

He noticed Kamm’s brown eyes again, their color and how sincere in their curiosity they were. “Do you want details?”

“I want reasons.”

“Why are they important? The end result is the same.”

“Because that’s where it broke between you and Simon. It was one thing if Simon was sick and absent from your life; it was an altogether different thing for you to do something you knew would purposely—and perhaps permanently—injure any possible reconciliation or recovery of your friendship with him.”

“You think I did it purposely to hurt him?”

“No, but it did sever your friendship with him, which is not to say the same about his alcoholism or drug addiction. In other words, Simon could recover from his illness and be your friend again; he could never recover from your fucking his wife.”

Michael rubbed his forehead. “I didn’t fuck her,” he corrected Kamm.

“You made love to her.”

He agreed with the correction. “I made love to her. Fucking is without much emotional investment; fucking is the only thing I’d ever done up till that night with her. Made love; that’s what I did. I wanted to know what sex was like with someone I trusted, with someone I was fond of, that, and I loved her, too. She was leaving the next day, and we did care about each other, after all, but I didn’t fuck her.”

“I’m sorry,” Kamm sincerely apologized. “I remember you using that word in our first session when you told me about the affair, and I assumed it was legitimate to use it here because of that. My mistake.”

“I hold you harmless,” Michael said. “I used it in that instance because Simon used it. I fucked her. That’s how he saw it. I took advantage of her during a volatile situation. I seduced her. I’m the loser. She was the victim.”

“Are you angry with her?”

“No. We parted amicably, despite the rift we caused in the friendship with the one person we both wanted.”

“While you were with her, did you think about him?”

“Not enough to stop me,” he remembered.

“And right after? Did he come to mind? Did you hope he’d forgive you? Were those the kinds of thoughts you had?”

Michael reflected a moment. “Not right away.”

“So, he really wasn’t on your mind at all?”

“At first, he was.” He laughed at himself. “But then I was too afraid of her—and what I wanted with her—to think about him.”

* * *

Michael examined the game board while he waited for Emily to select her word. Spending such a peaceful evening with her was a treat he wholeheartedly embraced. The late afternoon had been relaxing, too; leisurely walks with horses along a dirt trail at the stables where Emily took riding lessons. The smell of fresh hay and manure were so far from the city’s dirty, grungy odors that Michael believed he had been somewhere else altogether.

He remembered how he’d found her: excited and contagiously optimistic. She loved being with the animals, learning how to groom and to ride; he could see it in her eyes, the way she’d smiled at him when he arrived, the way she embraced him in her private world. Nearly a month earlier, she had introduced him to the horse she was terribly fond of, so that morning they sat on a wooden tack box in the aisle of the barn and talked quietly about the horse and about other things, things outside their mutual hurt.

Michael then lifted his eyes to meet hers. She sat on the floor opposite the coffee table they played on, the game board between them, across from where he stretched on the sofa. He sensed she had already emotionally left Simon, long before he himself could—and she merely stayed through Christmas because she believed Michael needed her—or because she had said she would, and she always kept a promise.

Special friend, he thought, watching her, and she wrinkled her nose at him in reply, as if pleased with herself about something.

“I finished my word,” she said and she pointed at the game board. “It’s your turn.”

He shifted his eyes and tilted his head to read what she’d spelled. It momentarily confused him, disoriented, and then alarmed him, and he couldn’t help but to laugh. “‘Fellatio.’ That’s your word?” Underneath his amused facade, he was palpably anxious. He focused on the letters and fought with himself to think of something clever, to come up with a word even more provocative than hers had been, so he could disarm her instead. But his mind wouldn’t work logically; it was distracted by the tightness in his belly.

“Wouldn’t you like that?” he heard her ask.

He looked blankly at her, into her eyes, and tried to measure her seriousness, but couldn’t. “Would I like what?” he managed to innocently ask.

“Fellatio.”

“Fellatio?”

She giggled. “You do know what it means.”

“Isn’t that an Italian way of saying ‘fella’?”

She laughed again—with him. “Seriously, Michael—”

“Oh, no,” he shook his head at her, leaning back into the sofa momentarily to elude her, “no ‘seriously, Michael’ stuff, okay? I’ve enjoyed today because I’ve lost the definition of that word.”

“I mean, wouldn’t you like me to do that for you?”

He was so stunned by her offer he couldn’t answer. He asked her a question instead. “You chose that F word over that other one because you didn’t have all the right letters for the other, or because you’re polite? Or is it that you’re just that specific about what you want?”

“I thought fellatio might be an easier word for you than the other,” she explained, eyeing him carefully, and excited by their conversation, despite his elusiveness, “because it would be something I would do for you and that way you’d never have to feel responsible.”

He laughed at her notion. “You attacked me with your mouth and I was helpless to stop you, you mean.”

“Yes, something like that.”

He smiled at her, shyly. “Well, I’m not that helpless, and I’m not a taker. So your set-up to protect me has failed. I’d be responsible and guilty.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I know this is difficult for you and I’m sorry.”

“Sorry because it’s difficult?”

“Sorry to put you on the spot,” she explained. She started to remove the letters from the board, but he took her hand and stopped her.

“Don’t. My hesitation isn’t about you.”

“It’s about Simon.”

What other reason could there have been?

Emily accepted his nonverbal answer. “Let me see if I can erase him somehow.” She rose from the floor, crossed the room to the fireplace, and knelt before it. Michael apprehensively watched her and wondered what she had planned. He realized he was totally in her hands in more ways than just the one he imagined she had on her mind.

She struck a match and ignited a wadded piece of paper he had left stacked in a brass pot beside the hearth. She lit the kindling in the fireplace and then closed the screen. “We’ll make the room nice and warm,” she suggested, standing. “Warmth is a comforting thing, don’t you think?”

He did. He rolled forward on the sofa cushion, propped his temple in the palm of his hand, and kept his eye on her. There was a nagging in the pit of his stomach, a tremble, ever so subtle, throughout his every muscle, a tightness in his throat—so tight he couldn’t answer her, for to do so was to encourage her. Instead, he managed to say, “I’m letting you set me up for something I shouldn’t do.”

She turned off one of the table lamps. “And it’s even more comforting with the lights out,” she added quietly. She turned out the other, and when the room suddenly darkened, Michael felt lightheaded and awkward, nor was he as relaxed as he would have liked.

Emily approached him in the silence; the orange glow of the fire silhouetted her. He felt her hand unexpectedly on his belly and he reached for and caught it in his when he rolled onto his back and looked up into her face. The light was in her eyes, and she looked frightened, but wanting, at once.

Maybe she was merely braver than he was, but scared nonetheless. Simon would be amused with the two of them—

Simon.

He bolted inside. “I can’t do this,” he whispered. He stopped her by taking her hand and felt his own tremble in the touch.

“Because of Simon, still?”

Michael heard himself breathing and prayed she couldn’t. “Still. Again. Always,” he confessed. “If he ever asked me—”

“You couldn’t lie to him,” she finished his sentence. “I wouldn’t want you to, nor would I expect you to.” She escaped his hand to caress his chest from the outside of his shirt. “I just want to be close to you.”

“You can be close to me without doing what we’re wanting you to do,” he reminded her, and they laughed at his choice of words.

She continued to pursue him by loosening the buckle on his belt—without his resistance. “If I do this right,” she said, “you’ll forget all about him for a while.”

He stopped her again, that time by taking her into his arms, but also to hold her because he understood how lonely she felt. No one understood loneliness better than he did. She surrendered, sank into his embrace, and allowed him to hold her tightly against him as if he’d never let go. After a minute, he thought she was crying; she felt limp in his arms, like a wounded child may have been. He caressed her hair and her hands and wished he had the words and the strength to ease her anguish—and his own—at the same time.

He lay quietly with her; the room was dark, and the fire’s glow danced on the ceiling. He realized, only after a few minutes, that he lay again with Simon’s woman, that he held and caressed her, and that it felt natural and easy, much easier than he ever thought it could feel, despite his nervousness. He knew Emily loved him, and he loved her. They were friends, bonded together by the same desperations. How they had needed each other all that time, how necessary it was that they lie together then, in the dark, to escape the pain the past many months had caused them.

She lifted away from him to look into his eyes; it was then he saw the wetness in hers and confirmed his suspicions. He wiped away her tears and tried to smile at her. “You feel so soft,” he said, like a little boy who touched marble for the first time.

“I feel so foolish,” she corrected him, sniffling. “I’ve never tried to seduce anyone before.”

“You never had to.”

“I never wanted to.”

“But you don’t want to play with me. Trust me.”

“Because you’d feel a need to tell Simon,” she surmised.

“I wouldn’t feel a need to tell him,” he explained, “but if it ever came up in conversation, you’re right, I couldn’t lie to him. But, more than that, Emily, I’d always know what I’d done with his wife and I’d—”

“I’m not his wife anymore,” she argued, crying a little. “I’m going to Oregon tomorrow afternoon and I’m not coming back. I’ll prove to both of you that I mean what I say. If you don’t want to do this with me because of him, I understand. But don’t not do it because you’d be doing it with his wife; I’m merely that on paper and not for much longer.”

What she told him made him feel deeply sorry for her and for himself, too. He didn’t want to talk about her leaving Simon. Or leaving him, for that matter, either.

“Consider doing this because you have an opportunity you’ve never had,” she added, “to be close to someone you’re fond of, someone you’re friends with, someone like me who appreciates where your life has taken you—and where it hasn’t. Consider being close to me this way because it’s the right thing for you, not a right thing for him. There’s more to our lives than Simon.”

Was there?

They watched each other for a minute. He didn’t want to think about Simon if he didn’t have to. He wanted to bathe in the way the fire lit her eyes, shadowed her face, and warmed the room. God, could he ever find the words to tell her just how troubled in that moment he was, how torn he felt between what was right for Simon and what was right for himself?

She gently caressed his cheek. “Can you forget about him long enough to feel this close to me?”

He looked at her, hard, and hoped she could read his mind so he wouldn’t have to answer. But her fingers touched his mouth, outlined his lips, tenderly, the way he might direct it in a movie, and his heart pounded with the idea that she held the key to a certain kind of freedom for him in her hands.

“I’ll never tell him,” she whispered. “If he ever knows, it’s because you told him. As far as I’m concerned, this is yours and my secret.” She lowered her face closer to his. “If you want this for you, I want this for me, too.”

He quietly exhaled and wondered where his body was in all that exciting intimacy. Why didn’t he feel anything? No arousal; just fear and awkwardness and embarrassment and out-of-reach desire. Maybe he couldn’t feel aroused by Emily; maybe she was simply too much a part of Simon for him to feel that way about her.

Her face was very close to his then. He could smell her perfume, feel the heat from her soft, smooth skin. His heart pounded heavily in his chest. He wanted to push her away and at the same time he wanted to feel her kiss him, so he wouldn’t have to make that effort. It was up to her, he silently argued with her; if she would just take the lead, it would be enormously easier. If he could just stop his mind for a few minutes maybe he could relax into what would be a very pleasurable experience.

Her mouth touched his. The unexpectedness of it made him bolt inside, but it never showed outwardly. He held her face in his hands, her hair in his fingers, and he held onto her, prepared to stop her if he had to, though he didn’t want to. He wanted her to stay that close, to not abandon him without his permission.

She kissed him then, his lips, and he kissed her back.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

She understood. Her kisses trailed across his cheek, his chin, along his neck, and he felt her breasts against his chest, her hands as her fingers tried for the inside of his shirt. He was soon overwhelmed by her fragrance, by her closeness, and by her need to kiss and touch him.

And then he was overcome by his own.

* * *

“I came in her mouth.” He leaned forward in the chair, his forearms on his knees, his eyes on the hardwood floor before him, and those words erupted from him as if there were no one there to hear; the most personal, private thing he thought he could say, and the words just spilled out.

He lifted his eyes then and met Kamm’s. The doctor didn’t seem affected. He merely waited. And Michael waited. He didn’t know, suddenly, why he’d said such a thing, why that particular detail had any importance in the scheme of things.

Kamm spoke first. “Did you think that was wrong, immoral, sexually speaking?”

Michael lifted his hands to his chin and propped it in them. “No.”

“You came in her mouth. So?”

He laughed, disbelievingly. “Simon’s woman. What the fuck was I thinking?”

“Was fellatio the only sex you had with her?”

“No, but it was a great start.”

“Did you feel disloyal to Simon?”

“I was a sleaze. What I felt had nothing to do with him. I made love to my friend, Emily, and enjoyed every second of it to the max.”

“But now she’s Simon’s woman—and you did a bad thing.”

He slowly nodded.

Perceptively, Kamm asked, “And so you want forgiveness now.”

“I’m greedy.” The belief that he would never get it caused him to choke on a pang of guilt mixed with hurt and remorse.

“You want forgiveness from Simon so he’ll take you back, right?”

“Of course.”

“And so you won’t have to be lonely.”

“So I won’t have to be …” He found the right words, “without him.”

“Is that it? Or do you want forgiveness so you can put the guilt you feel aside and get on with your life?”

He was certain he knew why he wanted it. “I want his forgiveness so I won’t have to live the rest of my life without him in it.”

Kamm exhaled in a way that Michael knew they were back to Square One again. Every inroad the doctor took led right back to its beginning. He thought Kamm felt frustrated, but alleviated it by continuing with his relentless questions.

“So what about Emily?” Kamm asked. “How do you live without her in your life? Or do you?”

“I’ve called her a couple of times,” he admitted, “to check in, make certain she’s all right.”

“Does she call you?”

“I got a new cell before I left L.A.; I didn’t want anyone from my life to be able to contact me. She wouldn’t know how to reach me even if she wanted to; no one does. We’ve treated each of my calls as if they were my last.”

“She knows you’re here in Colorado?”

“I told her I came ‘home’ for a while to get my head on straight—if possible,” he chuckled.

“So she knows you’re in therapy?”

“I never got that specific.”

“She doesn’t have caller I.D.?”

“She said the number from here registers as an ‘unknown’ in Oregon—and she never asked for it. It’s just as well; I’ve needed complete privacy, the absolute control over my life right now.”

Kamm watched him. “Has she wanted to see you?”

“I think she’s made that clear.”

“Have you wanted to see her?”

He nodded a reply. “But it seems like the wrong thing to do,” he added, “you know, under the circumstances.”

“The circumstances that you’re waiting for a miracle from Simon.”

Michael shrugged, too embarrassed to admit the truth yet again.

“Does Emily ever talk to Simon?” Kamm asked.

“Last I spoke to her, she said their parting was as pleasant as mine was with him.”

Kamm raised an eyebrow. “He beat the hell out of her, too?”

Michael almost laughed at how the doctor had misread him. “No,” he said. “Of course not. Just suffice it to say that their relationship was permanently severed.”

“But your parting with Emily was ideal.”

Michael detected Kamm’s sarcasm, but outstaged him. “It was actually perfect,” he said.

* * *

It was a brisk winter Christmas morning in Los Angeles, the day Emily left. A little bit of Oregon had crept into the Southland, she told him. They strolled the stable grounds that morning, about five hours from her flight, because Emily had wanted a few more minutes with the horse she’d grown fond of, and a few more hours with Michael—and he was insistent that she take the time. Maybe he could talk her into staying.

He was dressed in a black, waist-length jacket, and Emily in a full-length raincoat. He appreciated how wintry they appeared; it made him realize that he didn’t have a single picture of them together.

She interrupted his regretful thoughts. “Here it is Christmas Day and I’m empty-handed,” she said. “I’ve been so distracted lately I haven’t been able to enjoy this season. All I got for you were those candles I left at your house. But what do you get for a man who has everything, anyway?”

He pulled her close to him and squeezed her. “Last night made up for the last six Christmases.” He released her when she playfully pulled away. “I’m going to miss you,” he confessed.

“I will miss you, too,” she said. She briefly touched his face. “We’ll see each other again,” she promised. She left him and crossed the barn aisle to peer through the bars at the horse she’d ridden all summer. The gelding was busy in his hay bin. “Everything’s changing,” she added solemnly, her back to Michael as she clasped a bar on the stall door. “But you and I will see each other again. That won’t change, will it?”

He stood beside her and didn’t answer. He wasn’t certain he’d ever see her again; Simon would be home inside of two weeks, and that would make such a prospect as impossible as it would be inappropriate. “That’s a beautiful animal,” he commented after a minute.

Emily admired the horse with him. “I had to stop riding him about two weeks ago,” she said. “The family had to sell him. Do you see how things change, Michael?” She looked at him, into his eyes, and tried to smile. “All anything does anymore is make me sad.”

He gave her a smile and more genuinely than the one she’d given him. “Should I cheer you up then?”

She faced him. “Yes, please,” she insisted, fighting back tears.

“Well, I got you something for Christmas,” he said. “I got you something you would love forever, something that would always remind you of me.” He removed a small gold key from a jeans pocket and handed it to her.

“The key to your heart?” she asked.

“You got that long ago,” he reminded her. “Something better,” he said. “I wanted to give you something to take home to Oregon that would keep you warm during those cold winter months up there and make it easier, if I could, for you to forget what you left behind.”

“You know how I feel about fur coats,” she teased him.

“Ha ha—and funny you should say that. Cuz I know how you feel about fur coats. Like me, you prefer them on their original owners.”

She smiled at him and waited.

“So, that’s it,” he said with a shrug.

“That’s what?”

“That’s what I got you.”

She examined the key and turned it over in her hand for a clue.

“I got you a fur coat on its original owner,” he explained.

She frowned at him.

He nodded at the stall. “The horse,” he said to clarify it for her when he thought she still hadn’t understood. “That’s a key to the tack trunk I’ve already shipped to your mother’s. I threw it in for good measure.”

“Oh, Michael!” She burst into joyful tears before she could say another word. Then she hurried to the stall and swung open its heavy door to throw her arms around the horse’s thick neck. “Oh, Michael,” she said again. She faced him and beamed and made him wish all over again that he’d brought his camera.

And that he could spend another night with her.

“I was so depressed when I heard he got sold,” she said. “I didn’t even know he was for sale.”

“He wasn’t,” he replied flatly. “But everything’s got a price.”

* * *

“Did you pay good money for the horse?”

Michael was curious about why Kamm wanted to know such a thing. He watched the doctor finish the last of the soup in a bowl and set it aside before Kamm waited for an answer he expected sooner. “I paid more than he was worth in horse flesh, if that’s what you mean,” Michael finally replied. “But he was priceless in other ways.”

“So, everything’s got a price,” Kamm echoed with a smile.

Michael cussed under his breath when he realized he’d just opened a wasp’s nest of stinging questions. He got out of his chair and crossed the room to the parking lot window. From there he stared across the asphalt to the mountains, up over the sky as he’d done many times, and then briefly focused his gaze, unseeing, on the wood grain of the windowsill. “Sometimes I think you enjoy what you put me through,” he commented quietly.

“It just seems that way to you,” Kamm assured him. “I’m frustrated that no matter where we go, it never ends up anywhere. Sure, I’ve got most of the story, but maybe I just need more of it. Or maybe we simply need to explore the possibilities.”

“We had a deal,” Michael dryly replied. He faced the doctor and crossed his arms. “So what is it this time? What would you like to hypothesize today?”

“The price you’d pay.”

“For what?”

Kamm lifted his feet onto his desk, got comfortable as if he planned to be there a while, and clarified for his patient, “I’m interested to know what you’d pay to have Simon back in your life, the Simon you had in your life, say, two years ago. Do you remember him?”

“Fondly,” Michael answered impulsively, “and all too well.”

“If you could give me anything to have that guy back, what’s your limit?”

Again, without thinking, Michael quickly said, “I don’t have a limit.”

“You’d give up all your money and material possessions?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“You’d hand over your career?”

“I’d trade my soul.”

Kamm tapped the ends of his shoes together and studied his client for a moment. “It’s worth that much to you,” he observed, not waiting for a reply. “But what does it mean to sell your soul? You’d give up everything for the exchange?”

“Yeah. And never look back.”

“You’d trade in your values?”

“Have I got any?”

Kamm smirked at him. “Would you eat hamburgers for the trade? Give up your ethical vegetarian lifestyle to have him back?”

“Ouch.” Michael was stalled. Then he found his out. “The Simon I want back wouldn’t ask me to eat a hamburger.”

“Suppose he did? Would you?”

“You’re asking me to want someone who isn’t him.”

“Let’s forget him asking you. I’m asking you.”

“Fine.” Michael turned again to the window and stared outside for a while as he gave it thought. “If I had to eat a hamburger to get the Simon I knew two years ago back into my life, I’d

…” He thought another moment, and then settled on his conviction. “I’d ask for it with lettuce; hold the pickles.”

“Would you trade your rendezvous with Emily to have Simon back?”

“Without regret.”

“Because the world is a perfect place when he’s in it?”

“When he’s in it, clean and sober,” he corrected Kamm. He looked at him again. “Why don’t I just tell you what happened when Simon got back to L.A. Maybe you’ll find the answer you’re looking for in there.”

It was the doctor’s turn to correct his client. “I’m not the one looking for answers. I’m merely helping you find what you hired me to help you find. And we’ll get to Simon’s return, but this need-love-want you have for him goes back a long way; the answer lies there, I’m certain.”

“We’ve covered all those years,” Michael argued, “and still we’re no closer.”

“Then do as I wish.”

Michael came back to his chair and took a seat. “Fine, then,” he said. “Give me the hypothetical. I’m prepared to break our deal to appease you,” he added dryly.

Kamm then unsettled Michael with his request. “Suppose you replay two Christmases ago, the one you spent with Emily, only make it with Simon this time. It’s Simon who wants to please you.”

“You’re kidding me, right, doc?” Michael countered him. He didn’t feel angry, just bemused. “I think Simon had enough of that shit in his lifetime; that’d be the last thing he’d want and I’m so sure of it, I can’t even hypothesize it for you.”

“You’re right,” Kamm agreed. “This isn’t about him. That’s why the Picnic Replay didn’t work. The problem before us is your problem. So let’s replay that night and it’s Simon who wants you to please him.”

“Maybe you’re the one who’s queer,” Michael suggested. “Maybe you like to hear men tell you about the sex they have with other men.”

“Yeah,” Kamm replied, sarcastically. “It’s right there in my telephone directory ad. But you remember I’m not the one who walked in here troubled because he’d sell his soul for another man.”

Michael wanted to bolt for the door, but couldn’t move. He felt ashamed and embarrassed, maybe even humiliated. He wouldn’t look at Kamm.

“I’m not judging that feeling,” Kamm reminded him when he sensed Michael’s withdrawal and its reasons. “But we can sit here till the cows come home and have you answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and ‘maybe’ to hundreds of questions about how you feel about him, or we can roll up our sleeves and get down in the muck and see what we find there. And maybe we’ll come up with the same answers or maybe we’ll come up with something new.”

Michael still wouldn’t look at the doctor. He was on fire with his own frustration.

Kamm continued. “Do you enjoy women because they’re women or do you enjoy them because you enjoy what they do for you, something you would enjoy no matter which gender did it for you? And maybe you and I—and every other man on earth—could answer yes to both those questions and so it proves nothing.”

“So don’t ask the question,” Michael suggested.

Kamm continued. “But if you found it in your heart, in your DNA, or in any other part of your person, to return such a favor, then maybe you have your answer. So I’ll ask you this way: If Simon wanted, say, a blow job, would you give him one?”

Before Michael could even imagine what his reaction might be, Kamm answered for him. “You’ll say, ‘No, hell no.’ And that’s as far as we dig, but I want to dig further. That’s what you pay me for. So here’s the shovel and I’m digging deeper. It’s two Christmases ago and there is no Emily and there never has been. And you’re with Simon and maybe you think he doesn’t want to have sex with you because of the shit he’s been through, but we’re going to put that aside for now because this exercise isn’t about him. This is about you and what you want and what you’d do and how you’d feel about it. All right?”

Michael forced himself to oblige Kamm. The doctor was determined, but he was also concerned about Michael and that eased his humiliation enough to consider the elder’s request. “Go ahead,” he surrendered. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“It’s Christmas Eve. There’s a fire in the fireplace. You’ve had a relatively peaceful day. You’ve got your best friend in the whole world there with you, playing Scrabble, and he’s decided he’d like to end his day with something a little more appetizing than eggnog.”

* * *

“I finished my word,” Simon said. He nodded at the game board. “It’s your turn.”

Michael tilted his head to read the word Simon had spelled and was momentarily startled. He laughed sheepishly and took a sip of tomato juice from the bottle. “‘Fellatio,’” he noted, amused. “At least you held off on the slang.”

“That was the closest word I knew with a double L in it. Besides,” Simon added, “what do you know about it, anyway? Have you ever had the pleasure?”

“Can’t say I have because I haven’t.” He watched Simon lift a handful of peanuts to his mouth. The look in his eye made him think Simon didn’t believe him. “Seriously, man, I haven’t. Why would you think otherwise?”

“There just ain’t nothing like it on earth,” came the experienced reply. He munched the salty nuts and winked at Michael.

“In light of what your father did to you, I’m surprised to hear you say that. I know that sucking some guy off would make me sick to my stomach.”

“I don’t mean giving a blow job, asshole.” He shook his head at Michael and kicked his foot for having been forced to remember something he’d spent a lifetime trying to forget. “I mean, getting one. You have gotten one, haven’t you?”

“Well, yeah, of course.”

“From women.”

“What else?”

“A woman’s good,” Simon confessed, “if you can train her right. But, well, a man, he just knows how by instinct.”

“Well, since I don’t know what I’m missing, I’m not missing it.” Michael spelled the words “fat chance” off Simon’s “fellatio” and watched as Simon tallied the points and pretended to be impressed by his choice.

“Never say never,” Simon finally said.

Michael carefully asked his question. “Have you ever gotten one from a guy? Are you speaking from experience?”

Simon didn’t hesitate. “In the dark, the only way you can tell it’s a man doing you over a woman is just how much better it feels.”

“I’m shocked to learn that about you, especially after what your dad did to you.”

“My dad never blew me,” Simon argued. “It was always the other way around. But forget that, willya? It’s been a long time since then—and a long time since I’ve had a man take care of me.” He eyed Michael carefully. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in breaking my dry spell, would you? Do me the favor?”

Michael lowered his eyes to the game board and it blurred before him. The conversation had taken a disappointing turn; it made his stomach hurt and his head feel light. “Not particularly,” he finally managed to say to Simon’s request. “I don’t think I’d get anything out of that.”

Simon laughed at him. “You’d get something out of it all right.” He punched Michael’s shoulder to encourage his brother to look at him. “C’mon, don’t get so upset. It’s not as bad as you think it is.”

“I’ve never thought about it, bad or otherwise.”

“Then you don’t have any preconceived ideas. That’s good.” Simon lay back on the carpet as he unbuckled his belt and unzipped his jeans. “You care about me, don’t you?”

“Yes, but—”

“Besides,” Simon interrupted him, “you owe me, remember? This will go a long way toward settling the score.”

* * *

“What did he do for you that you owed him?” Kamm asked. His client didn’t hear, so he repeated the question, but he still didn’t get a reply. Eventually, he tapped the desktop with a marker. “Hey, you.”

Michael lifted his eyes to the doctor’s; his own reflected his mix of emotions: confusion, remorse, regret. Shame. Pity.

“What’s upsetting you?” Kamm’s voice was calm despite the look he saw on Michael’s face. “Is it that you could go through with Simon’s request?”

“Yeah,” he said factly, and he was embarrassed by his disclosure.

“Because you want to?”

“Because I had to,” Michael confessed. “I’d do it for him if I had to.”

“Because you owe him?”

“Yeah.”

“And why do you owe him?”

Michael heard the ceiling roof access door swing open. Light in the room below shattered the darkness in the attic and temporarily blinded him. He trembled against the hardness of a plywood wall; his teeth chattered from the vibration. Simon called up to him in a desperate search of his whereabouts.

“And why do you owe him?” Kamm asked again.

Michael shrugged off the memory flash, looked toward the bookcases for comfort there—but found none. “I think I got a taste of what it must have been like for Simon,” he said, not answering Kamm’s question, but thinking again how it might feel to have sexually obliged Simon, “you know, doing the things he did to his father.”

Kamm followed Michael’s lead. “So, what was it like for Simon?”

“Humiliating. Degrading. Ashaming. Frightening. But what could he do? He had no choice but to oblige the sonofabitch.”

“He had to because his father would beat and threaten to kill his mother if he didn’t.”

Michael nodded.

“And why would you have to?”

“I’d do anything Simon wanted me to.”

“To keep from losing him.”

“Yeah.”

“And because you owe him.”

“He says I do.”

“And you must think you do, too, or you wouldn’t give Simon what he wants in our supposition, would you?”

He looked at Kamm. It made sense and yet it didn’t. “I guess so,” he solemnly answered. “I guess I owe him. He says I do and I guess I do.”

“Has he actually said you owe him?”

“Toward the end there, it was implied.”

“The end, meaning …?”

“When he got back to L.A. He didn’t call when he returned. I thought that was odd. So I went over to Music Box Records and found him. He was—” Michael couldn’t finish. He rubbed his forehead, pushed back his pressing hurt, his anger, and his guilt, and kept control of his composure.

“He was what?” Kamm asked.

He finally managed the words. “He was shooting god knows what into a vein in his arm.”

* * *

Michael squat in front of Simon with his butt on his heels, his arms on his knees, and looked at him. He had to speak his name first before Simon even knew he was in the room, and then only Simon’s eyes lifted—briefly—his head stayed bent toward the floor. When he saw Michael he didn’t say a word, or move, or show any sign of recognition, nor did he offer any kind of greeting whatsoever.

The room was dark, as dark as Michael remembered it only a couple of months earlier, before Simon had left for his tour. Just a table lamp burned in the corner, the opposite corner from where Simon sat on the floor against the wall between his desk and his cot. He sat like he was hiding—and as if he’d been hiding for some time.

Simon appeared drugged even before he removed the needle from his arm. He dropped the used syringe on the floor between his legs, set his head against the wall, and exhaled as sorely needed relief overcame him. He squinted at Michael in the dark. “Do you think if I take enough of this shit,” he mumbled, “I won’t have to see you again?”

Michael didn’t appreciate the sarcasm. He also didn’t like how disheveled Simon appeared in worn jeans and an oversized jacket that barely hid the dirty tee-shirt he wore beneath it. He held Simon’s unshaven chin and forced him to maintain eye contact.

The face that looked back at him caused Michael relief—from being able to see him again—but also an inexplicable sorrow—from the emptiness he saw in Simon’s expression. The palpable desperation caused his chest to hurt with a familiar pain he tried but couldn’t ignore—an ache, as if all over again he was close to the most important person in the world to him and was utterly helpless to save him. Simon’s glassy eyes were a far cry from the light Michael had photographed in them over the years.

“So this is the answer to all your problems,” he noted for Simon. He’d hoped Simon would return from his tour a healthy man, not one who had hit the proverbial brick wall.

They looked at each other. After half a minute, Simon managed to shrug off enough of the drug’s influence to say, “What do you care, anyway? You had more important things to do than even to call me.”

“I tried to reach you,” Michael defended himself, but he didn’t confess that he’d abandoned the effort early on after none of his attempts were answered. He didn’t lie. “I left messages with your crew. Didn’t you get any of them? And, besides, you never called me, either. Did you even try?”

Simon freed his chin. “Take your hands off me, asshole.”

Michael felt more than rejected; he was anxious, too. His sense of safety was threatened again—except, that time, it was by the only person he had left in the world; Emily had already gone.

The door opened suddenly behind them, and he and Simon turned their heads to find a recognizable security guard in the doorway. The officer’s focus firmly locked on Michael. “You’re gonna have to leave,” he said, somewhat apologetically.

“Am I on some hit list somewhere?” Michael asked.

“I’m afraid so,” came the unexpected reply.

Simon interrupted them. “It’s all right, Al. Let him stay. I plan to crack his fucking head open and I’ll need him here to do it.”

Michael shot a glance at Simon and the one Simon fired back seemed to ask, “Why so surprised?”

The guard left and the door closed.

“Crack my head open?” Michael asked. “What’d I do to you anyway? I haven’t even seen you in a couple of months.”

“I called to talk to my wife,” Simon replied, agitated as he emphasized the word. “And I called often, but she never answered her phone.”

“She was with me.” He thought Simon had known that much, that Emily would have told him what her living arrangements had been. His heart beat fast and apprehension boiled in his gut. The truth would get him killed, he thought, but still he couldn’t lie.

“Yeah, I know,” Simon said. “She answered your phone enough times.”

Another detail Michael wasn’t aware of. “Did you speak to her?” Emily had never related those conversations to him, but he never thought to check his caller identification menu for missed calls, either. How many had Simon made to his cell?

Simon rubbed the inside of his elbow where he’d given himself the injection. “I didn’t have to talk to her. It was enough that she answered. I’m not stupid, man. I’ve been around the world a couple of times already.”

“And it’s so nice to have you back,” Michael snidely said. His hurt and uneasiness forced him into sarcasm and he hated himself for it. What he needed was distance so he could keep his wits about him. He tried then to rise to his feet, but Simon unexpectedly caught him by his shirt and pulled him back to his haunches—his grip was as intentional as it was successful.

“Did you sleep with her?” Simon asked, but his question sounded more like an accusation.

Michael’s heart pounded harder. He’d practiced that conversation enough times in his head the past couple of weeks so much that he was certain he’d tell Simon the truth if he was ever asked. But, for some reason, he thought Simon would suspect that he and Emily had had an affair, not have already decided they had. The conversation wasn’t about to go as planned.

“Answer me,” Simon demanded.

Michael couldn’t. He was inexplicably terrified.

“Did you sleep with her or didn’t you? The answer is as simple as the question. All you gotta say is yes—or no?”

Simon’s firm grip on Michael forced their mutual eye contact and Michael saw fire in Simon’s. He knew he could lie and save himself in that painful moment, but lying wasn’t anything they’d ever done to each other.

Simon then slapped Michael’s face with his free hand.

The strike startled Michael more than the pain itself—and it stunned him emotionally. The last person in the world he imagined would ever physically hurt him had just hit him.

“I’m talking to you,” Simon warned, “so you’d better answer me.”

He tried to reason with Simon by suggesting they talk later in the day when Simon felt “better,” but Simon slapped him again. He even tried to pull away before he was struck, but Simon’s grip was tight and he reacted too late. The blow was stronger that time, too.

“Yes—or no?” Simon demanded.

“I don’t understand why you have to hit me. Why can’t we just—”

Simon jerked him forward and forced Michael to lose his balance. He had to drop his hand to the floor and catch himself before he fell into Simon.

“Come on, man.” He attempted to pry Simon’s fingers from his shirt, but both his verbal and his physical request was tentative, and Simon didn’t abandon his grip.

“Did you fuck my wife or didn’t you? Why can’t you answer me?”

“Because I don’t like the way you’re asking—”

Simon slapped him again, harder. Michael tried to fend off the blow with his arm, but he couldn’t intercept it in time—and he didn’t know why he couldn’t. He felt suddenly helpless and ashamed of himself.

“Is it that you don’t like the words I’m using,” Simon asked, humiliating him further with his sarcasm, “or is it my method?” He popped Michael under his chin with a fist, a purposeful blow to force Michael’s head up, to get him to look him in the eye.

The punch caused Michael to sharply bite the inside of his cheek when his jaws came unexpectedly together and warm tears welled uncontrollably in his eyes. “Don’t hit me,” he managed to say, but it was very much like he begged Simon and very little like an order.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Simon asked, his tone heavier with his resentment as he slapped Michael again, so suddenly Michael didn’t even get the chance to defend himself. “You fucked her, didn’t you? How else am I supposed to treat you?”

Michael averted his eyes; in light of what he’d done, he couldn’t think of any other way Simon should treat him. He deserved the punishment and he deserved the humiliation. He’d been a fool to think it would have played out any other way.

Simon belittled him further. “Are you gonna cry now? Are you gonna cry like a baby—the way you did back then?”

“Don’t hit me,” Michael begged him. “I can’t handle it when you hit me.” And he couldn’t handle it because it was the second most terrifying experience he’d endured: Simon’s punishment.

“You can’t handle anything,” Simon painfully reminded him. “You can’t even handle life.” He shoved Michael backward as hard as he could.

Michael lost his balance, stumbled and fell; he had to catch himself on his elbow to keep from slamming into the floor. His heart pounded fiercely in his chest, his palms sweat, and he had the terrible feeling that he wouldn’t get out of the room alive. Maybe the truth was the only thing that could save him. He panted and waited for Simon to ask him again, to ask in a way he could answer, but too many things went through his head and nothing emerged from his mouth. He didn’t know what to say or even how to say it even if he knew.

“There wasn’t anything that happened to you,” Simon told him, his voice unexpectedly cradled in the hurt he himself felt, “that didn’t happen to me, too. It fucked us both over, didn’t it? But that doesn’t give you the right to do what you’ve done.” He pushed away from the wall and onto his hands and knees. Then he crawled over to Michael. “Be man enough to tell me,” he insisted. “Don’t play me for a fool.”

“I’m sorry,” Michael managed to say. He realized there were no excuses, none that would pardon him from his betrayal. “I didn’t do it to hurt you.”

Simon grabbed Michael by the front of his jacket and lifted him momentarily from the floor before he slammed him against it. The jarring blow knocked the breath out of Michael and he groaned from the impact. Then Simon punched him in the face and head with his fists; he broke into a nearly incoherent verbal assault as he repeatedly hit him. He beat him as if he would spend every last moment of his own life trying to pound the life out of Michael. “You fucking sonofabitch!”

Michael didn’t fight back. He merely tried to block the blows the best he could. The strikes seemed endless; only briefly was there a pause in their delivery. Michael had covered his face, but in that suspended moment, he lifted his arm to look at Simon, to find out where he was, what he was doing, even though he could still feel Simon pressed against him, his knee in Michael’s stomach. In that eternal moment, and in what seemed like slow motion, Simon struck Michael in the face with a half-emptied whiskey bottle.

The ceiling turned round above him, his senses shut down, and he fought harder to regain them than to protect himself from the assault. That was his mistake. The broken bottle sliced into his cheek, then into his head and into his hands when he raised them to block the beating Simon gave him with it. He saw blood, his own, and he bled with every blow he received.

Simon repeatedly hit him until the room grew very dark and then disappeared altogether. For a fleeting moment, just as the light melted away, Michael was in that cramped attic space again, in the sheer blackness, terribly cold and scared and alone, with that tree branch outside, slapping the rooftop with an endless, hollow rhythm.

* * *

“I assume you were injured rather badly,” Kamm said in a low voice.

“I was unconscious for a couple of days,” Michael recalled. “I guess you could say it was the beginning of the end.”

“Or the end,” Kamm corrected him, “so you could begin again.”

Michael shrugged.

“Why are you alone in the attic feeling scared?”

“When?”

“When Simon beat you, before you passed out, you had a memory of being alone in the attic. You were ‘cold and scared and alone.’ Why?”

Michael didn’t know; he guessed. “Because Simon had gotten whacked with that golf club and my father had dumped him at his house—where, no doubt, his father probably beat the shit out of him again. And I just didn’t have anywhere to turn, I think. Just like when he beat me. It was the same feeling: helpless.”

“Okay. Let’s go on from there. Tell me what happened after Simon beat you into unconsciousness.”

* * *

Indecipherable voices echoed in his head. They sounded familiar, but distant. A light appeared behind his eyelids, and the world gradually emerged around him. It was then he felt the pain, along his face, the left side of his head, his shoulder and chest, his arm and rib cage. He moaned, heard himself, and was startled by the sound. Then he coughed so painfully he thought his throat would crack open. It was sharp and heavy, like a suffocating weight on his chest.

He heard Emily’s voice; she cried and apologized to him as she repeated his name. Her hands gently caressed him; they were soothing and warm and necessary.

“Michael?” she asked—as if he had ignored her.

He opened his eyes, but the light was too intense and he shut them again. He felt her hand on his and squeezed it to let her know he knew she was there.

She embraced him, carefully.

He realized only then that he’d been wounded and was hospitalized. “How bad is it?” he managed to ask. His voice cracked, his mouth was dry, and his face so sore, he spoke through an unmovable jaw.

Emily didn’t answer.

“Come on,” he encouraged her, allowing himself a momentary reprieve of humor, “I can take it. I can feel it, anyway.”

“Your left arm is broken in three places,” she said, her voice still terribly sorry. “You’ve been badly cut and required stitches in a couple of places. Your high fever finally broke yesterday. I’m so sorry, Michael—”

“Yesterday?”

“You’ve been unconscious—”

“For how long?”

“Almost three days now. I’m sorry, Michael. I’m so sorry.”

He allowed himself a moment to absorb the realization that he’d been seriously injured and then tried to alleviate Emily’s concern to make himself feel better. “I’m not blind, though,” he hoped.

“No.”

“And I can apparently still feel and hear and talk and maybe even walk again, right?”

She tried a laugh, he thought, but only cried instead. “Yes. Soon,” she said.

“Did they remove any of my vitals?”

“No.”

“Then things aren’t so bad.”

“This isn’t funny.”

He opened his eyes finally and squinted at her. She looked tired and depressed, her eyelids swollen and red from crying. The shock of seeing her distress alarmed him. His heart went out to her. “I’m all right, Emily,” he said, trying in vain to convince her.

Her crying was close to uncontrollable. “This never would have happened to you if it wasn’t for me.”

“I believe he’s the one who nailed me,” he reminded her. “I could have kept my stupid mouth shut. Weren’t you in Oregon?”

“I was only thinking of myself,” she argued. She reached to touch him, but never made contact, as if he were too delicate to handle. “I didn’t stop to think what it would mean to you and Simon in the long run.”

“Don’t,” he ordered as demanding as he could be. “Don’t take what we had away from me. I did it because I wanted to—and I’d do it over again if you let me.” He tried to smile at her, but couldn’t because his face hurt from the effort. “Did you come all the way from Oregon just to see me?”

She held him then, crying still, and he held her in his arms the best he could. “Simon’s manager called me,” she said, “and I came as soon as possible.”

He asked about Simon. “How is he, anyway? Is he sorry?” He painfully laughed because he couldn’t imagine Simon would be anything except still enraged.

Emily lifted away from him. “I don’t know how he is,” she carefully said. “He can’t be found.”

He frowned at her to decipher her meaning.

“Simon left after the security men pulled him off of you and no one has seen or heard from him since.”

“For the past three days?”

“The guard said Simon looked physically sick, like he was in serious trouble. Michael, I’m so scared.”

Michael had only felt that helpless once in his life. “So am I,” he confessed. It was hard to swallow the panic that had lumped in the back of his throat while, in the back of his mind, for some reason he couldn’t grasp, he heard a little girl cry.

* * *

Kamm’s voice broke through Michael’s recollection. It startled him. He looked curiously at the doctor. “What did you ask me?”

“I said, it sounds like you’re pretty lucky to be alive.”

He rubbed the tiny, raised scar on his cheek. “I think he hoped he could cut my heart out, so, in the end, he failed to hurt me too badly.”

Kamm didn’t smile. “Why didn’t you hit him back?”

“What?”

“I said, why didn’t you hit him back?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Why would you suppose?”

Kamm was frustrated, but he persevered despite it. “Because you felt guilty.”

“Maybe I was just afraid.”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know. That I’d piss him off even more.”

“He beat you into unconsciousness and you don’t know why you couldn’t stop him? If fear stopped you, what other possible event could have made you more afraid than his killing you?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated. He felt as frustrated as Kamm sounded to not have the answer. He leaned forward and bent over in his chair to momentarily hold his head between his knees and let his mind clear. “I don’t know,” he repeated several more times. “Shit.”

“Simon could have killed you,” Kamm reminded him.

“He wanted to.” Michael sat up and looked at Kamm. “He hated me that much,” he added. “He hated me so much for what I’d done that he would have killed me if they hadn’t stopped him. I swear he would have killed me.”

Kamm leaned forward and tapped his desk with a pencil. “And yet you couldn’t stop him. You believed your very life was in danger and you didn’t even try to stop him. Are you that much of a pacifist?”

Michael raised his voice in a deepened frustration. “No. If I knew, don’t you think I’d tell you?”

“You could have stopped anyone else.”

“I think so.”

“But not Simon.”

“No.”

“Why not Simon? What made him so special?” But it didn’t seem like Kamm expected an answer. He repeated the question, almost to himself, then asked, “What did you do after your release from the hospital?”

“I tried to find him.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to know if he was all right—and I wanted to apologize.”

“For his trying to kill you?”

“For the whole fucking thing, goddammit! Don’t you understand? I mean, yes, I was guilty of something; I had betrayed him. I don’t think I deserved the beating I got—not to its degree—but I was guilty and I just wanted him to know I was sorry about what I had done.”

“Did you want him to be sorry for what he had done?”

He felt a charge of frustration and rose from his chair. “Yes! I did. I wanted him to be sorry for what he had done, too.”

“So? Did you find him?”

Michael walked to the window and looked out on the city lights. For a moment couldn’t remember where he was. Maybe Simon was out there, somewhere in that ocean of reflections before him, forever unfindable. “I called everybody I knew to call,” he remembered aloud. “But no one had seen him. Emily and I filed a Missing Persons report with the police. We checked the airlines. We drove the city looking for him. Everyone was scared. Some were scared because they loved him and others were worried because their major asset had just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

Michael touched the window glass and felt its coolness. In the silence of the room, he added, “A couple of nights later, Simon called me.”

Kamm was surprised. “What did he want?”

“He wanted me to save him. He said he didn’t want to die.”

* * *

Michael’s heart pounded and his respiration was audible when he recognized the voice on the phone line. “Simon?”

“I don’t want to die,” Simon repeated; he sounded hollow and distant. “You mustn’t let me. Do you understand?”

“I understand.” He thought he understood anyway. Simon thought he might be dying. If Michael could just get to him, he could reassure him things weren’t as grim as they seemed. They could repair anything between them. That’s how tight their bond had been. Or so he believed. He checked the caller I.D., but it reported the number as unknown. “Where are you?”

“I have no idea,” Simon finally answered. His voice was strained; talking was the last thing he had energy for, and even that was about to ebb. “You need to find me,” he whispered; there was a cry of frustration in his voice as if he truly wished he knew his whereabouts, as if he could still comprehend that it was important to know where he was. “I’ll die if you can’t find me. I can’t pull myself out of this. I tried, but I can’t.”

There was a deafening silence on the line.

Simon’s cryptic words sent a chill down Michael’s back when he deciphered their meaning. He clumsily worded his understanding. “You’re strung out. You’ve overdosed.”

“I couldn’t think of an easier way out of this shit, man, but now I think I don’t want to die.”

Michael’s heart sank and pounded at once. It was an effort not to panic.

“So you’ll have to find me,” Simon warned him again, slurring his words, “because I don’t know where I am. I can’t remember …”

Michael didn’t have time to feel. He could only think—and quickly. “Are you on your cell, out of range?”

“No cell.”

“Are you at a payphone?”

“No.”

“Tell me something you see,” he ordered him. “Anything.”

No answer.

“Simon?” He hit the coffee table with a fist in an effort to jar Simon over the line. “Don’t fuck with me. Tell me something you see.”

“T.V.,” came the slow, submissive response.

“You’re inside somewhere? Are you in a hotel?” Again, only silence answered him. He checked the clock, as if the time could answer for Simon. “Fucking talk to me, man.”

“Yeah … a hotel … somewhere …”

“Read me the number on the telephone you’re using. Do it now. Carefully. Read it to me.” As he walked into the kitchen to use the land line, he heard a crash in the background on his cell, but then Simon’s voice, still with him, recited the 10-digit number. Michael asked him to repeat it once, and then again, to make certain it was correct. He dialed the number as he asked Simon which room he was in.

“All I know is I’m upstairs,” Simon replied.

“What does it say on the telephone?”

Michael waited an eternal moment for the answer while he listened to the hotel phone ring on the house line.

“3-0-6,” Simon managed to say. “I’ll hang up,” he added, bordering on incoherent, “so they can call.”

“No one’s going to call,” he told Simon. “Stay on the line with me. I’m going to send someone to your room and then I’m calling an ambulance.”

The hotel staff answered the land line he held to his ear; he couldn’t decipher what the woman said, but back to it, he urgently replied, “I need you to get into room 306. A friend of mine has overdosed.”

On his cell, he heard Simon’s voice, sluggish, whispered, angry and hoarse. “Know this, Mikey … if I die … it will have been because of you.”

* * *

Michael looked matter-of-factly at Kamm’s blank expression. “There you have it,” he told the doctor. “I got him to the hospital in time. He went into rehab. I got full use of my limbs again. He went on to make records, I hear, and I came to Colorado—to spend time with you. End of story.”

“Except it isn’t,” Kamm said. “I’m curious about two things: Why did Simon call you, of all people, after he beat you up so badly he put you into the hospital and almost into your grave? And, why you would assume the friendship was over then? Sounds like you and he are even. You were punished for what you did to him, and to further make amends, you got an ambulance to him in time.”

“Even if we’re even—which we’re not—it didn’t mean he wanted to continue the friendship.”

“How do you know he didn’t?”

He remembered how. “I repeatedly called the hospital during his lengthy visit there and he wouldn’t take my calls.”

“So you just left for Colorado, no forwarding address or phone, is that it?”

“That’s it.”

“And you never gave Simon a chance after his release from the hospital to tell you he was willing to patch things up? You didn’t wait for him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Michael laughed. “Maybe I didn’t make it clear how badly he beat the shit out of me.”

“But he called you.”

“So he could blame me for his death.”

Kamm imagined the details, and then abandoned them after a minute. “So he recovered and went on to make records. Good for him. Have you heard any of his new stuff?”

“I don’t have the guts.” He fidgeted with the seam on his jeans cuff. “I overheard a few lyrics of one of his new songs and it was about knowing who your friends ‘aren’t’—and that was enough for me.”

“When was that?”

“About nine, ten months ago.”

“And the song was about you?”

“Who else?”

“Emily.”

Michael shook his head. “She told me they had decided they were never meant for each other in the first place and no hard feelings, but apparently no lasting friendship, either. He’s pissed off at me, doc—and can you blame him?”

“Yes.”

Michael searched Kamm’s eyes for his sincerity. When he found it, he incredulously asked, “You blame him?”

“You saved his life,” Kamm noted. “I think that’s worth something, don’t you?”

“But I drove him to overdose, so—in a sense—I’m the one responsible for nearly killing him in the first place. Even Simon said, if he’d died, it would have been because of me. End result? I owed him. I still do.”

“We’re back to that, are we?” Kamm leaned comfortably in his chair and prepared for another empty round of answers. “In our fellatio supposition, you imagined him telling you you owed him. That was two Christmases ago, long before you ‘drove him to overdose’—what did you owe him back then?”

Michael averted his eyes out of shame. “For all the shit he had to put up with in his life because of me.”

“What shit?”

“Babysitting me, for one,” he coolly responded.

Kamm lowered his eyes to the desktop and was silent for a minute. Then he abruptly voiced a question. “On the night he almost killed you, Simon said, ‘It fucked us both over, didn’t it?’ What’s the ‘it’ he referred to?”

“What happened to him.”

“What his father did to him?”

“Yes.”

“What Simon’s father did to Simon fucked both of you over.”

“That’s how Simon saw it.”

“I don’t see the connection,” the doctor confessed. “Explain it to me.”

Michael was annoyed. “This is pointless, isn’t it? I’ve been coming here for a couple of months and going nowhere.”

“Tell me something new,” Kamm suggested. “Tell me what Simon’s father did to you.”

“He didn’t do anything to me—not personally.” Michael was certain of it. “He did terrible things to Simon, and it put us together in a place where—”

“That’s old news,” Kamm interrupted him. “I want something new. Tell me what Simon’s father did to you.”

Michael felt badgered and raised his voice. “I’m telling you he didn’t do anything to me.”

“Then maybe it was your father who did something to you. Maybe this has never been Simon’s life experience; maybe it’s your life experience, and it’s so awful for you to remember, you’re projecting it on him.”

“In other words, I’m the rape victim,” Michael concluded. He laughed with disbelief at the doctor’s far-reaching claim.

“Are you?” Kamm wanted to know. “Maybe that’s why you’ve been ‘babysat’ all these years and why you have such trouble getting emotionally close to women, because you’re the one who was sexually abused.”

Michael grew visibly upset. “I can prove it wasn’t me.” His heart pounded in his chest; he felt lightheaded and queasy and didn’t understand why. Was it because he was about to break another promise to Simon?

Kamm was mildly taken aback. He exchanged a serious look with Michael and then calmly said, “So, prove it, then.”

The door to the hallway was within reach, Michael noted. Fear boiled the blood in his veins. He set his jaw and stared defiantly at Kamm. The doctor didn’t say another word, but Michael knew what he was thinking. He buried the adrenalin enough to defend himself and tell what he knew. “Simon’s father went to prison. That’s on record. Check it out yourself.”

Kamm sat back in his chair. “I thought you said charges for sexually hurting Simon were never pressed because no one but you knew about that abuse.”

“I think what I meant was, they were dropped for his hitting Simon that day, the day he smacked him in the face with the golf club, but he later confessed to some other crime.”

“To what he sexually did to Simon?”

Michael’s head hurt. He tried to remember. “He went to jail back then for what he did to Simon’s mother.”

“For assaulting her?”

He rubbed his forehead, drew a long breath, and slowly let it out. “Yeah, I think so.”

“But how does that prove you weren’t sexually abused?”

“Simon’s father couldn’t hurt me if he was in jail, now, could he?” He smirked, as if the deduction should have been obvious to Kamm.

Kamm outfoxed him. “So maybe he molested you before he went to jail. You haven’t made your case.”

Michael shook his head and looked off to let Kamm know he was tired and frustrated and didn’t want to be badgered any longer.

Kamm pursued him despite it. “How long was Nelson in jail?”

Michael realized he hadn’t been clear. “He’s still in prison,” he said, looking back at Kamm.

“He’s in prison? Still? Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

“I didn’t remember till now.”

“That was almost a decade ago,” Kamm reminded him. “That’s a long sentence for assaulting a woman. You sure he wasn’t also sent away for molesting children, too?”

“If he was, I wasn’t aware of it. Besides, he tried to kill Simon’s mother; it was more than just assault. But, regardless, it certainly didn’t have anything to do with me, so you can start by leaving me out of that equation.” He regained emotional control somewhat and felt the physical pain begin to subside. “I’m obsessed with Simon and he wishes he could kill me. Isn’t that fucked up enough for you?”

There was a long, drawn-out silence in the room. Kamm didn’t speak for a while and Michael didn’t expect him to. He knew the doctor thought it was a cop-out answer and that it proved nothing, but he didn’t care. What difference did any of what he’d shared in that office make anyway? He rose out of his chair, walked to stand by the window, and looked out over the city again.

“Then maybe it was your father who hurt you,” Kamm suggested.

“Come again?”

“Maybe it was your father who molested you, not Simon’s father molesting him.”

Michael shook his head out of disgust and avoided eye contact with Kamm. “Change the subject,” he ordered and he didn’t mince words.

Kamm did as he was told only to defuse the situation. “You think Simon really wanted to hurt you,” he recalled.

Michael finally looked at him. “That’s apparent.”

“He overdosed on drugs and alcohol and then called you, and what did he say?”

“That he didn’t want to die.”

“His exact words were, ‘If I die, it will have been because of you.’”

“Yeah, that’s what he said,” Michael confirmed.

“Suppose he had died?”

“Let’s suppose.”

“That would have been the legacy he left for you. The rest of your life, he wanted you to feel responsible for his taking his own life. Isn’t that what you believe?”

Michael was certain. “Yes.”

“Why would he want to hurt you that badly?”

“He lost the chance to kill me,” he explained. “He thought he’d try another way.”

“He beat you in a rage,” Kamm replayed, “and just maybe his rage was fueled by drugs and alcohol; maybe it wouldn’t have been his reaction to the degree it was had he not been, shall we say, ‘medicated.’ A few days later, under another powerful drug influence, he’s clever enough to find the most hurtful dying words he can formulate.”

Michael shrugged. “Simon’s good with words. He probably practiced those exact ones long before he said them.”

“Know what I think?”

“You’ll tell me even if I’m not interested,” he said, dryly.

“I think he was desperate. I don’t think he was trying to tell you you’d be responsible for his death because you betrayed him and put him into that spin; I think he told you you’d be responsible for his death if you didn’t get an ambulance to him in time.”

Michael stared out the window. He watched the breeze tickle the leaves on the trees spaced along the sidewalk below. It was refreshing to see them; the green planet had come back to life. He would miss Colorado’s greenery if ever he had to leave there—

“I think,” the doctor continued, “that you’re feeling guiltier about all this than is necessary. Take Simon’s words for what they were: a cry of desperation, no more, no less, and then stop beating yourself up over it.”

Michael’s breath lightly steamed the window glass. If he could stop beating up on himself, he mused, he wouldn’t need the good doctor. The ironies of life never seemed to escape him.

Kamm spoke even though his patient didn’t respond. “And so maybe you’re reading more into his songs from his last album than is there, too.”

Maybe. He liked Kamm’s take on things; it made them all a bit easier to handle. But he didn’t think they were accurate. He turned, pressed his back to the window frame, and met Kamm’s questioning eyes. He supposed a more realistic perspective. “Simon said some pretty vicious things. I think he knew what he was saying when he said them—even under the influence.”

“Like when he said you couldn’t handle life?”

“Like that.”

“Why couldn’t you handle life?”

Michael said what he thought was obvious. “The state of the world, you know, and seeing violence up close the way I saw it in Simon’s life, well, I just withdrew. People do that for a lot less reason.”

“Not usually. Not to that degree. What other nasty thing did Simon say just to be mean?”

Michael heard it in his mind then. It was something he’d almost forgotten and yet it had been the most cruel words to ever emerge from Simon’s mouth. It cut him again like the razor-sharp glass that had sliced him on that wicked night. He shuddered even to repeat it, but he managed just the same. “At one point, you know, it was like he’d lost control of himself on that night he kicked the shit out of me.”

“Yes?”

“He ranted at me, mostly incoherently, or maybe I lost the ability to decipher what he said. But I did hear him tell me that I was so perverted I’d …”

“Don’t stop there,” Kamm pushed him. “Tell me the rest of that sentence.”

Michael wasn’t certain he could even use the words, but when he did, they felt surreal to him, as if they were detached from his person. “He said I was so perverted, I’d fuck my own mother if …” Again, he stalled.

Kamm was impatient. “If what?”

“Never mind. I just realized …”

“What?”

“I didn’t want to share that after all.”

“You already did. You just need to finish it. He said ‘you’d fuck your own mother if’—what, Michael? If she’d let you?”

The idea made him nauseated. “Hell, no—and fuck you for saying that.” He hugged the wall near the window frame and vainly hoped Kamm would abandon his questions. “I misspoke, that’s all. I don’t want to talk about it.”

“In Simon’s uncontrollable, drug-induced rage and hurt, he said you were so perverted that ‘you’d fuck your own mother if’—what? if she wanted you to?”

He heard his mother cry and felt like crying himself. He didn’t like the doctor’s persistence; he resented his suppositions. He tried to tell Kamm he didn’t appreciate the questions, but the words wouldn’t emerge; they stuck in his throat.

Kamm came around his desk and leaned on the front corner nearest Michael. He crossed his arms over his chest, settled there, and conveyed by his posture that he had no intention of backtracking. “Did you fuck your mother, Michael?”

Disgust and resentment flushed Michael’s face. “What kind of a sick question is that?” he shot at Kamm.

“I want you to finish the sentence you started. I want you to tell me what Simon said, that’s all. You leave me no choice but to wonder how the sentence ended. Were you so ‘perverted’ you attacked your own mother? Did you rape her?”

“You go to hell!” That time, Michael did find his legs. He made it to the hallway somehow and loudly slammed the door behind him.

* * *

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Kamm ended his day as he always did, relaxed on the office sofa with a notepad or his thoughts or both. He’d counseled two patients since Michael’s abrupt departure, but couldn’t shake the disappointment he had in himself for driving the young man away. He’d grown especially fond of Michael, for he was both unusually troubled and, despite his occasional sarcasm, relatively innocent because of it.

He crossed his ankles on the coffee table, rested the back of his head in his clasped hands, and stared for long minutes across the room, unseeing. He’d played and replayed Michael’s answers and mannerisms in his mind so often over the course of two months, he was certain he was close to breaking the barriers that had imprisoned him. But just at that critical moment he’d blown it, pushed the man too far, and right out of the building.

So he was filled with tremendous relief and gratitude when he saw his closed office door slowly open and Michael appeared in the entrance. Kamm even tried not to show how pleased he was to see him, but he was certain the half-smile he couldn’t hide gave it away.

Michael didn’t notice. He was weathered, just from the few afternoon hours he’d been gone, weakened and emotionally beaten. He saw the doctor across the dimly-lit room look back at him with an inviting smile, but he still asked if he could enter.

“Please,” Kamm encouraged him. “Come in. Sit down. I’m sorry about this afternoon,” he immediately confessed. “I thought we were close to something, but I overstepped the boundary, and I apologize.”

With a visible tremble, Michael closed the door. He lowered his eyes, but the hardwood floor was unfamiliar to him. The chair he’d been invited to sit in seemed miles away. Instead, he crossed the room to the furnace, leaned on the wall near the bookcase, and faced the doctor.

“What’s wrong?” Kamm asked. He dropped his feet to the floor, straightened on the sofa, and leaned forward. “What’s the matter?”

Michael solemnly made eye contact. He’d had fragments of memory, horrific images and sounds that both confused and terrified him. Their weight crushed him and he sank against the wall till he hit the floor.

Kamm left the sofa and joined him there, bewildered himself when he noticed Michael’s tremble. He waited for him to explain his demeanor.

“Simon said I was so perverted,” Michael finally said, to finish his earlier sentence before his departure from Kamm’s office, “that I’d fuck my own mother …”

“Yes?”

“That I’d fuck my own mother … if she was alive.”

Kamm was somewhat confused and admittedly stunned. He searched Michael’s face for more than he’d heard, but found nothing. It wasn’t that he was surprised to learn that Michael’s mother had passed, but that Michael was so visibly upset by it—especially all these years later. Or maybe he misunderstood.

“You’ve never spoken of her,” Kamm said. “When did she die?”

“I don’t know that she died,” he managed to say, “but I think something terrible has happened.”

“You think something terrible has happened to your mother? Is that what you think has happened?”

“Yes,” came the uncertain reply. “I think so. I think maybe she’s dead.”

“You think so? Because someone has told you so?”

“Simon said.”

“When did Simon tell you your mother died? Just recently?”

“No.”

“Then … did he tell you in his drinking days? Did he tell you the night he beat you?”

Michael looked into Kamm’s eyes. He saw the concern that outlined Kamm’s face and it fueled his own urgency. He was grateful for the direction. “No,” he managed to say, remembering. “He told me when we were much younger than that.”

“When you were boys? Nine years ago?”

“Yes.”

Kamm gently touched Michael’s arm. “Tell me what he said.”

Michael was desperately grief-stricken and couldn’t remember Simon’s specific words. “I think something terrible has happened,” he repeated. He embraced his knee and silently begged Kamm to find the answer for him.

“When you were boys,” Kamm played it out, “Simon told you your mother had died, yes?”

Michael couldn’t breathe except deeply. “He told the police,” he unintentionally corrected Kamm. He remembered again the freezing rain as he stood at the payphone with Simon and they got drenched in it. He could feel the cold all over again, and it intensified his tremble.

“Simon told the police your mother had died? And he told them she’d died because she’d been killed somehow?”

“I think so,” he tentatively answered, unable to scream, but he felt like it. “Oh, God, I think something very terrible has happened. I can’t handle it.”

“Did your mother have an accident?”

“No.”

Kamm shifted closer and spoke in a controlled tone of voice. “Was your mother murdered?”

Michael pushed himself against the wall in a failed attempt to avoid the answer. “I heard her crying,” he said. He dropped his head into the elbow of his arm, against his knee. “He hurt her and she cried something awful.”

“Who hurt her, Michael?”

“Jake,” he managed to remember, though he could no longer see the face in his mind.

“Who’s Jake?”

“Simon’s father.”

Kamm visibly withdrew, startled by the unexpected answer to his impulsive question. “Simon’s father’s name was Jake Nelson?”

“Yes.”

“Simon’s father killed your mother, Michael?” he asked, incredulously. He wanted to be clear.

“I think he did,” Michael said again. He heard his mother’s desperate sobs in his head and pushed them away by clenching his fists. “It was something terrible and I think she’s dead.”

“Where were you when you heard your mother crying?”

The door had opened downstairs; Jenny answered it, he remembered. He heard her sweet voice, indecipherable, and then his mother’s, only seconds later, as she greeted the uninvited visitor. “I was up in my room.”

“You were upstairs in your room,” Kamm recounted, “when Jake came to the house. Was he looking for Simon?”

“I think so.”

“Where was Simon?”

Michael shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Was he with you?”

“No.” He couldn’t remember whether Simon was with him or not, but didn’t think he had been. He was alone in his room; he could hear the downstairs door open again and he emotionally pushed against it. “Jake came looking for Simon, but Simon wasn’t there.”

“So he got mad,” Kamm surmised. “He believed Simon was with you and that your mother stood in the way of his finding him. Is that what may have happened?”

“I guess so.” He hid his face in his arms.

“Jake was armed somehow? a knife, a gun?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you hear gunshots?”

“I don’t think I did.”

“Was your father home?”

Michael groaned and turned away from the doctor to feel the wall instead of himself when he realized he didn’t want to delve further into his memory. “No, please,” he begged. He writhed against the wall as if he could climb behind it and be safe from the horrific experience all over again.

Kamm tried to physically get Michael’s attention with a tug on his arm, but he failed. He surrendered the attempt and tried a question. “Where was your father when Jake came to the house?”

“Stop it!” Michael blurted. He recalled again his father’s last words. “Stop it!” He sank further onto the floor and covered his face with his hands. Had that really happened? Had his mother been forever hurt as he now remembered she’d been, as Simon had told the police she’d been?

Kamm successfully broke into Michael’s thoughts. “Your childhood memories become vague and nonexistent after a particular day, Michael, so let me ask this: Did Jake come to your house looking for Simon the day he struck him with the golf club, the day your family took him to the hospital for stitches?”

Michael was forced to remember the details by the question posed at him. He lowered his hands from his face and stared at the ceiling, past it, into that overcast day. “I think so,” he hoarsely replied. “Yeah, I think Jake came to the house that day. That was the day.” He was certain of it then.

“Jake was enraged,” Kamm assumed. “He’d found out Simon had been with you, something he had explicitly forbidden Simon to do, so he went looking for him; maybe he went looking for you, too. You were upstairs, alone, when Jake came to the door, but do you remember the payphone where you and Simon stood in the rain?”

“Yes.” He seemed to have never forgotten.

“It was nighttime.”

“Yes.”

“Simon was talking to the police.”

“Yes.” He had to have been.

“He told them Jake had killed your mother.”

“I think he told them that, yes.” He couldn’t remember specific words.

Kamm persisted. “If you were alone in your upstairs bedroom when your mother got hurt, why was Simon with you later that night at the payphone?”

“He got me and we went to the payphone together to call the police.”

“Where was your father when this happened?”

Michael closed his eyes and tried to remember. He was certain he’d been alone in his room when he heard his mother crying and his father yelling, but he was definitely at the payphone, too, in the rain, in the cold, drenched to the skin, while he listened to Simon talk to the police. “There’s been some killings,” he remembered, aloud, but the words didn’t feel like his, and then he realized they hadn’t been.

“Did Simon tell the police there’d been ‘some killings’?” Kamm pressed him. “Did Jake hurt your father, too, Michael?”

He pushed the words out of his mouth. “Yeah. He hurt him. He hurt everybody.”

“He killed little Jenny, too?”

Michael hit the wall with a fist and startled Kamm by its forcefulness. “Fuck him!” he said. “He killed everybody.” Then he pressed against the wall for strength, but even its hardness didn’t give him any.

Kamm whispered “Jesus” under his breath. He struggled with Michael to keep him from hitting the wall again, from possibly hurting himself, but Michael pulled away. He moaned and he cried and he desperately pled, “No, no, please, don’t.” It was easy for Kamm to believe his patient spoke directly to him just then, but the fact was that Michael instead begged Jake to leave his family alone, as if he could stop him all those years later.

* * *

The sun had set and darkened the room further; only a lone desk lamp shed any light. Michael was emotionally drained. He lay on his back on the hardwood floor in front of the doctor, who still sat near him. He exhaled finally, and turned his head to look at Kamm. The doctor was solemn, and he didn’t smile when their eyes met.

Maybe Michael shouldn’t have gone to him, but he didn’t know where else to go; only Kamm could have helped him to climb over the mountain. He apologized under his breath.

“Not necessary,” Kamm told him. “It’s what you’ve needed to do now for nine years.” He leaned back on his hands again, cocked his head to elicit cooperation, and sought more answers. “When you heard what was going on downstairs, did you hide in the attic?”

Michael stared at the ceiling; he crossed his arms over his chest, tucked his hands in his armpits, and audibly sighed again. He was reluctant to speak because he feared where it might take him. But, “Yes,” he finally replied. His throat felt dry when he spoke, and it must have been, because the doctor got to his feet to retrieve a cup of water for him.

“Did Jake come upstairs?” Kamm asked.

“Yeah.”

“You heard him come into your room?”

“I did.” His heart pounded with the memory. He’d been so terrified Jake would find him and kill him, too.

“And then he left,” Kamm guessed. He handed Michael the cup. “What did you do next?”

“Nothing.” He sat up then and slowly sipped some water; it felt cool in his throat and was more refreshing than he expected. “I kept blacking out, and then I’d come to and black out again, I remember now. It was surreal. I heard the phone ring a few times. I heard rain outside on the roof.” He even heard the tree branch bang against the side of the house in the wind. “Then things would go black again.”

He heard Kamm exhale. “When did you come out of hiding?”

“I heard a knock at the back door,” he explained. “It woke me. And then I heard pounding on the back door and I heard Simon yell my name.” Michael! Michael! “But I couldn’t move. He threw rocks at my window, but still I couldn’t move. I remember it being a familiar sound, one I so desperately wanted to answer, but I couldn’t do anything about it that time.”

Kamm sat again on the floor near him. “And then?”

“The noise stopped for a while. All I could hear was the rain and the wind; I thought he’d gone. But then I heard him come into the house through the front door.”

Michael didn’t continue for a minute. Temporarily, he was thoughtless, as if all of his memory had suddenly been erased again. He’d been emptied of every emotion he could feel. He merely sat, slowly sipped water for a minute, and he didn’t think and he didn’t feel.

“Simon came in the front door then,” Kamm said, to encourage him to continue.

It wasn’t that Michael had heard the door open. He simply heard Simon, yelling, and the sound had come from the front of the house, so he assumed Simon had come to the front door. “He started screaming,” he told Kamm.

“Over what he saw there at the front door? Or screaming because he was trying to find you?”

Michael! Michael!

“I don’t know. I think he thought I was dead, too.”

“Did you answer him?”

“I couldn’t. I couldn’t seem to do anything. I think I blacked out for a minute or two. I came around again when I heard a noise much closer to me.”

“What kind of noise?”

“Simon had come into my room. He kept calling for me. I wanted to get to the attic door so he could come up, so he’d be safe, but I just couldn’t move.” He remembered how helpless he’d felt; Simon could have been killed because of his inaction. “But he got the ladder down on his own, you know, by the rope, and he came up into the attic.”

Kamm watched Michael take another sip of water and briefly close his eyes. “What are you seeing?” he asked.

“How sorry he looked.” He could vividly see Simon’s face, how utterly horrified he appeared, how absolutely terrified he seemed. “I felt so sorry for him,” he said, and he realized only then that he’d felt such pity for Simon that night.

“He was your best friend in all the world,” Kamm noted. “And you were his. And there you were, alone together in that attic, terrified, stunned, and with only each other to comfort.”

“I never meant to hurt him.”

“How did you hurt him?”

“You know … when I did that thing with his wife.”

Kamm understood. “Of course, you didn’t mean to hurt him. But he got you out of the attic that night, didn’t he, because he cared about you, too?”

Simon carefully found his way in the darkness, with just the room light from below shattering it. He knelt beside Michael; he was wet, Michael noticed, and his hair was plastered to his forehead, and he seemed cold. It was difficult to get situated on the ceiling beams, but he managed. Wordlessly, he held Michael around his shoulders, buried his face in Michael’s sweatshirt, and cried with him for a while.

Michael leaned against the wall, level with Kamm’s concerned eyes. In a low voice, he continued. “Simon kept saying, ‘Everything is going to be all right.’” He laughed, sadly, and repeated it. “He’d say it like he believed it. Then we crawled onto the roof into the rain and wind, dropped to the ground from the tree there, and walked to a payphone at the corner gas station.” Later, he was in a hospital bed, looking into the hallway, watching Simon talk to the police.

Kamm offered his analysis. “And as long as you had Simon,” he completed the picture, “you didn’t have to face what had happened to your family. All these many years, Simon has been for you what booze and drugs had once been for him.”

Michael almost laughed, but didn’t, for he wasn’t certain he’d heard the doctor correctly. “Say that again?”

“As Simon put it, he was your pacifier,” Kamm explained. “You haven’t been able let him go, Michael, because you’re desperately addicted to the absolutely necessary escape he affords you.”

Michael was stunned by the revelation. That time he did laugh—because he felt amazed and foolish and liberated all at once. He laughed again, that time with disbelief.

Kamm added kindly, “It explains why you couldn’t defend yourself when he attacked you. And why you’d sell your soul to keep him in your life. You don’t bite the hand that protects you—even if it is punishing you. Simon rescued you that night, and then he rescued you every night thereafter by completely isolating you from the reality of that painfully horrific nightmare.”

* * *

Michael spent the morning on a drive north from Denver, toward the Rocky Mountain National Park, where majestic, snow-capped mountain peaks and rich blue skies beckoned him. Through the muddied windshield of his truck, and once out of the city, he was amazed by how clear the skies were, how blue the widespread heavens. He wondered what kinds of colors the Earth must have been dressed in all those millions of years before human beings stepped upon the planet and faded them. How refreshing, he thought, that there were still places as wild and as spectacular as the view that stretched before him.

The mountains reminded him of the ocean and they seemed as high as the seas were deep. He remembered how often he’d leaned over the bow of Simon’s boat as it sped toward the horizon and wondered about all those nations of other beings who lived in the ocean’s unfathomable depths. So what sort of creatures dwelled on the mountain, in the snows, in the canyons and crevices, along the rivers?

He turned on the radio and surfed to a country station, which he listened to until the parade of broken-hearted songs made him feel melancholic. He found a station that played classical music instead. It seemed more fitting, besides, amid the grandeur.

He didn’t have a destination in mind; the journey seemed enough. Along the way he stopped at a small grocery store on the side of the highway where pickup trucks and cattle trailers were lined. Cowboy hats and silver belt buckles were the fashion. Although he didn’t feel out of place, he certainly had stepped into a time warp of some kind—where a John Wayne reenactment was at play.

He bought a six-pack of canned apple juice, a bag of roasted sunflower seeds, and ordered a potato knish to go—heated, of course, which he had to wait for, and did so as he leaned in the doorframe of his truck and hid behind dark sunglasses to watch people in the parking lot. When they weren’t watching him, he snapped their pictures.

He could live there, he decided, in the middle of seemingly nowhere. Buy some property in the mountains nearby and raise horses. Or rescue cows. He wasn’t sure which—although the latter didn’t seem like it would go over too well in that part of the country where “ribs”—by the bucket load—could be bought at the counter.

Still, it was quiet there, and people didn’t seem to take much notice of strangers; merely friends they hadn’t met, in disguise. And, although the Wild, Wild West seemed long gone, there was a certain kind of old-fashioned comradeship in passersby—as long as, of course, one wore genuine snakeskin cowboy boots or said “howdy” with a friendly nod of the head. All in all, Michael thought, pushing away from the door when his order was called, it was preferable to living in Los Angeles where young people sported stilettos and automatic firing weapons and killed one another over the color of their clothes.

He paid for his stash, shoved it into a paper bag, and returned to his truck. For a long, lazy half hour he stood in the open door of the cab and ate quietly while he watched cars pass by on the two-lane highway, and occasionally snapped a picture or two of things that interested him in the surroundings. Strangers waved hello; they were friendly, he noted, in ways city folks weren’t.

He leaned across the bench seat, turned on the radio, and searched the dial for quiet music, but most of what he received was static and, after a while, he shut it off. He then climbed into the truck and returned to the highway.

By late morning he found himself at the mouth of the national park and decided to take refuge in its inviting beauty. It was a weekday, and few people seemed to be on the road; still, he slowly wound along the mountain curves, and parked only when he found a small, secluded turnout, to get out of the truck.

After he hiked up a wooded embankment, he was out of breath when he reached the summit, and very amused at himself to think he could have made the climb without being winded. When he regained his footing and stood on a flattened grassy knoll, he looked around and realized he’d been haloed by the mountains. The view forced him to whisper, “God Almighty.”

Maybe it was the vastness of the mountains, or maybe it was because he was a long way from his childhood, a long way from Los Angeles, a long way from Dr. Kamm and his haunting questions—or maybe it was finally just time to sit down, to stop thinking, to stop running, to break through the barriers that had imprisoned him nearly all his adult life—and mourn.

Images of his family circled in his mind; every detail he could remember then and they came in bits and pieces, fragments of images and sound: his mother’s crying, his sister’s screaming, the rage in Jake’s voice. He remembered how alone in that house he’d felt, how alone in that empty attic he was as he listened to the rain and the tree branch, utterly terrified, certain he was next to die. He forced himself to imagine the scene of the crime—to see his family’s lifeless bodies the way Simon had, the blood on the walls, on the floors, on the staircase railing. He remembered the body bags, the sirens in the neighborhood that stopped at his house, the police radios. He heard Simon’s screams when he discovered the scene; Michael! Michael! Michael!—as if Simon’s very life depended on finding him. Maybe it did. And he remembered Simon as he held him, rocked him, cried with him there in the cold attic. They were only boys—boys who were forced to grow into young men that day and were, he realized then, forever bonded.

But he couldn’t remember the funeral. He wasn’t even certain that he’d attended the memorial service or where his family had been buried. He’d abandoned them. He abandoned them when he hid in the attic, and he abandoned them again when they were lowered into the ground.

He opened his eyes, stared at the vast blue above him, felt his back pressed to the earth, and the force of gravity that held him there, that kept him from falling into the sky.

There was no God, he decided, for how could there be? And yet he was angry at God, too. He hurled insults at the sky and tore at the grass beside him, to throw handfuls of it at the blue atmosphere above him. The blades floated back to earth, into his hair and his face; he covered his eyes with his hands. “Damn you, anyway,” he cussed.

He rolled onto his side, stared into the distance toward a tree line, and realized he’d never freed himself from Simon’s protective embrace. Kamm was right about that. Simon had been his ‘fix.’ It was one thing to get false security from a bottle or a needle, another to get it from a person.

Such a responsibility Simon carried.

Michael gripped the grass as he pressed his face to the coolness of the earth. “I’m sorry, man,” he whispered, as if, somehow, Simon could hear him all the way from Los Angeles—and forgive him.

And so it was quite ironic, when he managed to get back on the highway and turned on the radio, that it was Simon’s voice coming at him over the speakers to emotionally startle him. The song he’d accidentally overheard ten months earlier, the one in which Simon sang about disloyal friends, had more to say; this time, Simon conveyed, in no uncertain terms, how he wished he’d succeeded in killing the friend who’d betrayed him the night he beat him into unconsciousness.

Michael turned off the radio in the middle of the song, pulled off the highway, and punched the steering wheel with his fist, too heartsick to drive another inch.

* * *

“I was thinking about that song I heard the other day, you know?” Michael said, “and about how angry he still is with me, about how determined he is to find me, even after all this time, to throw more punches. And I was also thinking about what you said, about how Simon’s ‘meanness’ may have been a cry for help. But I believe he’s still trying to get even.”

“So you heard through the grapevine that he was on the road to good health,” Kamm said, “and he even got his new record out on time, but he hasn’t stopped trying to settle the score with you, is that it? You tell me. Does that sound like a man in recovery?”

“He can make records; he can be ultra-successful again, maybe even more so with his newfound attitude. And he might even be healthier than I am, despite my vegetarian diet because he’s had a crash course in surviving. But it won’t change the fact that he’s been pissed off at me since the day the shit hit the fan.”

Kamm was amused. “Why would he be?”

Michael noticed how comfortable Kamm seemed, that he looked pleased to see his patient analyze matters for himself without being coaxed into it first. The doctor’s inviting posture and expression helped him to relax, and he spoke more freely. “I think he felt a great sense of responsibility in protecting me from what happened—the protection I wanted from him, that is, not that he wanted to give necessarily. He didn’t want the babysitting job; he never asked for it. He probably felt responsible for his father’s actions, and taking care of me made him feel not so guilty.”

“And so he kept the resentment he felt for you to himself because sharing it with you was being irresponsible,” Kamm hypothesized to follow up on Michael’s premise. “To be ‘weaker’ than you was to break the unspoken promise he’d made to himself to protect you.”

Michael locked his hands behind his head. The chair he’d spent a lot of hours in had grown to fit him. “Exactly,” he replied. “So his resentment came out in others ways—like in his sarcasm with me. When the world came down around him, he couldn’t turn to me and he hated me for that. He hated the way we were, the one-sidedness of it all, I think. And he distrusted me all along because of it. When I look back, I think the only time I felt ‘normal’ was when I was with Emily. The rest of my life was just, well, suspended animation, if you will—and at his expense.”

“Do you feel more ‘normal’ now?”

“I hated your gazillion questions, doc, but I’m glad you asked every one of them. I’m a relatively liberated man, and I think I’m only going to get freer.”

Kamm smiled, pleased. “You’ve had a tough battle. Your experiences and memories were so convoluted, we got taken on a number of rabbit trails that led nowhere. It wasn’t my plan. But, then, no one could have guessed what had happened to you and Simon. And now? How do you feel about Simon now that you remember his father killed your family?”

It was a hard question, but the answer came easily for him. “How can I possibly hold Simon responsible? I told him a number of times that he wasn’t responsible for his father’s actions when his father raped him, you know? And I practice what I preach.”

Kamm liked Michael’s answer. “So, then, are you going back to Los Angeles? Back to your work?”

“I think I’ll get back to my work from the great state of Colorado.” He glanced out the window to the blue sky and the mountain range in the distance. “I’m gonna look for some property near Estes Park and use L.A. as a drawing board, someplace where the cash exchanges hands. I think I’d like to finish that animal exploitation exhibit I started, maybe develop a similar one for the environment, and put these mountains to use. Hell, maybe I’ll get into filmmaking, who knows? I do know I’ll need a couple of years, as they say, to find myself.”

Kamm was impressed with Michael’s plans. “And what about Simon? Leave him behind in Los Angeles with the past?”

“The door will always be open for him; I just don’t believe he’ll ever walk through it. He’s made himself clear.”

“So you’re not going to go after him then?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you still need-love-want him?”

Michael laughed when he recalled those words from his first session with Kamm. He didn’t think he’d have to answer them, but he appreciated the opportunity to explore it. “It’s not love if it doesn’t last forever,” he said. “But need him? Well, I’d like to talk to him about all that happened, you know, to fill in those holes I can’t fill in without him.” He struck an idea. “Maybe someday he’ll come talk to the both of us.”

“He’s always welcome,” Kamm reflected. “I like that idea, too. Now we’re left with want. Do you still want Simon?”

“Not in bed,” he laughed.

“That’s not how I meant it.”

Michael knew how he’d meant it. “Yeah,” he said with conviction, “I still want him in my life—out of choice.”

“Then let’s suppose for a minute that Simon wanted to see you again. How would you feel about that?”

Michael dropped his hands to his lap and his line of vision to the floor. It was, admittedly, an interesting question. Would he be petrified? Relieved? He’d feel many things, he was certain. “I guess I’d be grateful,” he said. “It would mean he’d forgiven me, so I think I could handle it.”

When Kamm didn’t speak for a few minutes, Michael grew curious and amused. “You?” he asked, “at a loss for words this long a time? What evil thoughts are at play in your mind?”

“I believe Simon does want to see you again,” Kamm said. “Remember that you left Los Angeles for Colorado before he was released from the hospital and long before he got out of rehab—and you didn’t leave a forwarding address or telephone. How’s he to reach you? Through Emily?”

“I doubt he’d call her, but even if he did, all she could tell him is that I’m in Colorado—but even that was months ago.”

“Exactly.”

Michael scoffed then at the doctor’s notion. “It doesn’t matter. If you heard that song he wrote, you’d know a reunion isn’t in the cards.”

Kamm opened a desk drawer and removed a compact disc he’d set close at hand. “Never prejudge, my friend,” he said.

Michael noticed the new picture of Simon on the CD’s cover.

Kamm turned it over and read through the small print before he spoke again. “I actually did hear ‘that song’—so many times I’ve got it memorized.”

Michael’s stomach tightened and he silently cussed himself for his reaction because he hoped he’d overcome his fears by then. “You thought it might be fun to hear how he rakes me over the coals on the nation’s airwaves, huh? You have a sick sense of humor, you know that, doc?”

Kamm laughed. “Well, I wondered if there wasn’t something in it that might help me help you all the more. But if you don’t want to know what I think …”

Michael rolled his eyes. “You’ll tell me anyway,” he argued, “so you may as well say it.”

“Simon certainly wanted to make it clear that the song was about you. He titled it, ‘dandelion wine.’”

Michael was instantly shocked by the intense shame he felt for causing Simon to use ‘dandelion wine’ against him. He found his voice after a moment. “And from that you think he might want to see me again, huh?”

Kamm continued to study the disc. “The song is, at first, very unkind. It’s clear he was deeply hurt, having invested eleven years in a friendship that, in the end—an end he never thought possible—left him disillusioned and betrayed and—”

Michael choked back his remorse. “I got it, doc. So?”

“Apparently you didn’t hear all of it.”

“I told you that, but I got the gist of it.”

“Maybe you should hear it to the end.”

“Do I have to do time for the crime the rest of my life?”

Kamm turned in his chair and powered on his disc player. He pushed the open tray button and dropped the CD on the plate when it emerged, smiled as he did because he was pleased with himself for having mastered an electronic device. Then, seriously, he said, “This isn’t about hurting you.”

Michael uneasily shifted in his chair. “Even though it will.” He didn’t want to hear the song at all. “So what is it about?”

Kamm selected the track. In a few seconds, music emerged from the speakers and quietly filled the room.

Michael crossed his arms to brace himself against the embarrassment and pain he was certain the song would cause him again.

“It’s about the future,” Kamm said. He continued to stare at the disc as he silently recalled the lyrics of the song they were about to hear.

The guitar was Simon’s all right, his style, his rhythm—there was no mistaking it. Michael was sorry and hurt when he reflected on Simon’s choice for a song title, when he remembered the few words he had heard on the truck radio out there in the middle of God’s country. He looked at Kamm when Simon’s familiar, once desperately-needed, masculine voice joined the beauty of his music—only to find Kamm keenly watching him.

The lyrics were just as painful to hear then as they had been twice before. Simon made it clear—poetically and eloquently—how much he had loved his childhood friend. In the song, he recalled earlier memories of two boys who hiked in the hills, played along the river, and skipped school together. He sang about their special bond and about the personal tragedy that had sealed their fate together, though he wasn’t specific about the murders.

Michael remembered how they’d formed that connection, two loners who faced life’s blank canvas with each other, who empowered the other, and found refuge only in their friendship.

Simon sang about their deep respect for each other, about the lonely hours of their grief, and their escape from it into their dreams of “dandelion wine,” which he used as a metaphor for their special friendship.

Michael was grateful to Simon, that he had, in fact, felt that strongly about him at one time. The bond they had shared with each other, the friendship they had nurtured and protected all those years, had been real after all. Simon hadn’t denied it.

But then the song turned ominous: the music was strained, less rhythmic. It was pained and moody. Simon sang about the tear in their lives, the one Michael had caused them by his betrayal of Simon’s trust.

He met Kamm’s patient eyes, and his own were strong and directed; he hoped Kamm would understand just how resentful he felt to have been subjected to the words of that song at all.

And Simon didn’t ease it any; his voice engulfed them as he confessed to how much he wished he’d “killed the man in the payback.”

It was there, at that part of the song, that Michael had pulled off the highway and turned off the radio. He would never forget the beating he’d suffered in Simon’s hands. He would never forget Simon’s rage for as long as he lived and didn’t wish to hear about it longer than he had to. To avoid the bitter memory, he bit his lip, nervously tapped his foot, tightly crossed his arms over his chest, and prayed he could hold out till the end of the song.

Kamm stared at him, mercilessly.

And then the music slowed. A lone instrument, a guitar, Simon’s guitar, filled the room, note by note, slowing with each one until there was a weighted quiet, a deafening pause. Michael waited; he hung anxiously on that eternal moment.

Simon’s voice was clear, strong, healthy, but it was heavy with sincere emotion as well, which made the words that followed the breach all the more unexpectedly kind: “But, in the end,” he sang, “I put my life in his hands the way he had once put his in mine …”

Michael closed his eyes with sweet relief. Kamm had been right all along—saving Simon’s life had been worth something to Simon.

The music climaxed, slowed again, repeated the eternal pause. Then, softly, with an audible tremble in his voice, Simon sang, “… and he saved me from myself, thank God, with dandelion wine.”

The guitar stopped.

Michael opened his eyes and looked at Kamm. He met a sincerely pleased smile. He shook his head in disbelief at the doctor when he realized that Simon had forgiven him, that Simon’s brotherhood with him, his own indebtedness and trust in their friendship, had actually—

But the song hadn’t ended. Suddenly Simon’s voice cut into the silence; he spoke the words as they faded away in volume. “Where the hell are you anyway? Try getting your ass to my front door sometime, willya? At least give me a ring. Same number. And let’s forget the wine. Your idea was better, anyway. Dandelion pie …”

Michael laughed and his eyes were wet with tears, still choked on sentimental emotion when Simon’s last words startled him. He heard Kamm laugh, heartily, too. But Michael was speechless, stunned so deeply he couldn’t think of a word to say. He stared at Kamm, excited and sad and joyful, and tried to absorb what he’d just heard.

Kamm stopped the disc. He shrugged at Michael. “Looks like he was bent on finding you, wouldn’t you say? He must have figured that sooner or later you were bound to hear it—on the radio, in the elevator, at the supermarket checkout stand, in a passing car’s stereo. I’d say he really wants to see you again and I don’t think it’s to throw any more punches. He’s made his case clear all across the nation.”

Michael laughed again in disbelief mixed with joy. “That’s what he said, wasn’t it? ‘Try getting your ass to my front door’? He actually wants to see my ugly mug again?”

“As clear to me as the sky is over the Colorado river,” Kamm quipped.

“And you can’t get clearer than that,” Michael said with a grin. He wiped the tears from his eyes with his hands.

“No,” Kamm replied, “you can’t.”

“You know … had I heard that song back when it was released, I may just have gone home then, and never got the chance to hit the wall here.”

“Literally.”

He paused to exhale the past few months and affectionately admired Kamm. “You’ve been a godsend,” he said.

Kamm shrugged and waved away the praise. “Just doing my job.”

“I won’t forget the things I learned here. I won’t forget where it was that I began to put the pieces of my life together: on the hardwood floor of your office.”

Kamm smiled. “I’ve had a rug on order, but it didn’t arrive in time.”

“Use it for the next soul you rescue.”

Kamm removed the compact disc from the player and placed it in its cover. Then he handed it to Michael. “Simon has a lot more to say. If you’re not flying, you may want to listen to it on that long drive back to Los Angeles. You’ll have a better sense of who he is now.”

“The new-and-improved?” Michael asked.

Kamm looked into his patient’s eyes in an effort to pass along his acquired wisdom through them. “Yes, exactly,” he said. “New-and-improved—yet another thing the two of you now have in common.”

* * *

The sun had set over the Ventura Freeway when Michael abandoned the 405 and headed for Westlake Village. Emerging into heavy traffic very near the rush hour, he was impressed by the number of cars on the five-lane thoroughfare. It was a long way from the absence of civilization in some parts of Colorado he’d visited. The sky was afire with the reflection of vehicle head- and taillights, and the lights of the city. Still, there was an orange glow on the horizon where the sun touched the ocean some sixty miles away.

Miss it? He didn’t think so. Find it fascinating, he always would.

Music on the radio kept rhythm to the jockeying train of cars and brightly-lit green traffic signs that passed overhead, marking the way to the West.

He could have called Simon, but he didn’t want their initial meeting after all that time to have been over a telephone line. And he could have flown, too, but he liked Kamm’s idea to take the time and hear the rest of Simon’s album. It had been both an enlightening and thought-provoking drive.

The journey had been long, too; it had taken two days, with a stopover in Cedar City, near the Zion National Park, for the night. Michael assumed he’d be too rested to be calm, but he was aware how familiar and contented he felt on that freeway, one he had taken “home” many times before. He felt, well, good, actually—like he belonged there, there on his way to Westlake Village, on his way to see Simon again.

He hit the right-turn signal lever to exit and subconsciously took the off-ramp. The surface streets were much darker and wound their way through a sparser residential area. And, although it had been more than a year since the last time he’d driven it, he found his way instinctively to the iron gates of Simon’s estate.

When he pulled off the road and into the driveway, he stopped before the barrier while his stomach finally churned with excitement.

The house was set off the roadway; a few lights burned in the windows and there was a vehicle in the circular parkway that he didn’t recognize, a sports car of unknown make. Perhaps a new car for Simon’s new life. He rolled down the window and felt a cool breeze. On the gateposts beside him the intercom was lit in welcome. Momentarily, he felt uncertain, but then he remembered Simon’s words. Get your ass to my front door, willya?

He pushed the call button.

A minute seemed to pass. He tapped the steering wheel and stared at the house. If Simon wasn’t home, he would have to engage in another dance across the city to find him—like old times.

A click answered him momentarily and then Simon’s familiar voice asked for identification. “Who goes there?”

“I got your message,” Michael replied, not introducing himself, but amazed by his own calmness, “and this was as fast as I could get my ass here.”

Another click answered him, followed by dead silence. Then the iron gates slowly swung open. Their welcoming invitation made him smile. He stepped on the accelerator and drove up the driveway to park behind the red sports car. When he turned off the ignition, the front door to the house opened; its internal light shattered the darkness and Simon stood silhouetted in its frame.

It was only then that Michael felt genuinely apprehensive. Still, he jumped from the truck and hurried up the first step as Simon came onto the porch to greet him.

Michael never got the chance to say hello because Simon desperately took him in his arms. He laughed a sadly happy sort of laugh, filled with relief and gratitude, and affectionately called his brother a “sonofabitch” under his breath.

Michael hugged him back, just as intensely; the man’s aliveness in his embrace was the most precious thing in the world to him. He couldn’t believe they actually stood there together and greeted each other with such affection, as if there’d never been a minute’s trouble between them.

Simon let him go, but only after a long embrace, to hold him at arm’s length so they could look at each other. Michael noticed how neatly Simon was dressed—the way he used to dress, fashionably, but comfortable. He noticed the color in his skin, even in the dark, and more warmth in his expression, a calmer reflection in his eyes since he’d last seen him—or since he’d seen him in years, but, overall, he was very much the Simon he had known and loved since he was a boy. And they hadn’t lost that mutual conversation that passed between their eyes for more than a decade.

“Come in,” Simon said, eagerly inviting him into the house. “Wait till you see what I’ve done with this place. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe you’re here.”

Michael followed him. He didn’t know what to say, if anything, to the man he had needed so desperately for so many years, and had hurt so deeply for so long. But Simon’s demeanor was steady, and he spoke with that affectionate sarcasm as if they’d never parted. “I’m glad you heard that song before I had to drum up another one,” he said. “I can’t write Top of the Charts material all the time, ya know?”

Michael found his voice. “Who can?”

The last time he had seen it, the house had been abandoned. He’d gone there to help Emily retrieve some of her belongings. But it was alive now, with its new track- and firelights, the living room reminiscent of the one he had left at his own home some fourteen miles away—electronic equipment and lush, green plants. There were keyboards and musical instruments, recording devices and computers, television screens and synthesizers.

Even a piano.

He exchanged a look with Simon.

“I missed playing yours,” Simon confessed. “Besides, you were right. I produce my best stuff on that thing.”

Michael felt somewhat vulnerable, as if he’d been taken back to those days, and it was time to answer Simon again. But there was only a welcome in Simon’s voice, only a light in his eyes that was friendly and forgiving.

“And, so?” Simon asked. “Where the hell have you been, anyway?”

“Colorado.”

“I heard that much,” he said. He sat on a sofa. “It seems to have done the trick. You look good, man.”

Michael relaxed enough to smile. He sat in the armchair adjacent to the sofa and faced Simon. “I was thinking the same about you.”

“And you look like you feel good, too, despite this awkward moment,” Simon added with a nervous laugh. “But we’re all right now, aren’t we?”

Michael looked long into Simon’s eyes, bored in through those black pupils so hard he was sure he could see into his soul—and it reflected genuine wonder. “We’re all right,” he said, certain at that moment that they were. “Yet I can’t help but think you should have beaten the hell out of me nearly a decade ago—for my sake and yours.” He shrugged and redirected his focus. “But more than that, I can’t believe, after all the shit I’ve put you through and all the years I’ve held you responsible for my peace of mind, that I’m sitting here tonight hearing you ask me if we’re all right.”

Simon watched him for a moment. “What is it that you did in Colorado?”

“You mean, why do I sound like I have a handle on things now?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I spent a lot of hours in Dr. Robert Kamm’s office where I got the first-degree. He said I had the worst case of ‘post-traumatic stress, dissociative disorder, and selective amnesia’ that he’d ever seen—if you can believe that.”

Simon laughed with him, but they knew it wasn’t funny. “Leave it to you,” Simon said, “to do everything in life well. But what does that mean, ‘selective amnesia’?”

“I remembered my childhood up till the day of the murders,” Michael explained. “And most everything afterward, but I didn’t remember that the murders had ever happened.”

“You didn’t remember?”

“Not until a few weeks ago.”

“You didn’t remember that your family had been killed?”

Michael was suddenly aware of Simon’s shocked expression. “No,” he answered, carefully, then asked, “What did you think troubled me all these years?”

“Jesus, man. I thought you just didn’t want to deal with it, not that you didn’t remember it. Are you shittin’ me? Hell, if I’d known that, I’d have slammed you up against a wall and force-fed it to you.” He wasn’t facetious. “How could I have known that you didn’t remember?”

They looked at each other for a minute, speechless. Michael shrugged at him. Of course Simon couldn’t have known. And he was right: Had he known, Michael would never have made it that long blocking it from his mind. Simon hadn’t protected him all those years after all; he’d merely silently agreed never to discuss the murders with him.

“I can’t belive this,” Simon said, and he said it more than once. Tears emerged in his eyes. “I can’t believe this and I can’t believe you’re really here.” Then he thought back over their lives. “It’s a shitty journey,” he finally said. “I know, because I’ve taken it myself. Where are you in recovery then?”

“Just out the door,” Michael admitted. “I’m remembering enough to remember more, and every detail gets me one step closer to closure, I guess you might say, if there’s even such a thing for what happened to us.”

Relief lined Simon’s expression. Regardless of the past, the subject was finally on the table, and that could only be a good thing. “I thought not dealing with it—with you—was best,” Simon told him, apologizing for having made the wrong decision. “But—as I tell myself regarding my own life—it’s always better to come through these things late than never.”

“That it is,” Michael agreed.

Simon offered him pineapple juice, and they dug out some corn chips and artichoke dip, and then sat in the kitchen, at the bar counter, and discussed the details of their lives for the past year into the early hours of the following morning. They talked about everything from the weather to the terms of Simon’s new music contract, from the plans Michael had for life in Colorado, to Simon’s new sports car—and everything in between. They didn’t talk specifically about the murders, but Simon told him more than once that he was available for any such discussions, and Michael told him not to worry, that he had a lot of questions he needed answered—but that night wasn’t the time for them.

Simon pushed the dip container toward Michael. He’d had enough. He leaned elbows on the counter and made eye contact. “So … what about Emily?” he asked.

Michael half-bit into a chip when his heart rate took over momentarily.

Simon laughed at him, a friendly laugh. “Don’t choke, man,” he said. “It’s something we ought to talk about, isn’t it? Now or sometime.”

Michael swallowed what was in his mouth, but couldn’t chew more. He didn’t think the conversation was hostile; it didn’t show in Simon’s face, but he definitely felt awkward and anxious about the topic. “What’s to know?”

“Where did you both leave it?”

He tossed the rest of his chip onto the counter, unable to eat he was so nervous, and watched Simon flick it across to the sink. He didn’t know how to answer or even if he should.

“Let me tell you this,” Simon offered. He was sincere enough to ease Michael’s apprehension. “In her eyes, I was somebody; in my own, I was nobody. She married me because she needed something bigger than life, and I married her because I thought it would make me the somebody she thought I was.” He slowly twirled the bag of chips on the counter and watched a few emerge. “We weren’t ever really friends,” he admitted. “In the past year, I’ve thought a lot about how you and she ended up in that mess, and I figure the two of you were closer friends in that short period of time than she and I were in three years.”

“So what are you saying?” He retrieved one of the chips off the counter and ate it.

“I wonder if you’re still friends.”

“I’ve talked to her a few times over the past year, you know, just to say hello, check in, see how things are going. I haven’t seen her.”

“Does she not want to see you?”

“She’s wanted to.”

“But you don’t want to see her.”

They looked at each other for a minute, in silence. Michael felt a little more at ease, but he didn’t know how to answer, despite it.

“Okay,” Simon argued. “What I’m telling you is this: If you had something there, or if you wish you had something there now, and if you both want it, you have my blessing. If I know you at all, you haven’t pursued her this past year because you’ve wanted back in here.” And by ‘here,’ they both knew Simon meant back with him.

Michael laughed. Simon did know him well.

Simon flicked a chip from the counter into Michael’s lap. “I can handle it,” he added. “I really can. If you and she want it, go for it. You deserve no less.”

Michael was excited by the idea that he could have both Emily and Simon in his life again. He thought Simon was being honest and that he could accept Michael’s relationship with her; he just didn’t know if Emily could. If Simon hadn’t been so important to him, he would have been on the phone with her that very minute.

“Thanks,” Michael said, and he said it as if Simon had just offered him another glass of juice, and it made them both laugh.

“Don’t mention it,” Simon replied—and they laughed harder still.

The past was gone.

When Michael stood to stretch and begin his departure, Simon said it went without saying that he would stay at the house, in the guest bedroom with its private bath and satellite television, and they’d have breakfast somewhere on the coast later in the morning.

Michael thought it all a good idea. He was emotionally and physically drained. When he half-turned to leave the room, Simon pulled him into another lengthy embrace. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said, squeezing him tightly. “It hasn’t been home without you.”

Michael hugged him back without restraint. It was the most spontaneous and most genuine affection they had ever shared—for it had been the freest.

* * *

Emily’s voice sounded so sweet in his ear, he almost forgot to answer the “Hello” he’d heard. He impulsively responded and took liberty with his reply. “It’s your long lost boyfriend,” he affectionately said.

“Michael?”

Relief filled him and erased his nervousness. “Right answer,” he laughed, and she laughed with him. “I’m glad you didn’t name anyone else,” he said, relieved. “So how are you?”

“I’m great now that I’m hearing from you. I’ve missed you. I haven’t liked it much that I can’t reach you when I want to.”

“Well, that’s about to change.” He looked over the rest area’s landscape before him and subconsciously studied its layout and amenities: the children’s sandpit, the trash bins, the restroom structure at its center. “I’ve got lots to tell you, but you start first.”

She was excited. “I finally found an apartment and get to move out of my mother’s house this weekend. I’ve been busy preparing and packing, and looking forward to living without parental input.”

He knew she was close to her mother, but still he understood her desire to live on her own. “Why do you say ‘finally’?” he asked. “Didn’t you get enough in the divorce settlement to take care of yourself for a while to come?”

“I did,” she admitted. She didn’t sound disappointed. “I just didn’t want to make any serious life choices till I felt comfortable. But what are you up to these days? Are you going to come see me? Is that what’s about to change? It’s so good to hear from you.”

He liked everything she told him. “I’m sitting in my truck at a relief stop on some interstate highway,” he told her, comfortably slouched against his seat, his foot resting on the driver’s side mirror outside the open window, watching the passersby beyond the windshield, “and I’m waiting for your ex-husband to get out of the men’s room so we can continue our drive to Colorado.” He knew the disclosure might dampen the mood, but he didn’t want to lie and she should know sooner than later, if it would matter to her at all.

“You’re with Simon?” she asked, right on cue.

“Unless you’ve got more than one ex-husband, that’d be the one.”

There was silence on the line momentarily, and then she asked again, “You’re with Simon?”

“I’m with Simon,” he said and he laughed at the notion. “But I’ve learned he’s not the one I want.” He stole a glance at the men’s bathroom and watched for signs of his brother. “It’s a long story,” he added; he saw Simon emerge into the sunshine and walk his way. “I’d love to tell you about it sometime. We’re headed for Denver for some unfinished business. I put him on an airplane back to L.A. next Tuesday and thought, you know—if you were interested—while I was at the airport, I could catch a flight to Portland. We could have dinner.”

“I would love that very much, Michael,” she confessed. “I’ve so missed you and wonder how you’re faring. But how do we do this with—”

“It was actually his idea,” he interrupted her. He watched Simon approach and wondered if he should end the phone call, but he rethought it when he remembered the test of Simon’s offer had to begin sometime.

“Simon suggested you call me?” she asked. She seemed more than surprised; she was genuinely curious.

“I’ll give you the details at dinner. But maybe you’re not comfortable with any of this.” He felt disappointed even before he knew what she thought. He made eye contact with Simon through the window. When Simon saw that Michael was on the phone, he came to the driver’s side of the truck and leaned on the door beside him. It made Michael nervous and he waited for Emily to say something while he searched Simon’s face for any hidden communication. Could Simon guess to whom he was speaking?

Simon winked at him. He squeezed Michael’s wrist with genuine affection. “Tell her I said hi.”

Michael laughed. “Simon says hello,” he told Emily. Sweet relief tinged his voice.

Emily giggled. “Tell him I said hello back.”

“I will. So … dinner Tuesday night … bad idea?”

She laughed. “Great idea.”

Simon reassuringly patted Michael’s hand. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get back on the road.”

* * *

Robert Kamm described meeting Simon Nelson as a “gift.” Even Michael could tell he was quite pleased to have made Simon’s acquaintance; there was such a smile in his eyes for some time after the introduction.

They sat in the living room area of Kamm’s office, the doctor on the sofa, Michael and Simon in two comfortable chairs on the other side of the coffee table. Kamm was relaxed as usual, despite his excitement for the session. “Michael spent most of his time looking out the window over there,” he explained to Simon. “I call that Michael’s Wall.”

Simon turned in his chair to see the bay window and its open view of the vast Colorado sky. “He never did like closed-in spaces,” Simon remarked. “It’s fitting that he’s going to live here in God’s country.”

They exchanged more irrelevant talk. Kamm appreciated the little things he learned about the two young men. They talked about their drive from Los Angeles. Simon related his awe-inspired high as they journeyed through some of the nation’s most breathtaking country and took time to visit the north rim of the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion national parks, as they crawled over the spectacular Colorado Rockies into Denver. He confessed that none of his extensive touring had taken him into America’s scenic outback, but “leave it to Michael to drag me along such a route.”

Kamm admitted that he hadn’t visited the nation’s parks all that much, and because he lived next door to the canyon lands, he had less of an excuse for his absence. “Perhaps you boys have inspired me to get out from behind this desk.”

“Michael tells me you’ve done wonders for him—and it shows,” Simon said. He exchanged a glance with his brother before he gave his attention back to the doctor.

“And Michael tells me he’s told you everything he’s told me,” Kamm said, “including that he broke promises he made to you.”

Simon nodded that he knew.

“He’s also given me permission to share with you everything he’s confided in me these past few months,” Kamm added, “so, is there anything, then, that we shouldn’t discuss?”

“I can’t think of anything. I’m still reeling from the fact that he didn’t remember the murders, not that he simply didn’t want to talk about them, so whatever you two think is best is fine with me.”

“Why do you suppose he didn’t remember and you did?”

Simon shed an illuminating light. “Michael heard his family get killed,” he said. “I don’t think my experience was as horrific as his was—and my experience was pretty brutal by itself. Violence was an irreversible shock to his sensibilities; for me, well, I guess I was somewhat desensitized to violence having grown up with so much of it in my life.”

* * *

“Take it.”

Simon hadn’t felt more sickened by his father’s order than he did at that moment, that morning, by the very sound of his father’s voice, by the smell of stale alcohol and smoke in his clothes, and by the thing he wanted Simon to do for him—again. The man had shoved him onto the concrete floor of the garage; he bruised his knees and hands in the fall, but Simon had been through worse pain and degradation. Perhaps it was his maturing age that fueled his determined resistance, or the strength he’d come to realize he had in him, generated by the songs he’d written, by the freedom they allowed him, and from the friendship he shared with that blue-eyed, blonde-haired boy who lived on the other side of the neighborhood and believed in him enough to call him his brother.

All those things together.

Simon turned his head away when Jake shoved his erection in his face—an all-too-familiar experience—and made Simon feel all the sicker.

The man pressed it firmly into Simon’s cheek, missing his aim, and ordered the boy again to, “Take it—or do you want me to fuck you instead?”

There’d be hell to pay if Simon didn’t do as he was told. Another painful beating. Some predictable injury. The emotional abuse of his mother’s anguish when Jake would take out on her what was really the rage he felt for his son. And it had been for her, mainly for her, all those years, that Simon had obliged the man. On the occasions when he hadn’t, when he had escaped by the grace of God, it was his mother who suffered a painful beating, some predictable injury, sometimes to the very edge of her life.

But hell wasn’t on Simon’s mind in that moment, that morning, when he was more sickened by what his father wanted him to do than he’d ever been. The possibility that he could overthrow his elder, or hurt him badly enough to turn the tables in the dynamic that had defined their relationship since he was a young boy, was at the forefront of his thoughts. He shoved Jake away. “Go fuck yourself,” he growled.

“What the hell did you just say to me, boy?” came the heated reply. Jake slapped the back of Simon’s head, hard. “You think you’re too old for this? You take me and you do it now, you little prick, or your mother’s gonna wish she’d never had you.”

“Then the two of you will be even,” Simon said. He never felt ill-will toward his mother and didn’t then. His crack was a punch thrown at his father. He tried climbing to his feet, but Jake hit him in the face with a well-used fist, and sent Simon backward against the tool bench, which was jarred enough to shake loose a few tools and toss them to the floor where they clanged heavily on the cement around him. The hammer narrowly missed Simon’s face, but the punch stung enough for both blows.

There’d been numerous times when Jake had hit Simon, beaten him sometimes to near an inch of his life, and Simon took the beatings without resistance, without defending himself, without a word. But that morning was different. On that morning, he felt stronger, he felt emotionally empowered, too, and he was past the point of being sick and tired of ‘taking’ it.

Before Jake could get his hands on him, Simon lunged forward and tackled the man. They fell to the floor where they viciously wrestled, slapped and punched each other. Simon tried to get free enough to assault his father with more serious bodily injury, to forever disable him, and Jake tried to overpower his son’s struggles, as he’d done countless times before, to the point of submission.

But there would be no submitting that morning.

The two crashed into boxes and a pile of worthless collectibles fell into the middle of their fight. It gave Simon the pause he needed; he was able to get to his feet and posture himself for the assault he expected would come his way.

Jake panted as he climbed to his feet. Rage burned in his eyes. “You don’t want to do this to your mother,” he warned Simon.

It almost sounded to Simon that time that his old man tried to be reasonable—about an unreasonable act. He was no longer a physical match for his son, so he opted for a different tact.

Simon stared at him while they caught their collective breath. “It’s over,” he finally said. “You’ve done your time with me. I’m going and I’m not coming back. You do whatever you have to do. My mother,” he added in closing, his voice cracking as he spoke, “will understand.”

He could no longer be held hostage to either of them. He backed a couple of steps, then straightened, and stood as tall as he was then. Jake hadn’t moved. Their eyes stayed locked for a minute. Then Simon turned toward the garage side door and broke their fiery stare.

“You go,” he heard his father say behind him, “and I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”

“I don’t doubt it for a second,” Simon cooly replied. He grasped the door handle and felt the knob tremble in his hand, though not from fear that time. “Like I said, you do what you have to do.”

“I’ll kill her, too, then,” Jake said.

He’d almost done it a couple of times, Simon remembered. He’d watched the man choke her more than once, right there in front of him, until Simon agreed to be ‘a good boy,’ knowing it was their ‘code’ for his submission to his father’s sexually abusive appetite for him. But he couldn’t swallow the man’s semen, not a single time more, and he wouldn’t ‘assume the position’ and endure the degradation and pain of another anal penetration. His mother shouldn’t pay the price for that decision, but it was a decision he made nonetheless—and one to which he’d forever stand his ground.

“You touch my mother,” Simon warned him, his voice deeper with his own threat, “and I’ll kill you.” He thought he saw his father’s expression weaken just a bit, out of an alarmed surprise, and then he turned the handle and opened the door.

He heard his name behind him, but didn’t turn around. It wasn’t until he felt his father’s grip on his shoulder that he reacted, but it was the wrong way to turn in that moment, too unprotected an exposure. Jake hit Simon across the face with the end of a golf club, lacerated his chin, and knocked him into the door and almost onto his butt. Simon pushed off the door into the outside and stumbled forward into the side yard. His face throbbed as he felt another excruciating whack of the club on his back before he could get his feet under him. He caught the club in his hand when the next blow came his way and used it to force his father against the house wall. He pinned Jake to it and punched the man’s groin with his knee as hard as he could hit him.

Jake doubled-over; he’d been rendered harmless in that instant.

Simon shoved the groaning man into the gravel. “Keep your dick in your pants,” he heatedly warned him, “because if I see that fucking thing again, you’re gonna permanently lose it.”

* * *

“No one knew till that day what he’d been doing to you, did they?” Kamm asked Simon. “Other than Michael, no one else knew.”

“Honestly? You and Michael are the only two who know even now,” Simon said. He didn’t look at Michael as he shamedly added, “I only told the police about the beatings—and why I knew my father had committed the murders.”

“Have you ever thought Michael held you accountable for Jake’s actions?”

Simon thought back over the years and then spoke with certainty. “I did enough accounting for the both of us,” he said. “But, no, no …” He toyed with a seam on his jeans as he finalized his conviction. “I never imagined he felt anything for me but concern and brotherhood—despite everything. And I mean … everything.”

“Did you think his was an unnatural bond?”

“It began the moment we met. We were a couple of teenage boys who needed a place to belong, so, no, I never thought it unnatural. Besides, it didn’t differ from mine any, and I felt perfectly comfortable with it. Further, I was comforted by it.”

“But the bond became indelible after the killings, yes?”

“I wouldn’t say that, no,” he corrected the doctor, certain that Michael, though he sat silently, would agree with him. “I think it was engraved in stone, like I said, the moment we met. I knew when I left the classroom that first time that I’d see him again. I knew it because I wanted it. And the second we found a way to reconnect, we were automatically best friends.”

He looked over at Michael and got the nod he expected. “So before that terrible day,” Simon added, watching Kamm listen to him, “it was Michael—and Michael alone—who was at the forefront of my mind when I found what I did after I left the hospital.”

“After you left the hospital?” Kamm asked.

“Yeah, you know, after Michael’s dad dropped me off at my house.” He realized from both Kamm’s question and Michael’s look of confusion that neither of them knew what he meant. He clarified. “When Henry took me home after I got stitches from that gash in my chin, he told my father that Michael and I had been horsing around in the woods and I’d gotten hurt. Of course, my father knew what had really happened, but he played along. Henry then told him that Michael and I had tried to reach him—which we told Henry we’d done, but it wasn’t true—and that he, Henry, had gone ahead and ordered up my emergency care in my parents’ absence. Then Michael and Henry left and I was on my own again with my dad.”

Kamm could tell Michael and Simon understood, but it hadn’t answered Kamm’s specific question, so he tried again. “What did you find then? Or did you mean, you found Michael’s slain family after you left the hospital?”

Simon looked at Michael. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what?”

* * *

There wasn’t a single light on in the house. As Simon snuck along the gravel sideyard toward the garage, he heard a car peel out of the driveway and accelerated as it sped away. It caused his heart to stop. He froze and strained to hear anything else that would give him a clue as to who had left—and why.

But the neighborhood was eerily quiet in the vehicle’s wake.

He pressed his back to the outside wall near the garage side door where he’d earlier fought with his father, and felt the sharp stucco pinch his spine as his chin’s stitched laceration throbbed. Anger and resentment tumbled over his new feelings of apprehension and concern. He waited and breathed audibly as he struggled to think.

Simon had spent the afternoon into the evening on the hill near his house to keep an eye on his father’s whereabouts. After Henry had dropped him home from his hospital visit, he knew he couldn’t stay, lest he endure another confrontation with his father. But night finally settled, and either his father had taken off in search of him and left his mother alone in the darkened house—perhaps unconscious or worse—or it was his mother who had fled, abandoning her drunken husband to yet another of his incoherent and incapacitating stupors. Either way, Simon had returned to the house to confront a painful scene.

But maybe it wasn’t too late to run away himself. He grimaced and hit the wall with a frustrated fist.

He knew what he had to do. He would find out whether his mother was all right or if she was the one who’d driven away, and then he’d gather whatever money he could find in the house, along with a jacket and some food, and then camp in the woods, near the rocks where he and Michael often horsed around. The sky already spit rain; maybe he’d take the pup tent with him, too. He couldn’t go to Michael’s. To do so would put his brother in danger. In the morning, they could figure out together where Simon could go to be safe.

And with that decision, he pushed off the wall and entered the garage. The door into the house was open and a strong breeze passed through, no doubt, from an opened window somewhere. It had a chilling feel to it, but he pressed against it, stepped into the kitchen, and paused to listen.

No television. No lights. No murmurs. It was as if the house were empty. He reached for a light switch, but stopped himself before he used it; if his father was in the living room, he didn’t want to alert him. He would have to find what he needed in the dark. And it was dark. The cloud-filled sky had even shut out the stars.

Mainly by familiarity, Simon crept down the hall toward his bedroom. He would first retrieve his jacket—in case he was confronted by his father and needed to abruptly leave. Once in his room, he felt his way and found the garment at the foot of his bed. He hurriedly dressed in it and went into its pockets in search of loose change, but he only found a guitar pick.

As he passed his parents’ bedroom, he paused in the doorway, cocked his head, and listened. It was quiet enough to hear someone breathing—if somewhere were in the room—but he heard nothing. His heart raced because he also listened for the sound of the car returning. Maybe his mother had already left the house, and maybe his father had gone to Michael’s to look for her and/or for Simon and, having not found the boy, would return home—in what would only take minutes.

It was at that moment that he remembered his mother kept roughly $100 in the freezer, wrapped in foil, for emergencies, for things he then realized she would have needed it for—such as fleeing from Jake’s abuse. Perhaps its absence would tell the tale. With a pounding heart, he silently crept back to the kitchen. There was no time to waste. Grab and go.

He tripped over something—or maybe it was over someone—before he reached the counter. The object was dense and soft at once, and the size of it caused him to fall to his knees and try to catch himself with his hands. He knew right away when one hand landed on her belly and the fingers of his other inadvertently tangled in her hair, that he’d tripped over his mother.

He let out a cry. “Mom?”

She didn’t respond.

He stumbled to his feet and fumbled in the dark for a light switch over the sink, found it, and snapped on an overhead—only to have it confirm his worst fear.

* * *

Michael got out of his chair and walked a few paces, his back to Simon and Kamm. He swore under his breath and his heart pounded. He’d never known the woman, but he remembered how much Simon had loved and felt responsible for her, so much that he endured repeated beatings and rapes in order to protect her. Yet despite the abuse he regularly gave Simon, Jake had carried through on his threat after all.

Michael had often imagined that Simon had talked to his mother on the payphone that fateful night, when, in fact, he’d talked to the police about her. He resented himself for having blocked so much from his mind all those years. It was one thing to suffer the loss of his own family; it was another not to have been there for Simon’s.

Michael turned around and looked at him. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Simon reassured him. “She’s been dead a decade; for you, these tragedies are fresh and raw.”

They looked at one another for a minute while silent words passed between them, words of remorse and sorry, of forgiveness and understanding, of acceptance and brotherhood. That unspoken dialogue had spanned more than a decade of a deeply personal and unbreakable bond. They knew what they had lost as much as what they’d gained, and they knew where they stood with each other in that moment; it had been engraved on their souls a long time ago.

Michael sensed Kamm’s presence and slowly shifted his eyes from Simon’s to the doctor’s. His elder, in some ways his savior, sadly smiled at him, too. And Michael, finding a moment for levity, asked, “Have you ever seen the likes of us, doc?”

Kamm was sincere. “Not until now,” he said, “and it has been a privilege.”

* * *

EPILOGUE

Michael leaned against the smorgasbord counter, his back to it, crossed his arms with a wrapped sandwich in one hand, and watched Simon study the menu displayed on a wall behind him. He was relaxed, rested, and looked forward to showing Simon the for-sale property he had set his heart on. In the meantime, it was a personal pleasure to be watching Simon as carefully as Simon decided on the things he wanted in his sandwich. Even the young man behind the counter was patient, having already exchanged an amused glance with Michael as Simon voiced his indecision about what he would eat.

The time gave Michael an opportunity to lose himself in Simon’s appearance. Perhaps his brother had lost a little weight, and he seemed somehow more fit, too. New mind, new body. It was a good thing. Maybe Michael should follow his lead; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d truly exercised. Simon was definitely healthier, drug- and alcohol-free; Michael could see it in his posture, in his skin color, in the light in his eyes, in his unhurried manner. He studied Simon’s build, and remembered again how perfectly proportionate Simon was put together. And that different sort but undisputedly attractive face of his, despite the scar on his chin, or perhaps because of it, made Michael wish yet again he had a camera in his hands and not behind the seat in his truck so he could resume his Simon Nelson photography endeavors. He inwardly chuckled then as he reflected on conversations with Robert Kamm about his possible sexual attraction to Simon and some of the hypotheses they had explored.

Simon looked at Michael, startling him because, for a second, Michael thought he’d just read his mind and caught him in an embarrassing memory. But Simon asked, “You wouldn’t mind if I had a cheese sandwich, would you?”

Michael smiled at him. “Eat a cow for all I care.”

Simon looked at the young man behind the counter. “He doesn’t mean that,” he told him. “He cares a lot about the eating—or, rather, not eating—of cows. He’s just being impatient right now, is all. Give me a provolone sandwich with everything on it but the dead animals.” He looked at Michael again. “You don’t care if I eat a cow,” he muttered, and he nudged Michael. “Don’t have changed that much on me,” he warned him, “or I’m liable to not like you.”

Michael didn’t say anything; he didn’t need to explain his comment. Simon still knew him, and he knew Simon, and nothing else mattered. He smiled again at Simon and told him by it that he thoroughly enjoyed Simon’s company. He was proud of himself, too—and of them both—for having climbed over that mountain of hurt they’d shared for so many years to find themselves in some nondescript sandwich shop ordering vegetarian sandwiches on a sun-filled day somewhere outside of Denver, Colorado.

He watched Simon as a replying smile broke along the man’s lips, and a nod followed, one that silently told Michael, “I hear ya.”

The kid behind the counter wrapped Simon’s sandwich and asked if either of them wanted anything to drink. They completed their lunch order with juice and chips, and when Simon removed his wallet to pay for it, the boy unexpectedly said, “It’s on the house, Mr. Nelson.”

Michael pushed off the counter as he watched Simon’s surprised reaction, and felt surprised himself.

“I’ve seen you in concert twice now,” the young man explained, “and it’s a pleasure to give something back. Please, take it. Enjoy it. Your music helped me through some tough times. It’s the least I can do.”

Simon exchanged knowing eye contact with the young man. “And your name?” he asked.

“Dennis.”

“Well, Dennis, I can’t thank you enough for the food—but mostly for the sentiment. That’s a kind thing to say.”

Dennis shrugged and was awkward at that moment.

Michael winked at him when Dennis glanced his way in an effort to ease the boy’s embarrassment.

“Perhaps you’d autograph a napkin for me,” Dennis asked Simon, empowered by Michael’s gesture. “I don’t mean to be greedy, but if it wouldn’t offend you …”

Simon stepped to the counter and asked Dennis for a ‘real piece of paper’ and a pen. The young man hurriedly found the materials and watched Simon write a few sentences and then sign it for him.

Dennis read Simon’s inscription as he and Michael turned to leave the store. “‘Thank you, Dennis, for the gift you gave my brother, Michael, and me on our journey through Colorado—and through life. Stay the course.—Simon Nelson. P.S. We’re even.’” Dennis laughed; he was pleased and happy.

They thanked Dennis again and headed for the truck. Relatively speechlessly, they drove for forty minutes into undeveloped, tree-filled, rolling-hilled country before they turned up a gravel road and advanced further into pristine wilderness. The ‘for sale’ sign posted on an evergreen was covered in another that read, ‘pending,’ and forced Michael to confess that he’d already made an offer on the property. They stopped to look at the land.

“Why am I not surprised?” Simon muttered as he got out of the truck. “How could you walk away from this?”

“I couldn’t.”

“Exactly.”

Wildflowers and green-yellow grass covered the landscape. Old-growth shade trees of aspen and Colorado blue spruce littered the edges of meadows. In the near distance, blue-green Ponderosa pine trees contrasted with the deep hues of brown rock, and beyond them they glimpsed a large pond that reflected sunlight.

Simon whistled. “How much is here?”

“About 2,000 acres.”

“Does it include the lake out there?”

“It does.”

Simon squinted at him in the sunshine. “If this place can’t fix a broken heart,” he said, “ain’t nothing can. So, what say we hike out there?” he suggested, referencing the pond with a wave of his hand. “You game?”

They retrieved the bags of food and Michael’s camera. Simon strapped his guitar over his back, and they headed across the meadow, like old times, childhood times, into the wild of nature and away from their pasts and their pains. They saw rabbits and ground squirrels, numberless bird species, lizards basking on fallen tree trunks, and the occasional deer scat. The air felt clean and was just cool enough to make their jaunt perfectly pleasant. At the pond they wordlessly absorbed its beauty and that of the surrounding forests, pock-marked with a scattering of snowberry and currant shrubs.

Simon inexplicably laughed, so when Michael looked to see what he’d found so funny, he noticed that Simon stared at him. “You’re an asshole,” Simon said, affectionately. “You knew I’d love this place. Makes my 13 acres of multi-million-dollar real estate a rip-off. So where did you plan to put your house?”

Michael pointed off to the west of the pond, to where the meadow began its climb into rolling hill country. “The view from the house will be best from there,” he said.

“And my house?”

“Beside it,” he replied, not missing a beat, “with about enough trees between us to keep it interesting. I thought we’d add a campsite below them with log cabins for sexually abused boys to come out here and find their souls. We’ll erect an educational center in the middle of it to teach folks from all walks of life about preservation and kindness—and vegan cooking. We could hold art and photography exhibits here—and concerts. A sanctuary and a retreat.”

Simon squinted at Michael. For a moment, he was emotionally overwhelmed. That Michael wanted to help sexually abused boys deeply touched him. Then he laughed to break his choke and playfully asked, “So, how much is this going to cost me?”

“The rest of your life,” Michael warned him.

Simon grinned. He was pleased, Michael could tell, and it made him smile, too.

“But you have my permission to leave in winter,” Michael added, giving Simon an out if he wanted one, “so you can get your city fix—and learn to appreciate this place all over again.”

“No trouble there,” Simon said. He found a seat on a fallen tree log near the pond and set his guitar against it as he sat down. After tossing Michael his wrapped sandwich and a canned juice, he retrieved his own and ate it while he surveyed the horizon before he brought his focus closer to their surroundings.

Michael sat near him in the grass and watched him for a while as he ate his own lunch in a similar solitude.

A frog jumped into the pond and took their attention.

“Suppose there are grizzly bears up here?” Simon asked after a minute.

“The majority of them were blasted out of the lower forty-eight states long before we were born,” Michael told him. “There may be some in the San Juan Mountains south of here, but I hear they’re not a very viable population. Worry about human beings,” he added.

Simon grunted. When he finished his lunch he hugged the guitar in his lap and played an uplifting melody, one that was, it seemed to Michael, inspired right then by the Colorado wilderness. If only Kamm could see him as he sat beside a pond in a wildflower meadow among the aspen and Douglas fir trees, with his childhood companion and inseparable soul brother beside him, and listened to Simon’s improvised music on an unrushed, quiet, sunny afternoon.

The music stopped. Michael looked at Simon.

“Sold,” Simon said, finally. He committed himself to Michael’s dream with firm eye contact between them. “I can pay for the place off my next album if I write it here,” he half-joked. He set aside his guitar then and kicked Michael’s foot as he rose.

Michael lay back in the grass to stare at blue sky while Simon went to relieve himself. He inhaled the fresh air and closed his eyes to feel the warm sun, to privately enjoy his moment alone and the fond and bittersweet memories it gave him. They deserved this dream, he thought. It was payback for all their years of violence, loneliness, and pain. It was the thing to give them closure. They were about to change more than just their own lives, even more than just Emily’s and his own; they were going to save lives. Retribution was everything.

He heard Simon approach. “You’ll never guess what I found,” Simon said excitedly. His words forced Michael to open his eyes. Simon bent over him and held out a dandelion he’d picked.

Michael laughed.

“What’s a day without one?” Simon asked.

“Exactly,” Michael said. He took the flower from Simon’s fingers. In that unscripted moment, he realized he’d just come full circle—that they both had.

“Vegan cooking, you said,” Simon reminded him. “What say we start with dandelion pie?”

* * *