Part 22 (1/2)
He felt the flash in my hand and squeezed it. ”We never stopped being friends, we just stopped talking.” Ok, maybe not. ”We're friends now, Brennan.”
”I want to be friends for longer than 'now'.”
”I don't think anybody will let us get married.”
He dismissed my witticism and stared hard at me. ”Will you promise me something?”
My eyes wavered. ”I'm not good at keeping promises. You know.”
”Make me one anyway.” I nodded with hesitation. I think I knew what was coming. ”I think strength is all about gentleness, in being able to cry or to forgive someone, forgiving your own self especially.”
”And I don't?”
”No. You see strength like it's some kind of war you'd rather die fighting in than lose. To you, strength is any kind of sc.r.a.p you can lay your hands on and win. Maybe that's why we love each other so much.” He made himself blush. ”At least, that's why I love you so much. You're what I'm not, and what I can't be. The same is true for you.”
”What do you want me to promise, Brennan, to love you?”
”No. You've done...you do that.” We looked into each other's eyes as if the rest our lives might be there. The rest of the world didnt matter. Time didnt matter. All seventeen years each had wound down to that place that night, that room and that bed. ”I don't want you to be a peacenik. Its not you. But if anyone offers you peace, then I want you to promise me, please, that you'll accept it. Okay? Do you promise?”
Take peace instead of making it, huh? I wasn't sure why peace between me and Felix was so important to Brennan, not having read The McGuffin Letter and all. But I made the promise anyway. Maybe it would give Brennan some kind of moral victory to help him heal faster. ”OK, OK, I promise.”
It was an easy promise to make. Felix has indefatigably sent me a birthday card that had arrived a few days before. He invited the two of us to visit him and his family down in New Mexico. Id decided to make the trip Brennan's Christmas present.
Brennan didn't make me promise to forgive anyone else, however.
Evidently, a number of local school board members received reports about grades being adjusted and test keys being sold and distributed. Much pressure was brought to bear on the teachers alleged to be involved. A bitter internal inquiry followed, and a senior, little Eric Brazier, it so happens, was implicated, and expelled. Daddy Doctor Brazier even lost the school's insurance account! Why, the mess was so bad, it scotched Eric's chances of getting into his dream school, the University of Illinois!
As if that weren't enough to keep the old burg buzzing, a big downtown modernization project being advanced by a local real estate investor just up and collapsed. The plan was sc.r.a.pped and the properties rezoned, as were a number of other holdings owned by this same investor. The foreclosures by a suddenly unfriendly local bank and the bankruptcy filing put a bit of a crimp in the Sreckov's rickety family finances, not to mention putting quite the torpedo in Mickey's college tuition fund, too. The last I heard, the Sreckov's even had to sell their house and ”trade down” a few suburbs. Pity, that.
I never thought I'd reopen the guest register from Mom and Dad's wake, but I'm glad I did. They had many excellent friends that werent blood relatives, and it was good to talk to them again.
X X I I I.
The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
The Merchant of Venice The Land of Enchantment was exactly that.
On the day after Christmas, at around four o'clock in the afternoon, we crossed into what Brennan referred to as sovereign New Mexico territory. You couldn't buy a cloud in the deepest blue sky either of us had ever seen. The sun, which was beginning to set as we arrived, painted a small collection of brilliant pictures athwart the vast and spectacular horizon. The air was crisp and clean, even when we stood beside the Welcome to New Mexico sign on exhaust-filled Interstate 40, where we took pictures of each other.
I looked up and down the highway before stepping closer to Brennan, who smiled and wrapped his arms around me as I placed my lips on his for the fourth time since we left Chicago late Christmas night. We decided to commemorate each new state by doing the perfect hug thing every time we crossed a border, or 'frontier, as Brennan called them. That meant no hugs or kisses until we reached our next destination, which, to be frank, was difficult.
Originally, we were going to do a lot more than hug and kiss at the ”Welcome to...” state signs, but neither of us wanted to be arrested by a Deliveranceville sheriff or get run over; and the Bug, wonderfully eccentric car though it was, simply wasn't much good for misbehavin.
Besides, I had told Brennan, if we were going to nakedly consummate our togetherness upon each frontier crossing, the first place we'd head to was New England, not the Southwest.
Even though we talked endlessly, sang along to Brennan's glam rock and hair band ca.s.settes, and simply enjoyed a few of mine - nothing like a couple of cras.h.i.+ng overtures to keep you going through the night - it had been a long, exhausting overnight drive, and we were content to spend the night in Tuc.u.mcari, the first town we'd hit after crossing into New Mexico.
There didn't seem to be much a town, per se, beyond the four or five mile strip of motels, gas stations, fast-food outlets, and antique stores that were once part of the fabled Route 66. It was the town that time forgot, in a state, we would soon discover, that was filled to the brim with such towns.
I pulled into the last motel before the strip (and town) ended, a friendly enough looking place that had its own restaurant and bar. If you liked earth tones, died, and went to heaven, your resting place would look a lot like our hotel room did. The grizzled old man in the black cowboy hat and handlebar mustache grumbled an apology that all his rooms with double beds were being redone. After some shameless hemming and hawing, we took a room with a king-size bed big enough for an orgy.
We soaked the long drive out of our bodies in a bubble bath. I had packed a bottle of Mr. Bubble without Uncle Alex or Zora noticing. I fell asleep in Brennan's arms twice.
The bar menu featured an item called Bucket of Beer. Was this a literal description, Brennan wondered? A sweet old waitress named Sandy managed to forget asking us for any i.d. before serving us both a wine bucket filled with six bottles of Pacifico, a fine Mexican beer. Maybe we looked like good tippers (as opposed to under-age punks acting smart by ordering beer in the first place). The huge, stomach-busting delight of our dinner, which took over two hours to consume, consisted of a taco salad, bar-b-que filet quesadillas, chili rellenos, fried taco rolls, and the freshest, sweetest tortilla chips we had ever tasted. Then we sat and finished our beer buckets for the next hour.
Even though it was warm enough when we arrived in Tuc.u.mcari, the air was now almost frosty as we walked through a ma.s.sive empty field beside the motel, which separated that end of town from the eerily deserted Interstate. The only thing we could hear was the whisper of the night breeze in our ears and the sound of our feet on the dry, wild gra.s.s. Above us, the moon was bright and brilliant across in the still-cloudless sky, giving us both a shadow as we walked beneath what looked to me like every star in the solar system.
Brennan stopped and looked straight up. ”Could you imagine every night being like this one?”
”Very easily,” I answered quietly.
”Do you think it would get boring, like seeing the Eiffel Tower on the way to work every day?”
”I'd be willing to live in Paris for a year to find that out.”
”This is so beautiful.” Brennan pulled one of my hands out of my jeans pocket and held it in his. ”But I won't thank you for bringing me here.” He stuck his tongue out at me.
I laughed. ”Why not? You thank me for everything else.”
”Because I'd rather thank you for being here with me, here or any place else. I'm not sure how to thank you for giving me a Christmas gift like this trip, though.”
”Be my love slave until the sun comes up,” I replied with a grin.
Brennan ignored my defensive humor. ”As long as you're with me, I'll be happy. It's the only gift I really wanted this year, anyway.”
”I never know how to respond when you say things like that.”
”That's why I say them.”
We concluded the night with Brennan giving me the ma.s.sage of my life. I did most of the driving, so I got the rub-down, he said. We took a quick shower and started to fall asleep in a tangle of freshly-scrubbed flesh on that helicopter pad of a bed. Before he could say his usual 20 minutes worth of good nights, I held his face in my fingertips and said, ”Im with you all the time. Im with you even when Im not. Im with you wherever you go, no matter who else is there.”
Brennan peeped through the dark like a Cupie Doll. ”How do you figure?”
”Because youre with me all the time, so its only right.”