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It didn’t matter where they were tonight, all that mattered was that there were stars.
They’d come here for stars. Steve and Bruce were lying on their backs, side by side, on a hill, under a sky dusted with stars, like a careless hand had spilt them across the sky.
It was hard to see stars in 21st century New York and Bruce had kept saying he missed them. Which was why, this evening, Steve had flown them out here, just to look at stars, just so Bruce could tell him their names. Or, at least, that was part of the reason.
Steve did want that; he did want to look at stars and he did want to hear Bruce name them. He hadn’t lied. But, also, Steve had flown them out here so they could talk.
Because there was a something. A certain uncomfortable something. A something that made Steve feel cold inside. A something that wouldn’t leave him alone lately. A notion that caught him in his dark moments, an idea that made his breath catch and his heart twist. A horror that scared him more than any bully or any threat. And he was meant to be brave. A brave man. A good, brave man.
And his fear was something he thought Bruce might understand.
After a while Bruce stopped pointing out constellations and they both went quiet. It was a cold clear night and their exhalations were condensing in the air above them. Steve waited, watching the clouds of their breath mingling a while, and then said, “You can’t die.”
“What's that?” said Bruce, rolling his head against the ground, turning it so he was looking at Steve.
“You can’t die. You said that you can’t die because the other guy won’t let you.”
“The other guy won’t let me kill myself.”
“And won’t let anyone else kill you?”
“Yes. Or, at least I assume so. Why do you ask? I don’t get to find out if that isn’t true until the moment I find out that isn’t true. If you see what I mean? It’s not exactly a workable hypothesis.”
Steve looked away from Bruce and back up at the starry night. “So you don’t know if you’re immortal?”
Bruce let out a long low sound that was somewhere between a whistle and long exhale. “I have absolutely no idea.”
“Does it bother you? I mean, if you are. Does that bother you?”
“There are a lot of things that bother me more.”
“You mean the whole 'other guy' thing?”
“Not even that. There a whole bunch of things that bother me more than the fact I might be immortal, global warming, the end of net neutrality, poverty. There’s a lot I worry about more than whether or not I’m going to live forever.”
“Oh,” said Steve, feeling awkward for asking.
“Are you?” said Bruce.
“Am I immortal?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. Or, I don’t know exactly, but it seems likely.” And on that last word, Steve’s voice cracked with the horror of it. And he felt guilty. Guilty that he couldn’t be brave about it the way Bruce was. Wasn’t he always brave?
“And it does bother you?”
“It does. I’m sorry. I see what you mean. There are bigger issues and I feel selfish for being so hung up on something that only effects me. But, but, if I am going to live forever, if I really can’t die, that’s the worst thing I can think of. Everyone I love will die and leave me all alone. And that’s happened to me once already. Maybe you don’t know yet, what that's like.” Steve stopped and took a sharp breath through his nose to break up the thick, sore feeling in his throat. “And if all my life is going to be is that over and over again…” he stopped again, took another breath. “I built a good life for myself once. A life I wanted. And I worked so hard to get it, but for one moment, I felt I really had everything I’d ever dreamed of. And then it was all taken away from me. And now, here I am, and maybe I could start again, build it all again, but it it’s just going to be taken away again when I out live everyone, what’s the point?”
Bruce sat up, he pulled a paper bag from his pocket, took something from it and put that something in his mouth. “Humbug?” he said offering the bag to Steve.
“Thank you.” Steve took one, twisted off the cellophane wrapper.
Bruce lay back down. “Here’s what I know about that Steve, it’s not much, but it’s all I have. Life,” he said, “life isn’t about creating something that will make you happy forever. That’s a nice idea, and a comfort, but it’s an illusion. Life is about working with your present, living in that present as best you can, while knowing that nothing lasts. All those stars up there will die." He waved a hand at the spangled sky. "It’s still worth looking at them. That humbug you’re eating will dissolve and fade away, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat it. It will go, sure, but it will make room for something else. Maybe a butterscotch. Maybe a kiss. You don't know yet. Sic transit gloria mundi. So passes the glory of the world. Right now I’m here, and there are so many stars, and the other guy is sleeping, and I have wonderful, beautiful company. Tomorrow we’ll be back in New York and it will all be different, all this will be gone, but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy what’s happening now.”
Steve didn’t reply. He stared at the sky and sucked the humbug.
“And maybe,” said Bruce, “maybe one day, you and I will be somewhere out there, looking back at where earth once was, having lived a thousand, thousand lives, and we’ll remember this conversation and we’ll laugh at how much we didn’t know.”
Steve smiled in the dark. He knew he should be listening to Bruce, taking on board Bruce’s ideas about living in the present, accepting the now, but he wasn’t thinking about that. All he could think about was the quiet little joy that had sprung up inside him at the idea that although he might be doomed to live on and on forever, at least there was someone who would be there with him.
*
And what Steve didn’t know, what would never even occur to Steve, because he didn’t think like that, was that Bruce was thinking the exact same thing.
And Bruce took hold of his hand. In the dark. Under the stars.