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He can’t hate blood, it would be like hating himself. But he hates it when he gets like this, maudlin, splotched red, a down-and-out Santa Claus impersonator who can’t get a gig on Christmas Eve. So he says fuck it, and whips off the red suit and scrounges around in the drawers for a loose cigar. This isn’t that, but it’s sort of that. Instead it’s a newly dry-cleaned button down, the collar creased from tugging it away from his neck. To signal it’s that time of night, where the lapse in conversation makes them both feel a bit choked up. It is a cigar, taken with hollowed cheeks, posture tipped back. Max clings to the moment, before he says anything, and his father has taught him love better than anyone else. With girls and boys, Charles and all the rest, he never knows. But this moment, right now, he knows it’s love. Love, ultimately, is a very sad thing.
“You know how the first mermaid came into existence?” He asks and Max shakes his head, but he knows, he’s heard this story before. He contemplates downing the rest of his whiskey so he’ll have more of a justified impetus to leave, but he was too busy thinking about love to recognize the space of silence was the perfect time to excuse himself.
Thankfully, it’s a rhetorical question, so he’s not berated for shaking his head. He mistakes his silence as being dumbstruck. Nowadays, he’s working on fulfilling the silent vow he made to himself, to only talk to people who hear him.
“Once upon a time, there was a girl who smelled foul. Absolutely fucking reeked.” Max watches as he shakes his head, as if the scent’s wafted into his space upon the re-telling, and Max wishes he would hurry up, because he already knows the point. This isn’t the first time he’s heard this story. It goes like this: Coal turns to diamonds under pressure, greatness can’t happen without meanness. That’s just how we humans are, that’s just the kind of person my dad is, son, these anecdotes are a reminder that I’ll never apologize. Get on with it already.
“So the town banished her. She didn’t have anywhere to go so she thought she might go and just off herself. Fair play to her,” He lowers his cigar, and taps it once against the side of the ashtray. Like a moth to a flame he watches the ash dissolve, he waits, preferring to get enveloped in the trance of a burning ember, the sight instead of the sound. But Max can’t help but listen, that’s the problem. “So she walks into the sea but instead of drowning she grows a tail.”
“Mm.” Max nods, as though he hasn’t heard it before, as though there’s something new to take from it. The last line goes like this: We wouldn’t have mermaids if humankind wasn’t just a little bit evil.
He wants to change the ending, he doesn’t want to talk to people who don’t hear him. One has to give. He speaks anyways. “Mermaids only exist in folklore. It’s not real, those humans never did that. They just wrote about it.” He swallows thickly, mostly because he knows it’s stupid — because humans have done far worse. Max’s heart hammers against his chest, faster than he’d like it to. He downs the rest of his whiskey, he should go, it’s getting late. Come on, don’t be like that, stay a while. With blood, with your blood. He can feel his eyes boring holes into him, just so he can stitch him back together with steel thread. They’ll paint it over in gold for show but he doesn’t want him to have glory, he wants him to be strong.
“If it’s not real how come pussy smells like fish? That’s the mermaid’s curse.” He quips easily in return. Max goes wide-eyed. This is a new addition. He laughs before he’s even deciding to, unable to reel it back, the out of breath, suffocating sort of laugh which if he saw on anyone else it would irritate him, his hand coming down to smack at the table. Full bodied, full. Dad laughs too.
When the laughter dies down, they’re both inconspicuously eager to leave one another, so they can preserve the moment. He cradles what’s already a memory, like a newborn back to his room and tucks it in, swaddles it in the part of his brain that won't let it tarnish. He lets it sleep, he lets himself sleep too.
***
Charles is walking beside Pierre and thinking about being young, younger, no. He’s still younger now, he’s thinking about being a kid. They’re bathed in white, under the floodlights, their only company the rogue cyclers out for a midnight ride. It’s gentle, the air is sweet and warm, the nods of acknowledgement sparse but friendly. He’s thinking of Max. How much he’d hated him, and a laugh nearly slips and grazes the air just thinking about it. It was such a childish hate, petulant and whiny, no real malice behind it. Charles still hates the same way now, lightly, if at all. There are emotions far heavier than hate, guilt for one. He only realizes the offered ice cream is right under his nose when he looks down, and Pierre laughs because Charles is offering no more than a lopsided grin and puppy dog eyes, keen confusion wondering how long he’d been holding the cone there.
Charles pulls his shirt collar up to wipe at his nose, dunked white. “I was not ready for the lick, Pierre!” He goes to Pierre this time, instead of letting the ice cream come to him, dipping down with his tongue poked out, trying to get a taste while they walk. It's a bit tricky but he does the job. “Mmm,” He’s said it with every lick he’s had, closing his mouth and letting it melt fully on his tongue. “I love it.”
“Don’t be greedy,” But that’s all Charles has ever been, “What were you thinking about?”
What he’s thinking about is pretty odd. Firstly, he’s thinking about Pierre’s nostrils, from before, and how he doesn’t know what makes for perfect nostrils but that Pierre has them. Because he’s thinking about what people would look like with no nostrils, would that mean no nose too? That everyone would look like Voldemort? There’s a story that Max’s mother had told them, after their joint disqualification.
Surely, it was his mother’s idea, but there’s only flashes of the memory, a diner with cracked pleather seats, fire engine red or forest green he’s unsure, it could be either one. A milkshake bigger than his head, Max’s mother, drawing fingers through the scruff of hair that had grown too long down the nape of Max’s neck, in dire need of a trim. He must be making things up, how could he have seen the back of his head when they were sitting opposite each other?
It’s the story that sticks, one that looking back, he doesn’t think was meant for him despite them sharing a table. “Do you know why mermaids exist Maxie?” She had asked, hunching over, craning her neck, just to get on Max’s level. He was still pissed, clearly. What had been a racing incident for Charles had been apocalyptic for Max, sullen and closed off, drawing inwards.
“I was thinking about a story. About a girl who smelled so bad she wanted to die. So she walked into the sea, but instead of dying, she became a mermaid.” It’s told in lilting tones, but there’s no hint of what he thinks. He wants to be told what to think about it, he wants to take everything Pierre says as his own, because he knows best. He always does.
Pierre looks at him fondly, his brows perked slightly because usually he’s thinking about karting days, because Charles likes playing dangerous games and what’s more piercing than a hit of nostalgia? “That is a little bit sad, no?”
And Charles nods a bunch, because it’s what he was thinking, what he’d always thought, and he thinks he’ll never think anything different. He doesn’t know if that’s a good thing.
Maxie pouts his lips, shakes his head, his cheeks are full, not yet carved clean of baby fat.
“Because there was a little girl who was so stinky that everyone ridiculed her. They were very mean. So the little girl decided to go into the sea, because it would be better than being teased. She should’ve drowned, but she didn’t. She became a mermaid instead.”
Charles giggles. His mother has her arm around him, drawing circles with her thumb on his shoulder. A silent way of telling him to settle. He slurps at his milkshake, picking up the remnants of whipped cream stuck to the side of the glass with his straw.
“So, if those people had not been mean, we would never have had mermaids. And what a pity that would be, no?” Max doesn’t say anything, just nods a little nod, peering up to stare longingly at Charles’ milkshake even though he has his own. He won’t finish it, Charles remembers wanting to ask if he could have the rest.
“I would just hold my nose.” Charles pipes up, very precociously, flashing a dimpled smile to Max’s mother. Both his mum and Max’s laugh, so he does too, pretending he’s laughing along with them even though he doesn’t know what he’s said that’s so funny.
“You would hold your nose for the rest of your life?” His mother asks him. Charles nods enthusiastically. "Everyone could. Then she could stay here. Or, or we could all put clothes pegs on our noses!" He suggests cheerily, already a bit out of breath from the excitement of making a sad story happy again.
“But maybe it was just destiny, what could she have done instead?” Pierre adds after several moments of contemplation. He seems satisfied with this answer, which is actually a question. Charles gives a little shrug, he’s not sure either. Or doesn't want to be sure. That he got to play with the luxury of rewrites like toys, putting himself in the middle of stories that weren't told to him and carelessly changing the ending like it could be changed, like it hadn't already been written and Max's life was simply, sickly, reading it out loud.
Because what could have Max done, if not become great?