Archive of Our Own ^beta

Francis floated in the dark.

He was at sea, drifting. Thoughts passed through his mind, but he couldn’t seem to hold a single one down. Salt water and rough breeze and shouts in the air that he couldn’t understand. Five years of sailing and he couldn’t say where it got him.

Lost. He was lost.

His first memory of the hospital was the smell of disinfectant. A sharp smell high in his nasal passageways, too lemony and bleached to be pleasant. Next, it was the sound of a voice, mumbling. At first, the voice was simply white noise to him, a sonorous rise and fall of unintelligible syllables. But eventually he began to hold on to the shape of the words.

“They say you might hear me and now if that’s the case I don’t figure much why you don’t respond, because what’s the point of hearing me if you can’t respond, see? But I figure if you can hear things and no one’s talking to you, it must be lonely as hell and I don’t much like the thought of you being lonely, Lion. So if I talk to you and you really can hear me then neither of us are very much alone, right? Ain’t that right, Lion?”

There was a pause, as if the person speaking was waiting for a response. Or imagining one. Francis floated. The ocean at night had been vast and black and sometimes he would stand on the deck and try to imagine what it would be like to fall overboard and disappear into that deep darkness. He felt like he could go overboard now.

He couldn’t open his eyes.

The voice began to move around the room. With it followed the squeak of shoes against linoleum, and the swishing and squelching of something wet across its surface. A mop? The voice answered him, as if reading his thoughts.

“They got me working as a janitor here, you know that, Lion? I haven’t done this kinda work since me and Coley were kids, but a body don’t forget how to clean. I like to think of it as practice, anyhow. You know, for the carwash. There’s always dirt to clean. That’s why I thought of starting a carwash in the first place, because I got a good eye for shit. I work hard and I don’t cut corners, no sirree. No, you and me both, we think the same, right? I make sure the cars shine and you make sure the customers smile.”

The words were putting images in his mind, forming something out of the inky nothing of his vision. Cars of all shapes and sizes, parked in a lot. An open road. Sitting in the back of a truck. Crunched in the middle of a family van. Huddled against someone else in the back of a cop car, feeling like a fist was clenching his brain.

Where was he? Why couldn’t he open his eyes? Francis tried to remember what muscles he needed to move to speak, but couldn’t do anything. His body didn’t seem to belong to him anymore. So why could he feel everything? Why could he feel the brush of cloth against his arm, the pillow behind his head?

So he reached again for the voice, and held onto it for as long as he could.

A car wash. The voice was describing a carwash? It would have a roller on-demand conveyor belt, recirculating water systems, soft-cloth friction washing– “the whole nine yards!”-- and to top it all off they would charge for special wax and polish. There would be tiers, the voice said. Specials that customers could buy for extra. And on certain days there would be discounts. They would have a big sign out front. It would say: “Max and Lion’s Car Wash” and there would be a giant scarecrow grinning from ear to ear. “Because we got to keep those crows smiling, right, pal?”

Max. That name was familiar. He tried to place the face to a name but couldn’t see it. The face was right there, but he just couldn’t turn and open his eyes to see. Why couldn’t he? What was wrong with him?

There was something wrong with him, that’s why he was here. Wherever here was.

The sound of mop and water finally slowed, and now the voice was further away. “I gotta go for now. Floor’s got to dry and I’ve got lots more work to do. You know how it goes. There’s always more dirt. But I’ll be back, Lion. Do you hear me? I’ll see you real soon.”

And for a long, unknowable amount of time, that was all Francis had to hold on to in the dark endless ocean.

Time passed. He floated. But the voice returned occasionally, as if dropped into that sea of time. Sometimes reading stories, sometimes telling jokes. Always tickling at his memory with a sense of comfortable familiarity.

So he held on, letting the voice buoy him to the world.

---

“Electricity? Isn’t that going to hurt him?”

“Please, keep your voice down,” the doctor said. They were in the hallway outside Lion’s room. Max had just finished his rounds for that evening, mopping and wiping down every surface on the ward. The doctors and nurses didn’t quite know what to make of him, still. He was an employee, but also the only known next of kin for one of their patients. At least he claimed next of kin– “adoptive brother”-- and no one challenged him on it since he was footing the bill. So there was a confusion of roles. Was he a customer to be placated or an underling to be ordered around?

“I just don’t get it,” Max continued, this time in a harsh whisper that was very close to a yell. “Ain’t that just gonna scramble him more?”

The doctor, a young WASP-y looking man with strawberry blonde hair, brandished a clipboard at Max like a shield. “To be perfectly honest, Mr. Millan, when someone’s brain is already an omelet, the scrambling effects of electroshock can be a good thing. Think of it like a reset button.”

“Reset?”

“We believe that the patient’s state can be attributed to what we call traumatic withdrawal syndrome. Something so terrible has happened, so unimaginable, as to make his brain totally shut down. A defense tactic, if you will.”

“Sure.” Max thought of Riley, of the haunted bruises around Lion’s eyes, of that damn phone booth in Detroit and whatever it was that woman had said to him. He thought of the fountain. The way Lion was soaked to the skin and heavy as a sack of potatoes, so limp and unyielding, while children and mothers screamed behind them.

“So with a general anesthetic applied, meaning he would feel little pain, the electric pulses will induce some minor, uh, seizures in the brain.”

“Seizures?” Max pulled his cap off indignantly, revealing mussed curly gray hair. He twisted the hat between his hands as though wringing out a washrag.

“In 70% of cases, it causes a dramatic recovery in patients with depressive catatonia, which by the way is an excellent success rate. The drugs we have him on now are treating the symptom, but enough time has passed that we can see the patient needs further intervention. ECT will get at the source. His brain.”

The tone of voice and manner of speech continued to put Max on edge. He still didn’t understand, and he hated the feeling of not fully understanding. “What are the risks? There’s got to be risks with this kind of thing, right?”

The doctor handed him the clipboard now. “I’ve got everything listed right there.”

Max glanced at the list of possible side effects, but couldn’t focus with the bemused eyes of the doctor watching him read. He pushed his glasses further up his nose, held the writing up to his face. If he looked ridiculous, he chose not to care. “What’s this about memory?”

“Memory loss. There’s a possibility that there may be some uh, temporary loss of short term memory. Could be as much as a few week’s worth. But that could be beneficial as well. Might hide the traumatic event away in his brain until he is healed enough to handle it.”

Max stood up straight and eyed the doctor, up and down. “Look, you’ve got a doctor’s oath. Do no harm, right?”

The doctor scrunched his face at that, but smiled appeasingly, “Right.”

“And I’ve got an oath of my own, see? I promised: I’m going to take care of him. So as long as you follow your oath, and I follow mine, he should be ok, right?”

Nodding emphatically now, feeling that Max was dumb but at least beginning to trust him, the doctor agreed, “Right!”

“So if you break your oath, I still have to uphold mine. Which means you’re in deep dog shit if you do my buddy harm. Because I don’t break promises, and if my buddy Lion gets hurt then you’re going to feel it even worse, understand?”

There was a long pause as the doctor took this in. Max was a full head taller than him, a great big ape of a man, and he craned his head back to finally look Max in the eye. “Mr. Millan, are you threatening me?”

“No, no, no…” Max grinned, suddenly remembering where they were. He reached a hand out towards the doctor’s face then pulled back abruptly, thumb protruding through his index and middle finger. “Just pulling your nose.”

If the doctor was laughing uneasily, at least he was laughing. Max’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. He looked past the doctor into Lion’s room. Lion, with his head tipped back on the pillow, jaw slack. He had to keep his cool, for Lion’s sake. Stay in these doctors’ good graces. Keep an eye out.

He could almost hear him now: “Be a scarecrow, Max.”

So he would.

---

Francis was standing on the deck at dawn, watching the sun crest over the waves. He felt like a kid again. He felt like the world was new. The sun was blinding, and getting bigger, and bigger. And was it closing in now? Was it falling out of the sky, hurtling towards the deck of his ship, burning up everything in its path? Francis couldn’t watch anymore. Had to squeeze his eyes shut. Had to scream, but no sound came out.

Everything was too much.

“Patient is opening his eyes. Note excessive blinking.”

“Lion? Lion, are you there?”

“Some space, Mr. Millan, please.”

“Lion? It’s me, Max. I’m right here, okay? Well, just out here because some of these broads won’t let me in.”

Francis could see again. Well, see isn’t quite right, because everything was too bright still. Washed out and difficult to focus on. He blinked a few times, trying to force what was in front of him into something intelligible. There was a face looming over his, framed in brilliant red hair.

“Can you state your name, please?”

He opened his mouth. Something came out, but it was a lot closer to a groan than words. It took a great deal of concentration to shape the word in his mouth, and even more to work up the breath to push it through his lips. “Francis…”

“Very good. Your full name?”

“Francis. Lionel. Delbuchi.”

He looked around stiffly, muscles slow to respond. The room was off-white and sterile, with shiny tile and high ceilings. There was a window on the far side of the room, blackout shades pulled across. The main light of the room came from harsh overheads. Francis winced against this glare. He stared at the slit in the curtains, imagining what it might look like if someone pulled them open. Was the sun still falling out of the sky?

There were bodies moving around the room. One nurse was packing up some equipment, another loomed over him with a clipboard, and a third stood by the door. There was someone else in the door but he couldn’t get a good glimpse of them.

“Francis,” the red-haired nurse standing beside him gently touched his arm. Surprised by this light touch, he tried to move away but realized as he did that there was a pressure against his wrists. He tugged, feeling the constraint of the straps pull him back down. Strange. “What year is it?”

“This a pop quiz or something?” he croaked, voice dry and raspy. He swallowed, then twitched his lips into a smile to put her at ease. “1972.”

She smiled back at him, and he tried to relax despite everything telling him to run. To get out. He tried to calm his thoughts and focus on what she was saying. “Very good,” she wrote something down. “And where are you?”

“Wild guess… a hospital,” he said, somewhat helplessly.

“What do you remember before coming to the hospital?”

There was a ship. He was a sailor. No, he’d given that up. Was traveling. California? No.

“Denver.” Francis said at last, and as he landed on the word other memories followed. “Max and I just reached Denver.” From the doorway, there was the sound like someone being hushed, then hurried whispering. The nurse continued to smile at Francis, which just made him uneasy again.“Is that ok?”

“That’s fine. Just focus on my questions. What do you remember about Denver, Francis?”

“We were eating dinner with Coley and– and Frenchie? Things were good. We were going to stay, we had just decided.”

“Whose we, Francis?”

“Well, I mean Max and I.”

“Whose Max?”

“My friend.”

“Are you related to Max?”

“Well, we’re partners…”

The nurse raised her eyebrow, then looked back over her shoulder toward the door. A gruff voice called out:“Business partners! He means business partners.”
“Max?” He felt the name leave his mouth like a prayer. Finally, someone familiar. He truly relaxed for the first time since waking up. The room seemed warmer, as if Max had picked the sun up from where it had fallen and placed it back in the sky.

What followed must have been a bizarre scene for the nurses present. The patient, forgetting again that he was restrained, trying and failing to get up from the bed. Max, their tall, burly new janitor pushing through the door to reach Francis and grab him around the shoulders, clearly reaching for a hug the other man couldn’t return. Instead he cradled Francis’ head against his chest in a fierce squeeze of affection, before reaching for the straps around his wrists. “Who’s this for anyway, huh? He’s not a danger to anyone, right? This is Lion!”

That’s right. He was Lion. And this was Max. Something loosened inside him. Everything was going to be ok.

“He’s telling the truth– I don’t throw punches at anyone I can’t beat in a fight. So you’re all safe, ladies!” The two men’s demeanors were totally shifted. The scene changed with them and became more relaxed. The nurses looked around at each other and couldn’t help but shrug, laugh a little.

Redhead reached over and undid the strap around Lion’s wrists and elbows as Lion began singing Pinocchio, “I got no strings, to hold me down…” lolling his head back and forth in a cartoonish manner as he pitched his voice like a child’s, “I got no strings on me!” And he pushed his upper half off the bed and finally reached out to return Max’s original hug.

The other man couldn’t seem to stop patting him fondly across the shoulders, punctuating his words with firm slaps to the rib cage. Firm but gentle. “You goddamn bastard playing some kinda long con weren’t you, huh?” Max pulled back to look at him again, grinning.

“Sure, absolutely, Max,” Lion played along. “This vas all my master plan.” He said the last part in an exaggerated voice, like Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed with a flourish.

“Be careful, Francis,” Redhead said. “Mr. Millan, can you give him a hand?”

“Please, Mr. Millan is his father,” Lion quipped, not listening to the nurse as he attempted to stand. But his legs gave out from under him. The only thing keeping him from face planting on the linoleum tile was Max’s arms under his shoulders, pulling him up and tugging him back to his chest. “Shit.”

“Take it easy, man,” Max said, “I’ll kill ya if you hurt yourself again.” Again? But the words were softened by the fact that his friend couldn’t stop grinning.

As Max helped get him settled back on the cot, Lion asked lightly, “So where’re the girls?”

“Girls?”

“Coley and Frenchy!”

“They’re back in Colorado.”

“What do you mean–”

A firm voice cut Lion off. “Mr. Millan, can I speak with you privately?” This was the doctor, now standing in the doorway. He did not make it sound like a question.

Max squeezed Lion’s shoulder before walking back to the door. The doctor motioned him further out into the hallway. Looking back over his shoulder, Max saw Lion’s wide eyes following them, confusion in his face.

“Mr. Millan, are you listening?”

“Huh?” He pulled his eyes away from Lion’s.

“I am trying to tell you something important.”

“Well make it quick, I’m trying to catch up with my buddy here, you know.”

“I can appreciate that. But I need you to understand something about your… friend’s mental state.”

“What about it?”

“It’s delicate. He’s been catatonic for two weeks now.”

“Yeah...”

“And how long ago were you in Colorado?”

“Well, it took us a little over a week to get to Detroit from– from Denver. But we were in Colorado for over a month, so.”

“So remember to take it easy on recent events, when speaking with the patient. Remember what we talked about with short-term memory loss. It’s crucial you don’t overload him too soon, too fast.”

“You saying he doesn’t remember anything since– since we saw Coley?”

“I certainly can’t say. But it’s very possible that his mind is protecting him from any recent trauma.”

“Trauma. Right.” Max worried his lip between his teeth. “Look, doc, now that he’s awake– how long d’you reckon he needs to stay here? Because you know I just got a place nearby and I don’t see why he has to stay here another night if he can just walk on in to get a checkup, you know.”

“He should stay for a night’s observation, at least. Then we will reassess.”

Max wasn’t worried about the money. Not now that Lion was awake, and seemed himself again. Sure, he figured it could take some time, paying back the debt that racks up when you’re checked into a private psychiatric ward like this, private room and all. But Max could handle the numbers. He could plan again, now that Lion was awake. That would be his job– to plan, and make sure they had a future. And they did. It all seemed so possible again, like the fountain had never happened. Like the phone booth was just a bad dream, with no real consequences.

Maybe it could be, if Lion really couldn’t remember. Maybe all that shit could be buried and they could start back where they were: before the prison, before his cold shoulder, before Riley.

---

Not long after that, the nurses ushered Max home. It was late and Lion needed sleep. They both protested, Lion most of all. He still didn’t have any real answers to what was happening or how he had gotten there. It was nice of Max to visit him but he assumed Max was staying with Coley, and if so why didn’t she come too? Why did Max avoid his questions about the girls? He’d interspersed his questions with jokes, to keep things light, as was his way. But Max seemed to fall into banter better than he ever had while they were on the road, giving jokes back just as easily. And taking any light jab with a smile, not a threat. It was strange, like he was meeting Max again for the first time. His hospital stay must have really scared him.

He lay there sifting through his thoughts as the bustle of the ward wound down around him. The lights were turned off in his room and dimmed down the hall. The stillness of the night was interrupted by the faint sounds of coughing and low murmurs from other rooms, with the occasional footsteps of a nurse or orderly passing down the hallway. They’d just been in Denver, right? It was only yesterday they’d been celebrating Coley’s birthday and starting a riot over “Maxy’s Car Wash.”

Lion closed his eyes to sleep. It felt like he was on the ocean again, floating in the eternal dark. He pictured the bar in Denver again. In a booth across from Max and Frenchy, the lights low. The music playing on the jukebox. You make me feel… you make me feel… And he’d been ribbing Max about his stubbornness. About the fact he couldn’t envision a carwash anywhere but Pittsburgh.“What’s it feel like, a tightening down there? A kind of stiffness?” “Knock if off, I know what you’re doing…” “They got cars in Denver you know.” And then getting up and dancing, body holding body in the dim. You make me feel like a nat-u-ral woman. And the almost-fight. The adrenaline. The sudden change as Max declared he’d bring the money back from Pittsburgh. They could start the business right there in Denver, and there they’d be. There was joy. He had been drunker and happier than he’d been in a long time. His mind twisted those feelings and images around and around again, like a coin he was worrying in his fingers. The darkness felt close against his eyelids. There was flame licking against his skin. People shrieking in the street, collapsing to their knees in breathless laughter. Were they laughing? Gotta keep em laughing. Sirens wailing. Something was wrong and he couldn’t figure it out. Christ on the cross. Blood on his shirt. Neon lights. A coin pushed through a slot. A candle sputtering out. A road stretching to the horizon. A pig squealing in its filth. A body backing him into a corner, pushing him against the wall. Why couldn’t he move? Why couldn’t he push back? Why couldn’t he lift a goddamn finger?

He wrenched his eyes open again, heart racing, breath heavy. It took several long seconds to realize where he was. Still in the hospital room. He lifted his hand above his head, then lowered it. Lifted the other to his face and breathed into his fist. Felt the push of air against his palm. He was awake. He could move. He wasn’t trapped anymore.
Everything’s okay, Lion told himself. But he wasn’t convinced.

It took many hours before sleep drifted back over him like a heavy blanket. By then the birds were starting to sing to each other, and first light seeped in through the crack in the curtains, touching his eyelids with warmth.

He almost let himself believe that when he woke up, he’d be back on a freight train with Max, the rest of their trip stretching out ahead of them.

---

“Hey, Max?”

Max grunted in response. He’d come in early to visit Lion before his shift began. But he was tired and hungover, head propped against his chest as he sat by Lion’s bedside.

“Why do I feel like I’ve been through this before?” Lion kept his voice light, but he didn’t smile. There was a question in his eyes.

Max had to look away. He fiddled with one of the buttons on his sweater. It was coming loose and would need to be sewn back on soon. He was all worn out, he knew. Inside and out. But this sweater, ratty as it was, felt like a second skin to him. “What do you mean?”

“Sitting here in a hospital bed, you sitting there. Feels familiar. What’s it called when you feel like you’ve experienced it all before?”

“Called?”

“C’mon Max, are you listening? What’s that word for when you feel like you’re going through something again?”

“Stuck?” Max offered, knowing it was wrong. He tugged again at the button on the bottom tail of his cardigan and felt it come free in his hand. “Damn, would you look at that?” Max stared at the button in his palm, brow furrowed.

Without a word, Lion reached out and plucked the button from his hand. The large, plastic button, still warm from Max’s touch, had a comfortable weight to it. He held the button up to his eye socket and pressed it in place with the furrow of his brow and scrunch of his cheek, so that it gazed out from the left side of his face like a new eye. “How do I look?”

“Now you really look like a scarecrow,” Max said, affectionately. But there was an uncomfortable truth to that statement. The discoloration of bruises around Lion’s face had faded to yellow, and the scar by his left eye looked harsh in the overhead lights, cheeks slightly hollowed from where he had lost a few teeth. If Lion was a scarecrow, he was one that had been sewn together haphazardly.

With a laugh, Lion popped the button back out of his eye and grabbed it from the air. “Ok Max, watch closely.”

After holding up the button dramatically, he pressed it between his two hands. Humming, Lion rubbed his palms together so hard it looked like he was trying to start a fire. He waggled his eyebrows dramatically before clenching his fists and holding them up to Max. “Pick one.”

Max paused and deliberated, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

“I don’t have any sleeves to hide it up!” Lion said, referencing the short sleeves of his hospital gown.

With a grunt, Max reached over and tapped Lion’s left fist. Lion opened up to reveal: nothing. He opened his right fist and revealed the same.

“Hey–”

“Wait a second, Max, what’ve you got in your ear?”

“My ear—?” And before the bigger man could protest, Lion reached up and scraped the tips of his knuckles against the soft shell of Max’s ear. He was taken off guard by the tickle of Lion’s breath against his face.

“Ta Da!” He held up the button as if he had plucked it from the other man’s skull. “I knew there was a reason you weren’t listening earlier.”

Max huffed in delight, reddening. He had to hand it to Lion– that was pretty impressive.

They spent the next few minutes talking about nothing in particular. Lion explained his magic trick. Max shared that he used to know a guy back in his wandering days with Coley who could make it look like he was levitating. This was back in the days before the tent city had been torn down. No clue where that guy was, or if he could still float.

When the hour struck and Max had to start his janitorial shift, he was stopped at the doorway by Lion calling out: “Deja vu!”

Max turned to look back at him, confusion in his face.

“The word. For what this feels like.”

“Oh, right– deja vu,” Max said, placating. He turned back and allowed a nurse to enter before disappearing into the hallway.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Delbuchi?” The nurse asked, but Lion didn’t answer immediately, distracted by his thoughts as he listened to his friend’s footsteps retreat down the hallway. In his fist he still held Max’s button. It felt good in his fingers. Solid. Real.

He breathed in and out slowly through his nostrils, rubbing the tip of the button between his thumb and forefinger. Something was right there, at the corner of his thoughts. He could feel it brush up against him like a creature in the deep, like something slithering against his feet as he treaded water.

---

Deja vu. Max tried not to let it bother him as he busied himself with his janitorial duties. He soaked the mop in soapy water and dragged it across the hallway floor. Back and forth. Back and forth. Deja vu. The sense that they were going through this all over again. Lion was right after all. They were.

The last time Lion had been in a hospital bed, it had been with a face swollen and broken almost beyond recognition. The prison doctor had been dispassionate when Max asked for the list of his friend’s injuries. It was confidential, the doctor had stated, in a voice that brooked no argument.

“Doesn’t seem confidential that his face got fucked up beyond belief,” Max countered. “I mean, is anything broken? Ribs cracked? Did he get — was he hurt anywhere else? Anyway else?”

“I can’t disclose without patient permission,” the doctor said. “Or if you were next of kin. I know you’re friends…” He raised his eyebrow at Max, and there was an insinuation there. “But this is simply how things work.”

So Max never knew the full extent of Riley’s assault. When Lion woke up, he didn’t have the heart to ask him for details. Whatever happened, Lion was confined to the prison hospital for almost the remainder of their time there, which was nearly two weeks. He visited him every day during the one hour of free time allotted to all inmates.

In the early days immediately after the assault, Lion floated in and out of consciousness. In his moments of lucidity, Max would lean over to make sure Lion knew he was there. Unable to work his mouth properly through the swelling of his jaw, Lion would respond by reaching out and tugging at the tail of Max’s button-up letterman sweater. Max silently allowed it, sitting close enough to let Lion bunch his fist in the fabric and rub his fingers against the buttons. Max would fill the time by reading to Lion from whatever he could get his hands on. It was generally articles from years-old Playboy magazines, punctuated by spirited descriptions of the pin-ups. Lion would react to Max’s reading with gentle tugs at his friend’s sweater.

The first words Lion said in days were mumbled painfully at the end of one of Max’s readings. “So many layers.”

Max had shushed him gently.

Lion tugged thoughtfully at the bottom-most button on his sweater. For the first time, Max responded by placing his hand on Lion’s. He’d done it without thinking, just wanting to offer comfort. The other man froze, startled by the touch. He squeezed, but felt Lion’s own fingers release and go limp. Max pulled back and tried to shake it off as though nothing had happened, running his hand through his hair and readjusting his cap, while Lion’s hand fell heavily back onto the bed.

“You know I’m just a cold son of a bitch,” Max offered, hoping to lighten the mood.

“Sure,” Lion breathed out through bruised lips, a whistling sound accompanying his exhalation of breath reminding both of them of the teeth he had lost.

As the days continued, Lion’s condition improved and he became more lucid, words less painful. He pulled back from his earlier, particular displays of affection. If he was being honest, Max missed the weight of his friend’s hand at his side, but said nothing about it.

It almost seemed that Lion was embarrassed, which felt wrong. The other man had always seemed totally lacking in self-consciousness, a trait that had endeared him to Max from the start. During their travels together, Max had become accustomed to his friend’s constant need for touch. Lion’s hands had been so curious and warm, always patting him on the shoulders, clutching at his waist, playfully grabbing at his fingers.

Instead, Lion had pulled his hands back into himself, crossing his arms over his chest whenever Max visited him. A new kind of tension had been introduced into his physicality, as though he was a rubber band pulled taut. Ready to snap at any moment.

By the time their month in prison was up, it was Max who was reaching out to Lion. Keeping him close, as they ventured back onto the crosscountry rails. If he didn’t keep an eye out, it seemed that Lion could have disappeared entirely.

He nearly had.

It took Max the rest of the day to finish mopping the hallways, scrubbing down lab surfaces, changing bed linens, and cleaning the windows. He didn’t mind the work. The endless repetition of movement had a calming effect, even as his thoughts were drawn continually back to Lion. Lion, who he had promised to protect.

He wasn’t used to this feeling. Sure, he’d always been protective of Coley. That was second nature to him. But anyone else? He’d never had anyone else in the world he’d been afraid for. He’d never missed anyone else in the world the way he’d immediately missed Lion. Like he’d declared back when they first shared coffee together, before any of this shit had hit the fan: “I don’t trust anybody, I don’t love anybody…”

But those statements weren’t quite true anymore, were they?

---

Lion was officially discharged two days after the successful ECT session. The doctor suggested he enroll in the outpatient program, but he declined, not liking the sound of group therapy. Instead, he was prescribed a regimen of pills meant to keep his brain chemicals in order. The instructions said to take them each morning with food, and he’d agreed. He hoped they worked.
Lion’s body was sore and stiff from dis-use. Without question, he’d been under longer than Max was letting on. He knew he was missing teeth. Couldn’t help worrying at the gaps in his mouth with his tongue, as though this would reveal the mystery of where his molars had gone. By the time he left the hospital, he’d seen himself in the mirror. His own face was an image he hadn’t been prepared for — he looked like a different person than he’d been. Like a poorly referenced police sketch, he looked slightly off. Wrong.

He was different in other ways, too, though he couldn’t say how. Or why.

Lion wasn’t stupid. Max had been holding back on him.

They walked the three blocks from the hospital to Max’s rental. Lion could tell they were on the outskirts of a city, but the area was so residential it was hard to nail down the exact location. Dilapidated Victorians and big apartment blocks told him one thing– this wasn’t Denver. Familiarity tugged at Lion’s thoughts. He could barely focus on Max’s monologue. The other man had been anxiously lowering Lion’s expectations as they walked towards his new place. “It’s not much, just something temporary. Didn’t have time to get a lot of furniture. Just the basics, you know. But I got a couch I like to sleep on and you can get the cot. It’s just while we’re here, you know?”

“Speaking of here, Max,” Lion interrupted, clapping the other man around the back nonchalantly. “This doesn’t look much like Colorado.”

“It isn’t,” Max said, and he seemed surprised by his own admission. He started striding forward a little faster, and Lion had to jog forward to catch back up.

They both went silent then, chewing over the truth that had finally been spoken. The quiet was interrupted only by passing cars and the distant barking of dogs.

“I’ve got that deja vu feeling again,” Lion murmured, slightly breathless. He squinted his eyes as he looked around.

“Detroit,” Max said.

Lion stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. His cheeks felt hot, hands cold. He was suddenly pulsing with an unnameable anxiety. “What?” he heard himself say, as if from far off.

“We’re in Detroit,” Max repeated. He tugged at Lion’s arm, propelling him into motion again. “C’mon, we’re almost there.”

Lion felt like a weather vane in an electric storm. He was tingling all over, staticky and uncomfortable. He had to remember to breathe. Wordlessly, he let Max pull him down the steps into a basement apartment. It was a one bedroom efficiency, and though it was the late morning, the only natural light coming in through one very small ground level window meant it felt dark as dusk.

“Home sweet home,” Max said weakly, gesturing around. The top of his head nearly brushed the low ceiling.

Lion took it all in, running his hand over the small kitchen countertop, then opening and shutting the refrigerator, stocked with beer and milk. He absentmindedly fluffed a cushion on the couch, tongue worrying at the holes in his own mouth all the while.

“I guess I was in a pretty bad accident,” Lion said at last, deadpan. He collapsed onto the raggedy couch, crossed his arms over his chest as he stretched his legs out. He couldn’t look Max in the face. “I mean, to get knocked from Denver to Detroit in one go. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?”

Max just nodded, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard.

“You going to tell me what happened, Max?”

His friend looked at him, brows furrowed. “I can’t… not now, Lion. Give it time.”

When Lion was a kid, he’d gone to church every Sunday with his parents. His father had been the silent, devoted type. A dockworker with long hours and early mornings, he had been the kind of man who rarely spoke to anyone, let alone his own son. It was his mom who had taken charge of Francis’ spiritual development. Made sure he passed through Catholic school. Slapped the back of his head if he didn’t kneel all the way in Mass. Told him God was always watching, so he’d better be on his best behavior. Francis had often felt as though there was something wrong with him, some horrible truth that only God could see. He’d lay awake at night, worried that others may see it in him, too.

One thing his mom had always warned Francis about was questions. If he asked too many religious questions that she couldn’t answer, she’d remind him, sometimes with a slap, sometimes a hug, that there were such a thing as sacred mysteries. “We aren’t supposed to know everything, Francis. That’s pride, to think you can know everything. Only God can know all.”

So he learned from early on not to question too hard. It wasn’t his place to know everything. He sometimes found comfort in this unknowing. Some things were too vast and complicated. Some things were just out of his hand. And that was fine. When he’d been a sailor, he’d enjoyed the simplicity of not questioning, just doing.

But some mysteries weighed heavier than knowledge. Denver to Detroit. He was missing whole swaths of the country. Entire states– miles upon thousands of miles of road. Why couldn’t he remember?

“Hey, you ok?”

He craned his neck back to look at Max, who’d moved towards the couch in a sudden, aborted motion, arms outstretched but paused mid-air, uncertain. Lion realized then that he was trembling all over, starting first in his hands but spreading to his chest, his legs, his feet. His teeth were chattering as if from the cold, knocking painfully against each other. But he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t speak through the tremors.

Wordlessly, Max joined him on the couch and reached arms around his shoulders. Pulled him close, one arm coming up to cradle the back of his head against his chest, holding him in place as though by strength alone he could stop his friend’s shaking. “Just breathe, ok? You hear me? Just breathe, Lion.”

Lion tried, sucking in great gusts of air into his lungs, in and out. In and out.

“I’m taking care of you, Lion.” Max murmured into his hair. “I got you, ok?”

He held him like that for a long time.

---

They said nothing about it the next day. Max had to report to the hospital for his work shift. He said this apologetically, as though Lion was a kid he’d broken some promise to.

“I guess I’ll just stay here,” Lion shrugged, looking around the small apartment.

“Yes, you need more rest. I’ll be back before you know it.” But Max lingered in the doorway, as though worried that if he took his eyes off Lion, he’d suddenly collapse.

“Look, I can survive one day by myself, Max.” He tried to keep the frustration out of his voice, but the look in Max’s eyes told him he’d been unsuccessful. The other man puffed himself up and nodded, putting on a look of practiced coolness.

“Yeah, of course,” he said. “Look, there’s some baloney and bread in the fridge, if you’re hungry. And when I get back, we can go out and grab some drinks. Celebrate your freedom.”

Lion nodded his agreement but said nothing. Max left without another word, clearly unsure what else to say without sounding overbearing.

The first part of Lion’s day was spent reading the days-old newspapers Max had accumulated during the week. There wasn’t much else of any entertainment value in the apartment. No television or radio to fill the silence. He tried– unsuccessfully– not to feel anxiety about the passage of time, but the dates at the top of the newspapers had him reflecting again on what was missing in his brain.

By his rough estimate, there was well over a month unaccounted for in his memories. He didn’t know what to do with this information.

Lion had only truly blacked out once before in his life, while drinking with fellow sailors on shore leave in San Francisco. Awful hangover aside, he’d hated the sensation of not knowing what the previous night had contained. His shipmates had their own memories and insinuations the next day. He’d tried to laugh it off, but he’d been haunted by the implications.

It didn’t help that he’d been a bit too close with one of his shipmates, Ray, who’d gone out with him that night but never really looked him in the eyes again after. Something had happened and he’d never been able to put his finger on what, since Ray refused to talk about it. They’d had flings before, Ray and Lion. Jerked each other off in the ship’s berth when the weeks at sea had gone too long. But there’d been nothing more, at least until that night. The worst part of it all was that he just couldn’t remember. He’d done or said something while on leave that put Ray off, and he never found out what that was.

God knew, the voice in his head that sounded a lot like his mother said. God knew exactly what he was.

Months later, it had made it all the easier to resign from the merchant marines and take to the road. The friendships that he’d cared about while at sea had soured, and he had other ghosts haunting him. A child that was five years old, and the child’s mother who’d stopped taking his calls.

Annie. His thoughts circled her memory like water in a drain. He’d always planned to travel to Detroit to see Annie and the kid. And here he was! In the same city.

Why hadn’t he visited yet? A worse thought stopped him cold. What if he already had?

He couldn’t dwell on it.

Max told Lion he’d lost the lamp in whatever accident it was that had put him in the hospital. So he needed a gift for the kid. Something tickled at his memory, some warning, but he couldn’t name it.

By mid afternoon, Lion resolved to go out and get a new gift. The only problem was money. Specifically, the lack of it.

Taking the spare key that Max had left him, Lion exited into the brisk December air. The sun was already low in the sky, though it was only three in the afternoon. The darkest time of year, Lion reflected. It was brisk, but he didn’t have a winter coat and the alternative was continuing to languor in the apartment with his thoughts for company. So he turned his collar up to protect his neck against the chill and pressed forward into the December dusk.

He didn’t know the neighborhood at all, but he walked in a direction that seemed promising, based on the direction of other pedestrians. After about twenty minutes of walking, he found himself on Michigan Ave. A familiar drag, at last. Christmas lights were strung up along the street. Families and women with shopping bags bustled to and fro in the festive atmosphere. A group of carolers stood on a street corner, singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.”

He walked past window displays of toys he couldn’t afford, trying to imagine the child he’d never met. Without a name, without a gender, with just some undefinable part of himself running in the kid’s DNA. He found himself lost in thought by a model train display in the window of a giant department store. The bright red locomotive pulled model passenger cars in an endless loop through a winter wonderland constructed of cotton balls masquerading as snow and tiny houses with tinier families waving from the yard.

Everything about the model town was perfectly idyllic. He let his mind relax as his eyes followed the train cars around and around. Lion was vaguely aware that time was passing but he was tucked inside this endless repetition of movement. Returning again and again, and never getting anywhere.

He felt like he’d been there before.

“Lion?”

He awoke as if from a dream.

Max loomed at his shoulder, clutching a brown shopping bag in his arms and looking Lion up and down with incredulity. “You gotta be freezing! What are you doing out here?”
Lion realized his teeth were chattering for completely different reasons than the ones he’d had the night before. “Looking for a new gift for … the kid.”

Max’s face cycled through a mixture of emotions before landing on concern. “Look, that can wait, right? You gotta get warm first.”

“I’m okay,” Lion lied.

Max huffed in amusement. “Well, I’m fucking freezing and I’m not letting you stand there with your teeth chattering acting like you aren’t. So let’s split the difference and get inside somewhere for a drink like we promised, right?”

---

They ended up at a pub in midtown, sitting side by side at the bar like they used to, back when they’d been out on the road. It felt like only yesterday they’d been bumming rides from hippies and farmers. It also felt like a lifetime ago.

“What’s in the bag, anyway?”

“Oh this– uh, just some items for the place– bedding and blankets. Just making sure we’re comfortable.” Max seemed almost bashful to have taken such banal domestic concerns into account. On the road he’d always been content to sleep under his own coat.

They lapsed into silence until the bartender stopped by for their orders. There was an anxiety to Max’s movements, head on a swivel as he looked around at his fellow bar patrons, as if looking for someone to fight.

Again, Lion broke the silence:“So how long do you plan to work at the hospital, Max?”

“Long as it takes,” Max said, knocking back a shot of whiskey with a grimace.

Lion was nursing his own beer, clutching it between both hands like a lifeline. He studied the side of his friend’s face. Max looked tired, the bags heavy under his eyes. “Long as what takes?”

“To pay off the bill. Start saving up again.” Max caught the bartender’s eye and motioned for another round.

Lion nodded. What he’d suspected had finally been said aloud. “You didn’t have to do that,” Lion said at last, after a long pause. “Didn’t have to pay for me, I mean.”

“I said I’d take care of you,” Max said simply. He turned and caught Lion’s gaze, anxious movements suddenly stilled. It made the breath catch in Lion’s throat for a moment. He’d never seen Max look at him like that before. “You may not remember that, but I do. And I keep my promises. Wasn’t going to let them send you to some state hospital nightmare.”

“You also promised you’d get to Pittsburgh,” Lion choked out, taking a forcibly nonchalant swig of his beer. “Start up your car wash.”

“And I’m gonna keep that promise, too!” Max stated, slamming his fist for emphasis. His second whiskey arrived, and he took a sip this time before saying, reflectively, “I figure some promises are more important than others, anyway.”

The words took a moment to sink in.

“Thanks, Max,” Lion said, but even as he said it he knew the words weren’t enough. They didn’t communicate fully what he wanted to say, or what he was feeling. He couldn’t even articulate to himself what he was feeling. “Look, the fact I can’t remember things is strange. It feels like you’ve known me longer than I’ve known you, ya know?”

Max reached out and pulled him close for a moment, squeezing tightly at his shoulders before releasing. They leaned toward each other as if held by an invisible string and remained that way for a while, drinking quietly but companionably.

The bar was crowded but not packed. People moved around them disinterestedly, talking in loud voices and ordering drinks. In the back of the pub a game of pool was getting some attention, with patrons cheering certain shots and booing others. The hum of ambient activity made Lion feel grounded and safe in a way that the sterile hospital ward never could.

“Look, I don’t like not knowing what’s happened,” Lion confided, forehead nearly touching Max’s. “I have this feeling like you’re trying to protect me from something– but this feeling like there’s something I need protecting from… it’s not good with me, you know? I’d rather know what it is, so I can protect myself.”
Max nodded, agreeing.“I know.” He took a sip of his whiskey, movements looser, more relaxed. Face more open with the effect of the liquor. “You deserve to know.”

“So tell me,” Lion pushed. He placed a hand on Max’s before pulling back, remembering himself. Just a quick touch. No harm done.

"The doctor told me to be careful. Said it could be uh, what’s the word…”

“Jesus Christ, Max, how bad could it be?”

“I don’t know! All I know is I’m scared.”

Scared? What was he so scared of?

“Of losing you again,” Max admitted. Had Lion asked that question out loud? The air between them seemed thinner somehow, more easily permeated. Their thoughts and intentions passing back and forth like electric signal towers. Max continued, voice low as if confiding some deep secret to him. And maybe he was. “I can’t go through it again, Lion. I couldn’t reach you. I can’t go back.”

“Back?”

Max looked pained, as if being forced to admit something shameful: “To being alone.”

“I’ll stay,” Lion said, voice equally serious. “I won’t leave. You just gotta tell me. No bullshit.”

He watched something shift in Max’s face. Tension, melting away. Replaced by a sudden resolve.

“I will,” Max promised. He took his glasses off and rubbed his face. Yawned. He placed his hand over Lion’s and let it linger there, thumb stroking absentmindedly at his knuckle.“Look, let’s get outta here first, ok?”

It happened while Max was paying for the check. A man brushed past Lion, ten years older and fifty pounds bigger. “Faggots,” the guy said, loud enough for others at the bar to hear. Everything went silent, except for a distant roaring sound. It took a moment for Lion to realize the sound was in his own brain.

“What’d you say?” Max stood up so fast he knocked the barstool over.

Lion stood up, too, but he was completely focused on Max. “Look, don’t worry about him, c’mon Max—” As he got in between the two men, hands up placatingly, he had that feeling again, like he’d been there before. Always Lion, between Max and the next fight.

The man sneered over Lion’s shoulder at Max. Said some other nasty shit Lion’s brain simply couldn’t process. He just needed to get them out of there, before something terrible happened. A panic was rising in his chest, scrambling his thoughts and making the action around him pass in a strange daze.

That’s why it took him by surprise when Max, with a glint in his eye, pushed past Lion to grab the other man by the shoulders. He held him at arm's length with a look in his eye that, in any other context, would have seemed almost loving.

“Why… you looking?” Max practically cooed, right before he smacked a kiss across the man’s lips.

The uproar that followed was immediate. The patrons of the pub laughed, some clapping. The other man himself stumbled back, sputtering. “Fuck you, ya queers!” But he was drowned by the cheers of the crowd as Max, without a second glance, turned on his heels and glided out the door in a dramatic sashay, looking absolutely ridiculous for a man of his size and shabby dress.

Lion, realizing just a beat too late what was happening, dramatically lifted his arms in a gesture of defeat and followed his friend out the door into the night, turning only briefly to do a bow to the audience and grab Max’s shopping bag.

“Christ!” Was all Lion could think to say once they were out on the sidewalk, blinking his eyes against the sudden biting wind. “The Max I knew woulda just hit him!”

But Max was laughing, a full throated guffaw, as he tugged Lion close to him again. He smelled heavily of whiskey and the cigar smoke that clung to every fiber of his clothes. “The crows are goddamn laughing tonight!”

Lion hurried them along the sidewalk, looking back over his shoulder as he did so. Any moment now, that guy could burst out of the bar with a whole gang of cronies at his side. Beat them to a pulp. He could have a knife, or a gun. Anything seemed possible in the city at night.

But the most eventful thing that occurred on their walk home was Max offering Lion his coat, which he took with only minimal protest. “I thought you were always cold,” Lion said, barely audible through the chattering of teeth.

Max just patted himself proudly on the chest, as if to indicate all the other layers he had on. “Tonight, I’ve grown a second skin.”

---

They decided to start from the beginning.

Lion agreed with him that maybe, to make sure no points were missed, Max should just tell him everything starting from when they first met on the road. “Make it detailed, Max. Tell me what you really think.”

“Well, I thought you looked like a jackass when I first saw you.”

“Thanks,” Lion said, grinning. “You really know how to make a guy feel special.”

It was almost midnight, but that didn’t matter. Max sat on the couch, while Lion preferred the ground. He was propped up against the wall with a blanket over his shoulders, looking not unlike a kid preparing to be told a scary bedtime story. A twelve pack of beer sat between them, with Lion in charge of tossing a new can over to Max whenever he ran low.

All things told, Max didn’t think of himself as a storyteller. He could carry a conversation, sure. But he’d always found it easier to be silent. For him, silence was a protective instinct. If you were quiet, and carried yourself a certain way, no one questioned you or gave you trouble. That’s how he’d made it through six years of prison. Sure, it had been lonely. But he’d gotten out, hadn’t he? Not everyone did. Unscathed, at least.

He began the story with the moment he knew they would be partners: when Lion offered him his last match, all to light his cigar. Lion smiled to himself, a distant look in his eye.

As Max recounted their journey, from car to car, along the rail lines, bar after bar after hostel and diner, Lion chimed in with his own recollection. They bandied memories back and forth with each other like that, all the way until that night out with Frenchie and Coley.

“You put on that asbestos suit, right? Do you remember— we wrote ‘Maxy’s’ along the back— and then you led the march outside and I lit the trash can on fire? Ain’t that right?”

The rhythm of the conversation shifted as Lion considered this memory. It sounded like something he would do. He could almost imagine it. But the actual memory just wasn’t there. He was conjuring up ideas of what the people looked like, what the scene sounded like, but his brain couldn’t confirm with certainty that any of that was true.

He shook his head no, but urged Max to continue. From that point forward, instead of adding his own anecdotes and laughing fondly over shared experience, he could only ask questions of his friend.

“We were sentenced to one month? For a fight and a trash can?”

“Well, there was the hitting the police officer thing, yeah. You may have gotten dragged into that, too.”

And here Max was looking anywhere but Lion. He was red faced and blinking hard, like he didn’t want to keep going.

“One month just. Gone.” Lion breathed, running fingers through his hair. “Wow.”

More hesitantly now, Max continued with the story. He didn’t want to admit to the cold shoulder he gave Lion in that first two weeks of prison time. How he stonewalled his friend for some perceived wrong, leaving him vulnerable to someone like Riley. But he had to be honest.

“So you were a jerk, and I became friends with this guy Riley. Was he a nice guy?”

“No.” The word was forceful as a punch.

Max took a breath. He drank a sip of his beer, then another. Lion watched him curiously, turning over the puzzle pieces in his mind. Something sat heavy in his throat, like a piece of food he hadn’t quite swallowed. Just lodged there. Breathing took a little more focus, a little more effort. The silence continued to grow between them, taking on a monstrous quality. No matter what was said next, it would hurt.

“Max,” Lion said, softly like he was talking to a little kid. “What happened?”

Max told him as much as he could.

Lion just sat against the wall and listened. He bunched the blanket around his shoulder up in his fists.

“Anyway, I beat the shit out of him. He looked worse than you, by the end. Was still in the prison hospital when we were released.” Max coughed, lit his cigar with shaky fingers. “So…” But he trailed off, not sure what else to say. Just blew smoke and stared.

He realized as he spoke that he’d never said any of this aloud before. After prison, Lion and he just… hadn’t mentioned it. It was strange, like invoking the name of a demon. The past felt close. Claustrophobic.

Lion had remained quiet throughout the recounting, but at Max’s pause he stood up. Dropped the blanket back on the ground, stretched his arms, then nonchalantly walked into the apartment’s small bathroom. The light turned on, and Max watched Lion examine himself in the mirror. He turned his chin up and down, cheeks from side to side. Ran fingers along the scarring at his eye. “Must have been stitches,” he mumbled. “That’s pretty… this all Riley?”

“Yeah,” Max coughed out between puffs on his cigar.

“Well,” Lion said, then stopped. He met Max’s eyes through the doorway. He couldn’t think of anything to say either.

It was strange, learning about events that had happened to him from someone else. It felt like Lion was looking at himself in the third person. He felt sorry for the guy that had gotten beaten and raped in prison. But that was a story. That wasn’t Francis Lionel Delbuchi, not really. It didn’t feel like him.

But he didn’t feel like the man he saw in the mirror, either. The longer he considered himself, the more unfamiliar the face staring back looked.

“Let’s stop for the night,” Max offered, stubbing out the butt of his cigar in his old beer can. He hiked his long legs up onto the couch, stretched out and tugged his cap off. “Get some rest.”

Lion shuffled back into the living room, picking up his blanket from where he’d dropped it. Without a word, he draped it over Max, who grunted first in surprise, then thanks. But instead of exiting into the bedroom, Lion sat down on the floor with his back against the couch. “Keep going,” he said.

Max remained silent and still for a long moment. Lion tipped his head back, neck resting against Max’s legs, and stared down the length of his body into his friend’s eyes. “Max, please.”
So Max continued his story, picking up from when they left the prison farm.

There were rail lines and bars and the money steadily running out as they traveled to Detroit. Lion had insisted on buying some new clothes before meeting his kid, so Max had insisted on getting him a haircut. He’d been all cleaned up, Max said. Very presentable.

“So, did I meet them?”

“You called first,” Max said. “From a phone booth.”

“Why would I do that?” Lion’s voice betrayed exasperation. “I always said, I should just show up. See the kid, no matter what.”

“I guess you changed your mind.”

“So what happened? What’d she say?”

Max couldn’t read Lion’s expression from where he sat. All he could do was stare at the back of the other man’s head and try to interpret his mood from his shifting body language. “I wasn’t in the telephone booth, and I wasn’t holding the receiver. So I don’t know what she said. Just what you said after.”

“Fine. Tell me that.”

“You said Annie had gotten married and was taken care of. Said you had a boy. Said you didn’t want to visit anymore, didn’t want to mess anything up, with the kid already having a father and all.”

“A boy,” Lion breathed. Max nudged his knee against Lion’s shoulder, getting the other man to look back over at him. There were tears in Lion’s eyes. Max wanted to look away then, and give the man some privacy. But they were trapped in this together now. Only way out was through.

“You were really happy,” Max continued. He cleared his throat. “Or you acted like it. I’m thinking now that she said some other things to you, things that got in your head. We were going to celebrate. Went to some fountain on Belle Isle.”

Max described the kids, and the gentle way Lion had started off playing with them. He recalled that Lion had tried to get him to play Treasure Island with him. Be the Jim to his Long John Silver. And then, in the middle of that playacting, Lion had seemed to… disappear. He wasn’t himself anymore. Wasn’t responding to reason. Pulled a kid out into the middle of the fountain, prompting the nearby mothers to panic. Prompting Max to intervene. And the thrashing, the fighting, the way he clung to the fountain like a hurt animal unwilling to be coaxed down. How he’d simply collapsed, unable to move, in the middle of the running water, with only Max to hold him up. Max had brought him to the hospital, sure this could be fixed quickly. But whatever it was, it wasn’t a quick fix.

“Took electro-shock to bring you back. Two weeks of meds and three trials of electro shock. Worst thing I’d ever seen, you seizing up all silent-like on that hospital bed. Scared the shit out of me.

“I never knew that could happen to a person,” Max mused, voice raspy and low now. He felt worn out, as though they’d really gone through that whole scene again. He could almost feel the weight of Lion’s limp body at his side, the panic swelling in his throat as he called out for someone, anyone, to help. In his dreams the water in the fountain kept rising, until he was kicking his feet and struggling to hold them both above it.

“Why can’t I remember any of it?” Lion asked. “It’s just not there.” He shook his head. Slapped his temple, then pounded his fists against the ground. “Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with me?”
Max sat up and scooched over next to Lion. Placed his hand on his friend’s shoulder, but remained silent.

“Boy, you really made a mistake, Max,” Lion was laughing now, a high pitched wheezing sound. He clapped his hands over his eyes. “Really hitched your wagon to a shit wheel.”

“Fuck you,” Max mumbled. “I could have killed you for leaving me like that. Nearly wrung your neck in the emergency room.” But the hand at Lion’s neck now was gentle, rubbing circles into the nape of his hair.

Lion, still hysterical and holding in giggles, knocked his head back until he was staring up from Max’s lap. “You’re a real asshole, you know.”

Max studied his friend’s face upside down, trying to make sense of the expression. The eyes and the mouth weren’t right from this angle. Everything felt off. “Why?”

“Because you didn’t leave.” Lion sat forward, so Max was once again staring at the inscrutable back of his head. “You took care of me.”

“And that makes me an asshole, does it?”

“Because what do I do with myself now?” Lion asked the wall. There was a tremor in his voice. “A guy’s just supposed to live with all this?”

When Max bought his roundtrip ticket to Pittsburgh, he’d paid for it with the last twenty bucks in his shoe. Those had been his emergency reserves, saved only for moments of direst need. He’d always believed in keeping back something for himself. It was another survival tactic of his. Don’t show your whole hand. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Hold something back for yourself, and more importantly, hide it from yourself so you don’t use it all up on a whim. That was Max’s way.

But he’d used up all his reserves now. He was exposed and spent. No point in holding back anymore. So, with an old-man groan, he heaved himself down off the couch, onto the ground beside his friend.

“We have our plans still, right Lion? We’re gonna start that car wash, you know. And we can start it wherever you want. Detroit, Pittsburgh, Denver, or hell, I don’t care. We could start it on the moon! But we’re gonna go into business together, right?”

“C’mon, you don’t need me, Max,” Lion shrugged, trying to pass off his next comment as a joke. “It sounds like I’m an insurance risk at this point.”

“But without you there’s no point to it,” Max pushed, feeling desperate for Lion to understand him, “There’s no point to any of it if we’re not doing it together.”
“You planned this car wash way before you ever met me.”

“I was the goddamn loneliest son of the bitch on the planet before I met you, Lion!” Max’s voice began to raise. “Are you kidding me? I was so lonely I didn’t even know what that meant anymore. I forgot how to talk to people like they were friends. I forgot what that was supposed to sound like. People came up to me on the streets after I got out of the can, and I would just bark at them like a goddamn dog. No one could get near me. I was one mean, awful, sonofabitch and after I met you it was like – it was– goddamn you. Don’t you dare start going on about how I don’t need you, goddamnit. Don’t give me that self-pitying shit. Fucking look at me.”

Lion turned his face up toward him. Their eyes met. The lightbulb in the secondhand lamp was dimming, the radiator humming, the whole room closing in on them. The past was a beast ready to swallow them whole.

“Max…” Lion’s voice was strangled, eyes pleading.

“Can’t we make it work, Lion?” The last time he’d begged like this, it was to a body on a hospital bed. “Goddamnit, can’t we make it, just this once?”

It was a rough kiss. Lion’s hands bunched up the tails of Max’s sweater. Held him in place, pulled him closer. Max’s own hands came up, wrapped around the back of Lion’s neck. They were tangled up and uncomfortable, limbs in all the wrong places. His back was going to kill him in the morning.

When they came up for air, it felt as though this was where they were always going to end up. From the moment Lion held up his match, to now. They were always going to find themselves right here, in this room.

“Hey, Max,” Lion breathed. His fingers pushed through to Max’s next layer of shirt, searched for purchase in the fabric. He grinned, panting. “You gotta work on your kissing technique.”

“I’ll show you technique,” the older man growled. And he did.

They spent the evening exploring each other. They were tentative, but there was a sense of near relief in their sudden intimacy. There were no more questions between them. Only need.

---

The coming days brought routine. Lion got a job with the hospital as an orderly. He had good bedside manner with the patients. Could get them to smile or laugh even in a stressful or embarrassing situation, such as changing bed pans, or moving a patient in and out of their wheelchair. He was relieved to be doing something to pay back the debt accrued during his stay there. Tried not to think of how towering that debt felt.

When Max and Lion passed each other in the hallways, especially in those early days at the hospital, they couldn’t keep from grinning at each other. It was a giddy feeling, like they were pulling one over on everyone else. It was strange, thinking of how long they’d known each other. All things told, Max had been in his life for only a few short months, made shorter by his own amnesia.

But the scale of time was irrelevant. Max was his person. The only man he trusted. Together, Lion felt certain they could travel any road. They could build a future. At long last it felt like they both were heading toward something, rather than going nowhere fast. His whole life until that point had been an exercise in running in place.

At night, when the nightmares came, he could talk about them with Max. He wasn’t alone with his thoughts. The images that sometimes stuck in his brain were hard to distinguish between recovered memory or imagined fear. When he woke in the night, sweating and trembling, Max was there to reassure him. Talk it through.

Everything wasn’t perfect. He still had his ghosts. Still had the shadowy idea of Riley, lurking in the corner of his mind. And the mystery of the phone booth— Annie, his child, the trigger of his catatonia– these fears were still present. He would need to face them, over and over again.

But he wasn’t alone anymore, and neither was Max. It felt as though they were survivors of a shipwreck waking up to find themselves on dry land. Everything that came next would be better than what came before. Lion felt almost sure of it.