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At the edge of the water, Kendall made a choice. He always did.
He wondered, straining against Colin’s scrambling grip, if that first wet breath would feel like homecoming. He thought it might. He intended to check.
Though Colin was stronger than him, Kendall could not lose another fight. One step closer, three steps back. One shoe slipped at the ledge, past the fence. He scrabbled to catch it on the posts, missed. Colin dragged him away. Kendall fell limp. He said, “I’m firing you.”
Colin said, “Let me order you a car.”
The truth of the matter was that Kendall Roy had never grown out of a damn thing in his life, and this wasn’t the time to start.
Laite Memorial Beach was shallow then drop. It had long since been closed for the season, thus stood abandoned but for him.
Waveless harbor slosh reached through his suit with extraterrestrially curious, November-cold fingers. The soles of his brogues skipped across slick stones. He landed hard on all fours, split his palm on a bladed jetty, shoved his face beneath the surface, ignored the water quality warning and opened his eyes into the murk and agitated sand. He thought, I did this, I made the world move. He thought, This is when and where it happens. He thought, This is nothing. He thought, Maybe there needs to be swells.
He picked himself up and stumbled to shore, tongue shoved into the slice on his hand, mouth full of blood.
All water on earth was reused. This was mighty Mesopotamian water, the water Odysseus washed his feet in, the water which fed and rained and drowned and stroked and petted and swallowed and kissed and killed and birthed and birthed and birthed without mercy or pause. Kendall swished a sip, cold like refrigerators and manmade reservoirs and lemon pith, and tasted his mouth.
Through the glass, his taped hand warped. His cramped front teeth reflected. I choose me I’m sorry / I choose me I’m sorry / I choose me I’m sorry.
He dropped it. Smash like lights. He knelt to sift through the ice and shards. The bartender leaned to watch, to say, “Hey, man, it’s good, we’ve got that.” The hotel lobby floor was marble as far as he could see, the furniture and guests doubled, Alice tumbling ass-over-teakettle, he raised his fist and brought it down on his nose, felt nothing, turned over his hand, saw glass in his knuckles, presented it oozing to the approaching staff member like Mommy?
“Oh,” she said, taking pause. “Allen,” over her shoulder, “can we find a first aid kit?” And this to Kendall, “Don’t worry, Mister Roy, we’ll take care of this.”
He stood, accordion staircase in reverse. “Accidents happen,” said the woman, touching his elbow to steady him. He flinched so hard she let go. The outline of her fingers seared. He told her, “I did it on purpose,” distracted by his body attached two ways to each of his heels like Peter Pan’s incorrigible shadow. He dragged a shoe through the glass, trying to free it, but it gum-clung, heavy. He tried again. She said, “Are you alright, Mister Roy?”
“Don’t call me that,” he said.
“What should I call you?” she asked.
He stared hard at his double. Snarled, predatory. It scowled back.
“Call me nothing,” both of him said. They left the assembled staff mopping and sweeping in latex gloves. Marble became carpet; Kendall was alone. He pried bits of glass out of his knuckles while he rode the elevator up and up. In his suite, he climbed into the empty tub, folded his hands on his chest, imagined himself the pharaoh, lost time to the drift, woke dizzy and fiending with his clothes blood-stuck to his skin, smoked three cigarettes end to end unwilling to waste even a millimeter not a single hit, drank up the liquor from the minibar, stuck his fingers down his throat and produced corrosive bile, took a shower, inhaled into the stream, sputtered, rinsed his wounds old and new, got out and crawled into bed soaked and slept to the tune of the rainfall nozzle. He dreamt of disgust and atrophy. His body woke at dawny six with ears full of breathing, took a lap of the room to determine it was his own, then kept moving.
Italy was wind-whipped.
On second thought this island might have been Greece’s—who could tell—the miasmic soup from which the catch-all Mediterranean sprung from, winter-rough salt-scrubbed, stormy fists of clouds encroaching with titanium fury, a stunning lack of seabirds, Kendall and the surf.
He politely removed his shoes and socks. He shucked his coat and folded it then laid it on the sand. His body took graceful steps in, Primo Ballerino Facing Oblivion with Dignity, to the ankles, then the knees, a rattling drop, his shoulders, wave crush, submerged. A rip yanked at his heels, desperate lover. The cold seized him by groin and throat. It robbed him of breath. He thought, Finally. He thought, This again. He thought, It’s nice, without a car in the way. He thought, Wait. He thought, I want to die beautiful, not battered. He had the image in his mind, regal, solemn, an honorary flag. He knew the outcome, but not how to get there. All this failing would make a man of him yet. But he could not reach the seafloor. He could not escape the suck and slurp. His head broke the surface for a moment, gasped, swallowed water, it clung blinding and abrasive to his lashes, it burnt his smoke-ruined chest, it sparkled, it roared as it reached into his ears, slapped his shirt around his throat, the beach receded, Kendall fought, he thought Why am I fighting; he thought, I am the director; he thought, Yes this is my magnum opus and it must be right; he thought, Send in the clowns.
The current pulled him out a half mile or so, then dropped him, uninterested. He paddled breathlessly sideways, out of its purview, then rode the waves back to shore.
“Sciogliere is to melt, really, in Italian,” said the EMT, a trilingual man younger than Kendall by far. That was the word the first responders had used, while they wrapped him in shock blankets and stripped his sodden garments with their sand-filled pockets for a plain grey sweatsuit and shapeless overcoat, to describe Kendall’s state. Sciolto. “Keep breathing it,” he added, tapping a fingernail against the oxygen mask.
“I told him to leave,” Kendall said.
“The fisherman?” said the EMT. Behind him, seagrass rip-rolled and whined against the wind. The storm crept closer. “He might have saved your life.”
“I got out of the current,” Kendall said.
“Stop talking, you’ll bite your tongue,” said the EMT.
The shuddering hadn’t ceased. Kendall didn’t know why. He told the team again, “I’m not cold.”
They ignored him. They attended his ruined hand which bled faintly from the salt-beating it received, spoke into walkie-talkies and cell phones, wrote notes, a report, did not let him rise from his seat on the lip of the ambulance’s loading end no matter how many times he insisted he had saved himself, he was capable of feats over nature, he could make their lives hell, he would have people go through their garbage, he could unearth and post their entire internet histories, they were administering medical care against his will, he was Kendall Roy and that meant something.
Their silence replied: He was Kendall Roy and that meant nothing.
It tasted like breaking sobriety and his body remembering, Oh, fuck, that’s right, I’ll never get enough.
This was the fourth hotel at which a clunky telephone had been punted into Kendall’s face with faux-courteous requests to please pick up as really, it was becoming excessive, they were clogging the line.
Kendall, wearing the same unwashed Italian sweats, took it. “What,” he said. He was treated to the sound of someone throwing up, which meant it was either Roman or Stewy. The particular tone of the retching—furious, not relishing. “Stew,” he said.
“Fuck you!” Stewy howled, choking. “Fuck you! Oh my God!”
Stewy hated to vomit, but his body loved to. Kendall waited out another round of gagging, holding the phone away from his ear.
“What happened to you,” Kendall said.
“I’m so fucking upset right now Kendall do not test me,” Stewy said. He spit; Kendall heard it hit the toilet bowl with an echoed splat. “What are you doing?”
Kendall looked around to make sure. “Istanbul.”
Silence like sinking. It stretched so long that Kendall hung up and gave the phone back to the concierge. Once it was in her manicured hand, it rang again. She raised her eyebrows. Kendall took it. Another retch.
“Dude,” he said.
“Stop hanging up and I’ll stop fucking spewing!” Stewy said. “Kendall! For the love of God! What are you thinking!”
“I’m in Istanbul,” he said again.
“Good for you!” A huffed breath, then, more punctilious, “What does it look like?”
“Come see for yourself,” Kendall’s mouth said—muscle memory.
It shuttered Stewy up. “I will not.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a life, Kendall, which didn’t stop when you left.”
“Oh,” Kendall said. “Okay.”
“You fucked it up, Ken,” Stewy said. “You failed. You tried, and it wasn’t enough.”
“I could’ve handled it,” he said. “I would’ve made it work. I had ideas brewing.”
“Oh, you had ideas. Are any of those on the subject of you coming stateside to talk your siblings out of their nauseating concern?”
“No.”
“You should change that.”
“There’s no point.”
“There’s no—? They’re harassing me. Roman came to my fucking apartment, I don’t even know how he knew where my apartment is. Connor sent me a letter. Snail mail.”
Kendall picked at the tape around his hand. “How’d you find me.”
“Pap pictures, bro. They’re making fucking photo albums of your world tour. Did you drown in Italy again?”
“No.”
“So, what, you won’t give me a wellness check? I’m puking for you and you’re just gonna listen and say nothing?”
“Nothing,” Kendall agreed.
“You don’t get to do that to me,” Stewy said.
“It’s done,” Kendall said. “History lost interest. You should, too.”
“What do I care about history,” Stewy said. Kendall hung up before he could continue. He gave the phone to the concierge with finality. He left the hotel and wandered. Not even street thieves wanted him. The moon winked smugly, watching. Kendall threw a middle finger into the air and missed Naomi who, if nothing else, would say something placid and yes-man him out of this life into the next. Like his God-given good-time cicerone.
His bag was packed. He was waiting at a roundabout for a car pickup to the airport. A Range Rover approached, gravel crunch reveille, and Kendall rose instinctively. A backseat window lowered. Out of it came Stewy’s face—January-pale, sunglasses in place, immaculately groomed. Kendall waited for him to speak, enduring a calculative once-over.
“Yo, what the fuck,” was what Stewy said.
“Go away,” Kendall said.
“Are you done with the theatrics?” Stewy said. The pinched wrinkle of his nose and mouth—distaste. A small jerk of the head. “Get in.”
“I don’t have to listen to you,” Kendall said.
“Get in,” Stewy said again.
Kendall got in.
Stewy smelled the same. On the tarmac, their jackets flapping and Kendall’s shaved skull wind-caressed, he took Kendall’s busted hand and unwrapped the tape, lifted the gauze. He examined the split palm—puckered and decisively cut but healing well—and the raw knuckles—newer, still fresh with blood, jaggedly pocked. He hummed. He thumbed a bag beneath Kendall’s eye. He pinched Kendall’s chin and tilted his head. He lifted Kendall’s arms by his sleeves, then let them fall.
“What do you think,” Kendall said.
Stewy clicked his tongue. “Nothing to be scared of,” he said. “You’re half-assed as ever.”
“I’m gonna do it,” Kendall said. “Just so you know.”
“You just keep trying,” Stewy said condescendingly.
“I’ll get there one day.”
A shark smile, top teeth braces-perfect and lower crowded like a desperate mosh. “You won’t. But okay.”
“If I’m not gonna do it,” Kendall said on the plane, plucking a wireless headphone out of Stewy’s nearer ear, “why did you come.”
Stewy kept facing forward, sleeping mask in place, posture liquid. He said, “Front row seat to the fall of Rome, brother. That shit doesn’t happen twice.”
Boats fascinated Kendall. Yachts were fine, but proper everyman rafts, schooners and sailboats and one-engine operations too small to stand on, dissevering ocean or bay or sound like the hand of God, treading where no body was meant to tread—he imagined himself an explorer. No one had touched this water where his body was touching it.
He and Stewy had spent countless sunburnt summers off the Hamptons coastline drinking themselves seasick then dropping anchor and paddling around spotting fish, holding their breath in contests, jerking each other off under the surf where nothing counted because nothing was real.
“Which one is it,” Kendall asked.
Stewy kept walking, one hand in his coat pocket, closed around a vial of coke, if Kendall knew him as well as he thought. “A little less questioning, a little more follow the leader, if you please.”
Kendall squinted as the narrow planks of dock morphed and wavered underfoot, badly lit by hung lanterns along the port’s bouldered edge. His balance faltered; he threw his arms out instinctively.
Stewy shot a look over his shoulder. “Keep up,” he said.
“Go home,” Kendall replied. He turned his eyes to the glazed sky and continued on. Eurydice.
“We had plans,” Stewy said. He was high as the stars above, so Kendall knew he didn’t mean it pettily, a dinner date, a calendar-booked catch-up. “You fucking prick. We had plans. We’ll make new plans.”
“I have plans,” Kendall said. “A plan.”
Stewy knocked him away from the helm with a solid hip-check. Kendall stumbled; Stewy let him, narrowed eyes on the control panel, hands tenderly draped along the polished wood wheel. A single spotlight shone from the bow against the night-black Marmara seawater. “Nice. Radical candor at last.”
“Someone died,” Kendall said. “I killed him.”
“No they didn’t,” Stewy said. “You’re still alive, man, no one’s dead.”
“He drowned,” Kendall said. “The car’s parked down there.” Then, “You wouldn’t get it.”
“You could explain,” Stewy said. They both laughed at this. Nothing, nothing ever changed. “Get me a cigarette, will you? My mouth’s bored.”
“I thought you were sick,” Kendall said.
“I just needed to stop wondering,” Stewy said. His tongue poked out between the corner of his lips with focus. A tug then a small flourish—a perfect shoelace noose. He dangled it before Kendall, who stared, unamused. “Once I heard your voice, I was fine. Do you remember college acceptance season? I lost like ten pounds, my parents thought I had cancer. I kept having to leave class to tear up the bathroom and I threw up at every party even when I wasn’t blacked out.”
Kendall lifted the bottle of Laphroiag to his lips, laughed a little, then drank. They weren’t far from wasted. They weren’t far from land. They were an island in the middle of nothing. Kendall’s heart was a boat was an island in the middle of nothing, carrying Stewy. “Your stomach is the, fucking, the cradle, the fertile fucking crescent from which all your desires and anguish bloom.”
“That’s sober-Ken talk,” Stewy said. “Drink, drink, hurry up, never say that shit again.”
“Maybe sober-Ken infected fun-Ken. I don’t—fun isn’t gonna happen, for me.”
Stewy put the shoelace noose around his neck and yanked, stuck out his tongue and made a choking noise and rolled his eyes back, then pretended to struggle, went limp, made a hissing sound to simulate a post-mortem piss.
“I’ll never know why you chose choir over theater,” Kendall said, taking another sip before handing the bottle over. Stewy took it with a scowl; he was always put-out when Kendall found his hysterics unimpressive. “You were born to die before a crowd of many. That’s why we’d never really work.”
“Oh?” Stewy said, mouth twisted.
Kendall said, “Uh huh,” then nodded to drive it home. His upper lip tickled; he wiped it, then checked his thumb for blood, but it was only a wind-kiss. He said, “We don’t match. Because I can only die alone.”
Kendall took Stewy’s hands in his. They were nice—long, lean. There was ash smeared into the pads of his fingertips, like he’d had ink prints done. Kendall remembered when Stewy used to roll his own cigarettes to feel cool. They always fell apart after two or three puffs.
“Ken,” Stewy said, eyes fathomless.
His skin tasted like burnt smoke and sea salt and the fizzle of coke dust Kendall had left behind when crushing a line off his middle finger. Kendall sucked experimentally; Stewy’s mouth fell open; his head cocked; he pushed in deeper, down the length of Kendall’s tongue into his throat.
Kendall lifted his soft palate to make room. Stewy swore, twisted his fingers, dragged light nails from the cupolic plate to the backs of Kendall’s front teeth. Sat so close, facing each other, on the king bed which dominated the cabin, they were once again playing doctor, now touch me here, now here, now here. Tell me I’m healthy. I’ll live forever if you say so.
“You’re not gonna kill yourself,” Stewy said.
“I owe it to myself to try,” Kendall said.
“I don’t even worry about it, man, because you never press hard enough, or you never drown long enough, or you never take enough pills or give the government the right papers or have enough coke on hand or the fucking moon is in the wrong sign. Ken, you’re the proverbial limpdick, you’ll never ever win at killing yourself.”
“No. That’s not true. That’s not—right.”
Stewy laughed heartily. “Yes it is! You’re incapable of loving yourself that much.”
“What,” said Kendall, “the fuck?”
Stewy dragged his spit-slick fingers down the length of Kendall’s neck. “It would feel too much like love to you,” he said. “And I know you’ll never love yourself enough to do it. So I’m not worried.”
This irked Kendall. He rolled his sleeves and showed Stewy the insides of his wrists. Stewy hummed, impressed.
“Damn,” he said. “That’s almost real shit. When’d you do those, before or after the Mediterranean decided she didn’t want you?”
“After,” Kendall said. “Before. I don’t remember. I dropped a glass.”
Stewy, unfailingly smart, touched only one scar: the wedding night, punched-window bite-mark. “And, what, rolled around in it like a dog in shit?”
“I pocketed the prettiest pieces.”
“Like collecting seashells.”
“Isn’t everything?”
“No,” Stewy said. “You fucking weirdo. Have you ever been to Egypt?”
“No.”
“Dope,” Stewy said. “Me neither. Wanna go?”
“I can’t do it if you’re watching me,” Kendall said.
“Oh, sorry,” Stewy said, “let me just turn the other way.” He paddled to put his back to Kendall. “That work for you?”
Kendall stared hard at Stewy’s broad, bare shoulders, the way he shivered while he swam. He’d been asleep when Kendall left the cabin, Kendall was sure of it.
“Fuck you,” he said. “Fuck off, Stew. Seriously.”
“No, if you’re really gonna do it then you can do it with me here,” Stewy bit out, teeth chattering. “I won’t stop you.”
“What is this.”
“I’m the last remaining member of team Ken. Here to watch the final match. And to cheer for the number one player.”
Kendall listened to the proclamation and found he felt nothing. He dunked himself beneath the lilting midsea waves. When he opened his eyes, he found Stewy had gone under too, cheeks ballooned with breath, squinting as to not miss a thing. Kendall shoved him away; Stewy barely moved with the water-dull force of it, instead grabbed Kendall around the neck and forced him down deeper. An animal instinct—Kendall kicked off Stewy’s treading legs and flailed for the surface.
When he broke it, his body gasped, coughed, heaved. Stewy surfaced beside him, head and shoulders shattering a perfect reflected moon.
Stewy spat like a dolphin. “No balls,” he said.
Kendall swept a sheet of water out of his eyes. “Fuck off,” he replied.
Stewy moaned around a mouthful of fried pastry, like a funnel cake, tangled swirls perfumed with rose water, soaked in something sticky. Catching Kendall’s eye—“Why are you looking at me like that?” he said.
Kendall believed death was dreamless sleep, but just in case, he filed the image. “To remember it.”
“Bro, you’ll see me eat again,” Stewy said, still chewing. “You’ll see me eat again in like five minutes when we walk by that stall over there with the oranges.” He sucked syrup off his thumb with a hum of pleasure. “My cousins talk about Egyptian oranges like they’re currency, I’m buying at least a dozen, maybe an even two. Try a piece of this.”
“I’m not hungry,” Kendall said.
“Bullshit. And anyway, you look ninety pounds, Ken, you can afford one bite.” Stewy held it to his mouth, so Kendall allowed it, dipping forward to steal a brush of his lips against Stewy’s pinched fingers. “There you go. How is it?”
It crunched between Kendall’s back teeth. The inside was soft, chewy. Sweeter than he preferred. “Fine,” he said.
“We have something like this back home,” Stewy said. “We call them zolbiya, though, and we give them to the poor during Ramadan.”
“Is that what you’re doing now,” Kendall said. “Feeding the poor instead of fucking them, for once.”
Stewy laughed with a hoot and slapped Kendall between the shoulders. “Precisely,” he said, eyes sparkling. “That’s exactly it, Ken.”
Connor: “I’m water, I flow.”
He taught Kendall how to steer a boat. How to enjoy the pick and push of waves rather than losing his balance, his stomach. How to tell time by the sun and to read a chartplotter. He was a general enthusiast of vessels and coasts until a storm hit the Gulf while he was on a small fishing ship, tagging along with locals for the lived experience, and the whole thing overturned then sunk. Connor had been in the hospital for a week, spitting seafoam, rabid-eyed. Nineteen. His expeditions, after the fact, were not so exploratory.
Kendall supposed it made sense—Connor would always love what tried to kill him, so he’d marry Willa on the water on a yacht too big to overturn, and he would never finish drowning, and—well, their father wouldn’t get to, either.
There was something to it. Completing the circle. It was a thorny crown but Kendall wore it with solemnity and certitude. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Kendall did not know about Dead Horse Point State Park until they arrived. It was Stewy who suggested it—“The cliffs, dude, look at the cliffs,” he said, and “We’ve come a long way since you tried to nosedive off that parking garage at Buckley, huh, Kenny?”
Tour groups passed like clumps of benign cloudstuff. Plateaus casted great purple silhouettes against burnt orange dunes, judgmental like kings, like time. They’d run out of coke. Stewy was alternatingly chiefing a dab pen and a bag of gummy candy shaped like sharks and fish and seahorses, which Kendall found gauche.
“Not really,” Kendall belatedly replied.
A bark of laughter from Stewy. “No, I guess not.” He wore a ballcap and sunglasses, a fleece quarter zip, and had layered DRI-fit leggings under his tactical pants like a dirty little secret. His hair was shaggier than usual, curly, and his beard crawled up his carved-sharp cheeks. Kendall’s dick was half hard from first glance, unfailingly punctual, not surprising but irritating. Sex with Stewy was a bullet to the brain. Too easy.
Stewy held out the candy.
“Scandinavian swimmers,” Kendall read. “The organicheads got to you?”
“This was all I could pick from that really crunchy-looking family’s campsite. It was this or soy jerky.”
“Nice,” Kendall said. “Classy.”
Stewy shrugged, then popped a magenta lobster into his mouth. He chewed twice, then dropped his mouth open with a retch and spat onto the sand. “Eugh. What the fuck.”
“Did you know,” said the guide of a passing tour, “water molecules are so good at sticking to each other they can overcome the force of gravity? Capillary action, guys, it’s crazy.”
Kendall’s swinging hand bumped into Stewy’s as they shuffled past the group. Stewy instinctually smacked him away, then spared him a glance and loosely linked their little fingers.
“Bro,” Stewy said, grabbing one of the cucumbers off his eyes and using it to scoop an avocado mask off his cheek, “there’s no past, stop saying shit like that. Right now, there’s right now. That’s it.”
In Kendall’s mind, they were ten and the twins were four; the Hamptons were crowded and it was jellyfish season. Shiv screamed without ceasing—her face screwed up and went red and when her voice tapered Kendall thought she’d ruined her throat—was grateful that he may never have to hear her sing again—but it was just the anaphylaxis. Roman ran into the water to get stung too, not one to be outdone, but failed, emerged sodden and despairing to watch Shiv get nursed and shot up and soaked in vinegar.
“If there was no past,” Kendall said, “I wouldn’t have to kill myself. I’d already be dead.”
“If only you were so lucky,” Stewy said.
“For real,” Kendall said.
Their facialists worked on.
The hot tub was kidney-shaped, just deep enough for the water to bubble against his chin. The room surrounding was greenhouse hot, the air nearly liquid. Through the paneled glass ceiling, the day was colorless. Snow had melted around the building’s exterior like a four-foot moat.
Kendall took a breath—then laughed at himself. He dipped under the water with a smile. A swirling embrace, all was love, it was peace, except it wasn’t, because jets bubbled into his ears and his body wanted to float and it was hot like a childhood fever tucked hidden under all the sheets and blankets they owned or possibly hot like his palm flat on the griddle how he used to do when he and Stewy first lived alone together just to see how long he could take it, and he’d barely made the connection when he was seized beneath either armpit and yanked like wombstuff onto slippery, chlorinated tile, antiseptic-white like a petri dish, like a new moon.
He craned to look up. “Dude,” he said.
“You’ll steam your brains, sir,” the lifeguard said, then laughed a little, nervous not amused. Kendall realized, when he spat up water, that he was being pounded on the back. Each thump echoed inside him. Fucking this again.
He mopped his running nose on his arm and said, “Can you make it hotter.”
“No, sir,” said the lifeguard. “It’s not safe, sir.”
“I can’t think,” Kendall said, and he took a sharp breath. No one understood him. “I need it to be hotter.”
“It doesn’t go hotter,” the lifeguard said. “Are you okay?”
Kendall picked himself up and left, each flip-flop footfall smack and splat. He got lost in the hallways. He briefly hid in a janitorial closet. He sniffed the bleach, felt weird, sniffed it again, then put it down. He didn’t, he had determined, want it to hurt. His life had hurt enough.
He returned to the spa.
“Tough luck,” Stewy said. He was still facedown eating cucumbers, though he now had hot rocks on his back. The facialists had left; masseurs had taken their place. None of these people were real. Nothing was anything.
“Fuck you,” Kendall said. He laid on the mat next to Stewy’s and pretended to sleep so everyone would leave him alone. He had a fleeting desire to go home. There was no home. He drifted and dreamt of his familiar Atlantic.
Kendall only barely caught him at it. The glint of light on the tilted screen.
“The fuck are you taking pictures for,” Kendall said.
“Proof of life,” Stewy said, phone now lowered nearly to his hips while he typed with rapid thumbs. “Why do you think they haven’t flown out here themselves? They get a snapchat in the morning and one more at night.”
“If I’m not going to kill myself, why are you babysitting me,” Kendall said.
“We used to vacation together,” Stewy said lamentingly. “We used to take guys trips. We used to snorkel, Kendall. We used to do molly at Nas concerts. We rode camels. We jumped off cliffs so high I peed a little on the way down. We went to Guam, dude. Do you even remember Guam?”
Kendall put his sunglasses on. “I thought there’s no past,” he said.
“Fuck you, don’t use my wisdom against me.”
“Get wiser wisdom, then.”
“You used to suck my dick,” Stewy said. “I miss when you used to suck my dick instead of trying to kill yourself. This is so annoying for me.”
“Then go home, fuck,” Kendall said.
“Where are we going next,” Stewy said, “fucking, Nepal? Dude, I’d do Nepal. Do you hear me? I’d do Nepal, I’d do fucking fjords, I’d do the birthplace of Zen Buddhism and where Shakespeare shat his last shit and fucking the Hesperides’s garden,” he seized Kendall’s body by the front of its cableknit sweater, a rough fist, and got into his face, “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove to me, you motherfucker, so you might as well out with it.”
“Spit on me,” Kendall said. Stewy shoved him away with a scoff and shake of his head. “Hit me. You’ll follow me anywhere? Kill me, then. Show me you love me.”
Stewy said, “I sure as shit don’t love you enough for that.”
“Then how could I ever believe you,” Kendall said. “Selfish prick.”
They finished their walk in silence.
Sometimes the wind spoke to Kendall. Sometimes it just shoved him around. Sometimes it bared milktooth fangs and gave a churlish yowl like a young cat convinced it was king of the jungle. Sometimes, when Kendall was taking a cigarette break and things went soft, he spoke back. “I’m not scared of you,” and “I know you’re there.” It was nice to have company, mostly. It was nice, he thought, that there would be something to hold him while he fell.
Stewy seemed to be waiting for something, but Kendall couldn’t fathom what. He was comfortably certain Kendall wouldn’t successfully perform suicide. So, what. Really. Did he anticipate a bounce back? There was nothing to bounce. Kendall couldn’t kill himself but he wasn’t dead. He was Schrödinger’s dream bitch and Jesus after dark. Maybe he’d die if his body could just stop walking on water.
“It’s thick fucking ice, Ken,” Stewy said boredly. “Jump all you want, you’re not falling through.”
Kendall shucked his overcoat, then his gloves, hat, and scarf.
“You wanna feel something?” Stewy said, louder, so the wind couldn’t steal his voice. “I’ll give you some sloppy head, Ken. I’ll fuck you however you want, I’ll do some Cirque du Soleil bullshit, I’ll do a headstand and three somersaults and land in the splits on your dick. I’ll find us some below-zero blow. I’ve got Oxys back at the rental, even.”
“No downers,” Kendall said. The cold burnt beautifully. “I need to be sharp.”
“To die?” Stewy said. “Bro, get real. If you’re gonna try here, can you hurry up? What is this, what are we doing, is this round exposure? You wanna die of exposure? I don’t have the patience.”
“Go home,” Kendall told him.
“Dude, I’m not gonna go home,” Stewy said.
Unbearable force, unmovable object.
“Seriously,” Stewy said, “what is this?”
“Maybe I’ll throw myself down Mount Tam,” Kendall said.
“And I’ll be drum major of the Thanksgiving parade,” Stewy said.
“Believe me,” Kendall said.
“No, dude,” Stewy said.
“You won’t or you can’t?”
“What? Both, I don’t know!”
“You don’t trust me,” Kendall said.
“Absolutely fucking not,” Stewy said.
“You don’t believe in me,” Kendall said.
“I voted for you,” Stewy said. His expression was tight-mouthed, serious. “I was ready to believe enough for both of us. I would’ve done it with you. I would’ve helped you. And when you fucked it, I would’ve cut you free with the most deliriously excessive severance package, more liquid than you could imagine, and tucked you into bed with a freshly sucked dick and a heated blanket. I voted Team Ken because I’m the tenured fucking captain of that team.” His eyes had locked onto Kendall’s. Without turning away, he removed his jacket and dropped it to the ice.
“What are you doing?” Kendall said.
“I don’t know,” Stewy said, voice wild. “Your move, slick.” But he didn’t wait—took off his sweater, threw it onto the slush.
“Stop that,” Kendall said.
“I’m following you,” Stewy said. Gloves. Hat.
“Stop,” Kendall said, stumbling towards him.
“I’m following you,” Stewy yelled, and a horrible echo, YOU, YOU, YOU.
“Don’t,” Kendall said, and his hands were on Stewy’s flannel, were grappling up it, under a henley to find skin to scratch at. “Fucking stop.”
“The first time we smoked cigarettes,” Stewy said breathlessly, arching into Kendall’s grip, “I don’t remember how old we were, but I remember you got so dizzy I had to hold you, and you got weird, and you kept touching my face, and I was fucking gone. Kendall, I have spent my whole life following you, and you never fucking notice.”
Kendall grabbed fistfuls of Stewy’s chest hair and pulled. He gritted his teeth and choked back a whimper and Stewy did nothing, didn’t touch him back, just stood with arms spread like the most pathetic crucified harlot in hell’s ninth circle, Brutus if he were wind-whipped Paolo. Stewy shoved him away, but followed his body’s lilt, grabbed it by the elbows, while Kendall beat a trembling fist on his breastplate. He was walloped and he was cold. He forced out, “Don’t fucking say that. Don’t say that shit.”
“I’m tired of not saying it,” Stewy growled. He seized Kendall’s face, a two-handed grip, more slap than anything. “I’m tired of your bullshit.” His thumbs rubbed against Kendall’s eyelids—Kendall flinched, had a Saint Lucy fantasy—but Stewy only held them open, poured forth a fierce gaze like helpless bubbling magma and made Kendall see it. Stewy was never warm. He was unfailingly, incurably hot.
“Rome did fall twice,” Kendall said. “By the way.”
Stewy made a sound too incredible to be called aggravation. He kicked Kendall’s feet out from under him; Kendall kept clinging. They crashed to the ice like rocks. The lake beneath them groaned.
“Ow,” Kendall said. He laughed. “That hurt.”
Stewy shifted on top of him. There were no trees. There was no life but them, vermillion beating leaching heat from nothing curled together like a four-way intersection. All glass to cut. Kendall was pain. He was an island, with Stewy.
“If I take you home with me,” Stewy said, steaming breath on Kendall’s ear, his cheek, like holding his head over a screaming kettle, “are you going to keep doing this?”
“If you take me home with you,” Kendall said, “I’ll still be in that sunk car.”
“You’re delirious,” Stewy said. “You’re just fucking delirious.” Kendall smacked his head back against the ice to feel his brain rattle. Stewy swore and shoved his hand between the hairline surface fractures and Kendall’s skull.
“It hurt,” Kendall said. No one heard him. The way he said, Eureka!
Stewy bit his ear. Hard. Kendall was still moaning when Stewy’s tongue flicked against its shell as he whispered, “There you go,” because Stewy, he’d forgotten, could hear him, selectively but fluently, only when it benefitted him. “You don’t scare me.”
“Kill me,” Kendall said. “I want to see how hard you’ll try.”
“You want, huh?”
“Maybe it’s the wrong word,” Kendall allowed. “I wonder. I’m curious.”
“And what do I do with the body?” Stewy said. His chattering teeth massacred his voice. Kendall remembered, vaguely, the cold.
“Eat it,” Kendall said, meaning it.
Their rental had one bed. Kendall watched Stewy sleep the unrepentant sleep of the good and plenty. He wanted the best for Stewy, and he knew what the best was. He wished they were on another boat, to make things easier. He cursed himself for not thinking of this sooner. He told Stewy’s sleeping body, “I’m sorry for waiting.” He found a basin, placid shell-pink plastic, in the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink. He filled it warm, which was better for Stewy. He brought it to bed carefully, but the water sloshed. This didn’t matter except it made him feel bad for the rental’s owners, who would likely have to pay extra for this clean-up, perhaps out of pocket, depending on how this next part went. Kendall spent a long moment admiring Stewy’s beautifully honest, unbashful sprawl. Sleep-flushed cheeks like an angel and one hand tucked under his pillow, shut around his phone. Kendall slipped his fingers through Stewy’s curls. He caressed his lax brow. Rubbed his healed knuckles against his rough, wild-grown beard. He said aloud, “I love you enough.” He had just taken Stewy’s head in his hands and lifted it when Stewy gave a full-body jerk and woke, eyes barrel-of-the-gun wide and a shout falling from his lips. The toss of the mattress overturned the basin onto the floor with an enormous splash and clatter. Kendall snatched his hands away. He hid them under his arms.
Stewy blinked himself awake. He looked at Kendall, then the half-soaked bed, then over its edge to the mess on the floor. He said, “Oh,” in a mechanical, not-his-own voice.
Kendall couldn’t speak. It was awful, it was relief, to be caught.
“Ken,” Stewy said, like he was begging for another explanation.
“You should call the police,” Kendall said. “I haven’t slept in three days,” Kendall said. “I love you enough,” Kendall said.
Stewy rose like a corpse. Kendall touched his elbow to ensure he was real—Stewy caught him by the wrist and squeezed hard, forced his hand open. He said, “I have aripiprazole in my bag. That’s what you used to be on, right?”
“In a previous life,” Kendall said.
Stewy nodded. “I am going to give you one, and you are going to take it,” he said, very clearly. “And then I am going to lock myself in the bathroom. And you are going to stay out here.”
“Sorry,” Kendall said obligatorily. Then, sadly, “You wouldn’t let me?”
“If I change my mind,” Stewy said, backing away, “you’ll be the first to know.”
“Should I ask why you had this on you,” Kendall said, studying the pill.
Muffled by the shut door, Stewy said, “I told you I was worried. I came prepared for anything.”
“This has never happened to me before,” Kendall said.
“Yes it has,” Stewy said. “Freshman year? The Zurich trip? Fucking Shanghai?”
Kendall sat on the bedroom floor. He leaned against the lintel and imagined Stewy on the other side. Not his body, just himself. “You’ll never know if I take it,” he said.
“It’s a pill, Kendall,” Stewy said tiredly. “If I wait long enough, you’re gonna fucking take it.”
It made him sleep. He laid there on his side, on the hardwood, and dreamt beautiful dreams of a long, lean hand on his throat. Another plugging his nose. Another holding him down. Another trailing up his thigh. Another covering his mouth. Another reaching straight through his chest to grip his spine. Another milking him dry. And one more, the prettiest one, holding a knife over him by its precarious end.
He woke when the door hit him. Groggy, cotton-mouthed, heavy-bodied, he allowed Stewy to push him out of his way. This was how people loved him: by treating him like he wasn’t there.
Breakfast. Heartbreak. Medicated-exhaustion. Stewy did not let him drink. He did not let him smoke except for cigarettes which didn’t count anyway. Stewy said, “I never thought of it that way.”
Kendall looked up from his gluey oatmeal.
“I never thought,” Stewy said, then he bit his lip, visibly struggling. “I don’t think of these things. If I’d let you kill me on a normal day, when life is fine.”
“This is normal,” Kendall said, hauntedly amused.
“This is three-par, brother,” Stewy said. He rested his forehead against his palm. A slight grin on his face, cold like a shadow, like watch-told time. Understanding crashed over Kendall: Stewy liked this. He liked games. He got high when his stomach dropped. He got off when Kendall was a cunt and a killer and ore-hard, fire-blazed then set on ice. He liked Kendall best at his worst. So when Stewy asked, “If I take you home with me, are you bringing all of the other Kendalls with you?” Kendall knew what answer he wanted.
Still, Kendall gave a quick glance over the room to take stock—the Kendall reflected on the fridge, and the Kendall caught in the glass tabletop, and the Kendall smeared against his spoon. When he turned his gaze back upon Stewy to nod, they nodded with him.
It felt, a return to bassinet cradle, like nothing.