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It didn't dawn on me until after I left Rome that Richard would rather wish for death than ask for help.
The fact that I'd found him on the edge of passing out was purely fortunate on his part—him bearing the cut on his head and the unmistakable pallor of a sick man. Wether it was his strange resilience or inexperience that was to blame for this poor excuse of a housing, I could not tell. The lack of heater was enough cause for my concern, but the hole on the roof of his little room was just upsetting.
All the while shouldering his unconscious body to the car, I imagined the repercussions if I hadn't left Italy as soon as I did. He would surely be dead if I'd found him any later. Another death in Vermont, and one that wouldn't please me very much either. Although I hadn't known him for too long, our time at Francis's country house certainly left an impression on me.
The journey to the hospital passed in a blur, and I would find myself sitting beside Richard's bed at half past midnight, gazing through the dark glass panels to the white street outside. When the doctor finally arrived, the man had practically rammed into my skull the very fact that I'd saved my friend's life. I didn't take well to debts, wether owed to myself or another, but this particular one came at an opportune time.
I tried to forget this little discovery in favor of listening to Richard's diagnosis.
*
My occupancy beside Richard's bed soon became more of a want than a need of mine. I needn't play nursemaid, especially with the adequately staffed nurses and caretakers, yet I had the want to stay by his side.
I first attributed this strange act to loneliness—as exhausted from Bunny's antics as I was, I would find any company better than the rabbit's outbursts of complaints and tantrums. With the blow I gave his poor face still in my ears, the frustration still fresh in the flesh, I poured all my time into reading and being somewhat helpful to Richard's recovery.
On the first day, he could barely lift his own limbs up from the bed, and so I offered to spoon-feed him. Startled, he accepted this reluctantly with a frown, all the while forcing the watery food down as quickly as he possibly could, so much so that I was forced into thinking he was going to choke.
Over the four days he spent there, it was as if I were a magpie bringing little trinkets to its nest. What Richard asked for, I would comply, in exchange for the polite little thank yous he gave me, which I assured him weren't ever needed to be said in the first place.
Soon enough, his books and other necessities were soon pilling up in the hospital room; a battered copy of The Great Gatsby took its temporary place on the bedside table, his equally battered suitcase at the foot of his bed. It occurred to me then that he could pack all these things in one night and leave, owning as little as that, material on today and a mere memory on the next.
On the last day, Richard was once again startled when I told him he would be moving into my apartment for the mean time. His mouth formed a small o as he stood dumbfounded, finally dressed in his own clothes after days of hospital gowns and my own pajamas.
*
I slowly got used to cooking for two, and to expect the occasional nights Richard lays in bed shivering, seemingly without any physical reason. I'd given him my bed even if he denied the offer. After the hours I spent outside, I would come home to Richard reading in my room or doing odd chores around the house. On some days I couldn't find him at all.
Late nights soon turned enjoyable with a fellow insomniac. He was either glum or overjoyed when drunk, and I didn't find these little moods too irritating. Rather, I very much enjoyed the late night entertainments he'd provided. A deck of cards and a bottle of liquor guaranteed that none of us would be sleeping that night, and our rest would be moved to tomorrow or the day after instead.
I reciprocated the smile he'd given me when he won, the boyish expression infectious, even with the dimmed lights of the kerosene lamp on the table.
Richard held a sort of childish wonder one would exude when encountered with the unfamiliar for the first time, which was either found in children or nowhere at all. He was also an admirer of beautiful things. From things such as passages, landscapes or even an antique vase, I suspected he could shed a tear out of pure joy if he was ever drunk enough.
These qualities of his managed to pique my interest sporadically, and before long, I'd found myself taking apart—on the nights he was much too drunk—all the clues he'd left unguarded; he was an only child, Californian by birth, and apparently held some hefty hatred for the silicon village where he'd grown up. Face flushed and grinning, he blissfully gave over these details to me in the dead of the night, unaware of the consequences they would bring.
On several occasions, I had to haul Richard to my own bed when his limbs had failed him completely. He'd gained a few pounds back, but was still as light as a feather, only weighing only a little heavier than Camilla if I were being honest.
"Henry?" He said one night, as I was about to leave the room.
I turned to him. He'd lifted his head up to look at me with unfocused eyes, looking so spectral with the blue moonlight from the windows. His tawny hair reflected the color, warmth welcoming cold as if it were an old friend. He asked me to come to the bed. I walked over, crouching beside it to meet his eyes better.
With a dopey smile, he began his words in a slurred tone.
"I used to think you looked odd at first, but you've really grown on me," He said.
This brought a laugh out of me, strangely. I rarely ever laugh as I get older.
"Go to bed, Richard."
*
Everything continued on as usual. Until one night I came back to find Richard in the kitchen, t-shirt rumpled and stuck to his skin from sweat. With a shaky grasp, he put a glass of water to his lips, looking down at the floor tiredly. His eyes were noticeably bloodshot, which was a high praise coming in between two people who hardly slept.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"Why don't you own a TV," Richard said, resigned. This was the only time he was agitated and unwilling to hide it. I didn't know what to say when he had always known the reason to that.
The sound of droplets rang loudly in the room. After listening to it for a minute or two, I walked to the sink to turn the tap off.
"Sorry, it's just—it's too quiet here sometimes." Richard's reflection was framed in the glass windows in front of me. I saw him rubbed on his temple slowly.
"You can't sleep if it's too quiet?" I asked.
"Well, yes."
"Would you like me to read you something?"
"What?" He put down the glass, looking up at me confusedly with his bloodshot eyes. "God, no, it's almost five in the morning, you should just go to bed."
Still, I followed him into the bedroom silently with a book in hand. If he found this irritating, he didn't tell me. I sat on the bed next to him.
Propping himself up with an elbow, Richard made a vague hand gesture, as if to make his point clear, and then told me to go to sleep.
I started reading aloud almost at the same time he finished speaking. Having given up on his attempt, Richard laid on the bed with his back to me. Fifty or so pages passed before I noticed a slower breathing pattern. It was then that I felt how truly exhausted I was.
I ended up laying on the bed beside Richard, without lifting the blanket up so as not to disturb him.
The next morning, I woke up to an empty bed.
*
It became somewhat usual too see us on campus together, either me sending Richard off to assist Dr. Roland, or the two of us hanging listlessly around Commons.
One evening, when I was smoking beside my car in the parking lot, Richard had asked me for a cigarette. I was taken aback, but I complied nonetheless, handing him the roll I was smoking without a word. He put it to his mouth, breathed it in, and promptly coughed out the smog in a minutes long battery.
I couldn't hold in my chuckle, and so in response, he looked at me crossly.
"You never smoke." I said, "Did Dr. Roland use you to the bones today?"
"No, I was just wondering of the taste."
"You could've just asked specifically, then."
Moving closer, I pressed my lips to his, startling poor Richard out of his mind. He seemed to linger for a moment, only to shove me away in the next. His lips were cold and dry, but still somewhat soft.
I wondered if Francis had ever tried to kiss him, and if so, did he also receive the same comical reaction.
"Are you insane?" Richard said in a quivered voice, eyes widened with disbelief. "What if somebody sees that?"
"Nobody would be here right now."
He went quiet for some time. I entertained the thought of kissing him again, but he'd already went in the car, shutting the door in my face. The wind whispered silent jeers at me, and Richard's slam of the passenger door resounded in my ears jarringly for minutes after he went in.
Once I was done, I threw the butt of the cigarette down the icy asphalt. Our drive back home was spent in uncomfortable silence.
*
Winter had passed, and I'd decided to tell Richard just about everything. He was staring at me incredulously by the time I was done. His gaze held to me in the dark, staring straight into my very being with a crazed dilemma to pick me apart with great effort, although quite unsuccessfully.
I had expected him to either turn away and run along to the police, or turn a blind eye to this whole ordeal. Finally relieved that the latter was chosen, I relaxed in my seat considerably. He mirrored my action in his own seat, and for a moment, I could pretend that we were merely discussing books, or recounting his awful time during pre-med.
I still wondered why he hadn't told a soul of what we did, and so I asked him once again, only for his silence to hang heavy in the room.
Then, out of place, I had imagined him in the white chiton, blood-red from a night in the woods, his mundanity broken by the purest form of debauchery.
"I don't know, Henry." He said, finally, glancing down at my lips, then to the whiskey glass in my hand, distressed. "I really don't know—"
"Now, that doesn't matter. Does it?"
"What do you mean?"
"I know for certain that you won't tell anyone. That is all that matters right now."
"You're insane."
"And you just love it," I sloshed the scotch in my glass around, feeling the pendulum of it, a tiny storm contained in amber liquid. "Tell me, and please be honest. Has Francis ever kissed you?"
At that, he frowned at me, and it must've bothered him intrinsically that we were sitting right in Francis' apartment, in his mismatched arm chairs and amalgamations of furnitures scattered around the room.
"No." He glanced away distractedly to a corner of the room. "He's my friend. Nothing more, nothing less."
"Am I your friend?"
Richard's shoulders tensed imperceptibly as he met my eyes. He pressed his lips into a thin line.
"Don't do this today, Henry. I was hoping we could just leave it be."
"If you say so." I shrugged. "But let me say this. I like you, at least more than I ever expected to."
"You should stop saying these things if you don't mean them." He said, seriously. "I can't tell if you're honest or not."
"That is our ongoing little game." I smiled at him.