Archive of Our Own ^beta

Welcome to the Thunderbird Invitational

Bill,

Thanks for your letter of January 31st detailing your loss of the Thunderbird Invitational. I hope you know that I don’t keep up with that kind of thing, and you could’ve just as easily have told me that you took home the whole damn prize. I guess I should thank you for your honesty, shouldn’t I?

All is well here, thanks for asking. I really am sorry that I’m not able to come to more reunions, but New York is a long way to travel even to visit with nice people. Maybe I’ll get up there someday, but I’ll bet that you salty bastards must get up to enough excitement without me there. Tell the fellas I say hello the next time it rolls around. Tell Gene I enjoy reading his letters, though I’m never sure how to answer them. They’re appreciated all the same.

If you’re still in California, my wife and I would be happy to host you at our home here on the outskirts of Los Angeles. We’re still at the same address we were when we were married back in ‘49. (Some four years ago, now. Can you believe it?) So, swing (haha) by if you want to. Ring if you decide to come or Alma will bite my head off. My extension is enclosed, and it hasn’t changed either, as you know.

Faithfully yours,

Jay

---

Bill likes to read magazines after sex which Jay has never had the time to become fully accustomed to, though he always remembers so easily after the fact. When he comes traveling to California, he always saves space in his suitcase for a stack of them—sports, cooking, and a significant backlog of Saturday Evening Post which he mostly gets for the pictures and swears that one day he’ll read them for the thinkpieces and short stories. Jay knows better.

There are things that you learn about a man after knowing him for a decade and some change. Even more when you spend nearly the entire time as two halves of a whole secret. Jay knows the kinds of motels that Bill likes in town. He’ll never pay extra for the magic fingers. He always starts to whistle when his knees begin to really bother him, and that’s to disguise the way his mouth pinches and his brows furrow. He’s favoring Ricky Nelson and that upstart Elvis Presley these days. Another thing he knows is that when Bill turns over on his side in the bed without starting for the familiar stack of magazines, it spells trouble all over.

Jay stubs out his cigarette on the nightstand ashtray and runs his hand over Bill’s shoulderblades, the skin tacky with drying sweat. Attaboy, Leyden, that hand seems to say, regardless of what it really means. Job well done. Not so bad for a boot.

“Who said anything about getting old?” Jay says, regardless of the fact that he’s still breathing heavily through the afterglow. His physical condition peaked when he was in bootcamp and has been on a steady downhill trajectory since. First it was the harrowing conditions on Gloucester, then Peleliu. Things actually lightened up for him somewhat on Okinawa, but that’s when his body started keeping score. Now, it’s eleven years of the war behind him, and he’s not as spry at thirty-three as he was at twenty-two. Alma says that he could stand lose some of the softness of his belly, and Bill says he’d better not fucking dare. So, the softness stays.

Bill finally turns back, pulling on Jay’s hand until it crosses the breadth of his chest. His own hand slips into the messed, sweaty mop of Jay’s hair. He’s not so young as he was either. He spent his twenty-eighth birthday here in the distant suburbs of Los Angeles complaining of deep aches in his bones that made it difficult to move around in the ways that he had been used to before, and that was two years ago now. “Nah, we’ve still got it,” he agrees, but his tone is detached and his eyes are fixed on a spot somewhere on Jay’s hairline, never quite matching his gaze.

Better to leave it alone than to press, Jay supposes. Very soon he’ll have to slip back under the cover of night and make his excuses to Alma about why he’s coming home so very late. He gets away with a lot by taking a swig of whiskey here and there, splashing it on his neck like a cologne, and citing a long night of drinking with a war buddy. Not many people have the guts to ask questions about a war buddy.

“Figure I could get away with staying here all night long?” Jay asks, poking at Bill’s ribs that are by some mercy not as visible as they used to be.

Bill hums absently like he’s trying for a laugh and coming up short. “Do you want a water?” he finally asks in lieu of answering as he pulls himself out from under the sheets. “I’d kill for some water.”

That’s hardly the first time he’s said so. Funnily enough, those first days across the airfield on Peleliu was when Jay first took real notice of Bill as anything besides a dumb boot with an ego and a mean streak, each a mile wide.

Now, Bill pulls on his boxers and fetches them two cups of water from the bathroom sink. He hands one to Jay and slides his hand up his arm for only a moment before pulling away and going for the pack of cigarettes that are still in the pocket of his discarded shirt on the floor. Still no moves on the magazines, Jay notes, but he drinks his water without a word. There is an entire weekend and some change stretching out before them in which Bill will stay right here with him, so he really shouldn’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth.

God, he shouldn’t be, but he is anyway. It can be helped just about as little as it can be withstood. “All right, Bill, out with it,” he finally demands when he can’t take it a second longer. “What’s on your mind?”

Bill sips thoughtfully at this own cup of water and twists up his mouth as he swallows. His feet shift on the old carpet as he paces the length of the room once. “You know, uh… Last reunion,” he finally answers, as simple as anything. A beat passes before he adds, “Tony Peck was there.”

Jay only has time for a pinprick stab of guilt that he doesn’t remember that name. There were so many fellas, a constant revolving door. He’d like to say that he has no room for the names of the living because he’s holding too many names of the dead. In truth, he’s sort of swept them all under the rug wholesale, pushing out the faces when they come to him and locking the door. “Tony…” Jay mutters. “I don’t know a Tony.”

“Replacement after you left,” Bill says. “I’ve told you all about him. You know. Kathy.”

“Oh,” he answers, his memory at last beginning to serve him where he wishes it wouldn’t. “Kathy.”

Bill smiles, a wild and frightening thing. “It’s funny, right? Because the thing is I used to give him so much shit over everything he was up to,” he says. “So much shit.”

Jay is all too conscious of the rabbit trail that particular train of thought leads down. God knows, he’s stared into it himself and found nothing he could stomach to pull back up from it. The comforting words he tells himself in those times are the only ones he can offer to Bill. Sitting upright, he tells him in no uncertain terms, “This isn't the same.”

“No, come on,” he says, trying to force a laugh that isn’t fooling either of them. “It's exactly the fucking same.”

“No, it isn't.”

“How?” Bill demands. When Jay has no answer, he presses, “How?”

Jay’s fingers, stretched over the empty side of the mattress, begin to twitch. “Would you just come back to bed?”

Bill only complies halfway, planting his ass on the edge and refusing to crawl back under the covers. It’s a strange instance in these covert meetings when Jay feels no liberty to reach for him, touch him, soothe him in the only way he knows how. So often, there isn’t any need to begin with. It’s a role reversal that only happens once every blue moon.

Instead, Jay folds his arms over his chest, curling in on himself as he waits for Bill to snap out of it. It won’t happen, of course, because Bill is nobody if not a man who sticks to his guns. It’s part of what set him aside from the rest of the boots as not only a fellow in arms but a man worthy of admiration.

“You know, you could’ve married a real bitch,” Bill remarks after a long moment’s silence. “Made the whole thing easier. Better yet…” Then, he seems to remember himself and shut his mouth with a click.

Even so, there’s a sentence that Bill need not finish.  Better yet Jay might’ve left marriage alone altogether. That’s another thought that he’s already had, another rabbit hole he’s looked down. The only response that comes to him is not exactly flattering. “You know that it was you and me first.”

“Yeah, but she’s the one you made promises to,” he says.

“I made you promises,” Jay points out quietly. “We made each other promises. Just because it wasn’t before God and man doesn’t mean they don’t count.”

It’s a beat before he comes up with an answer for this. “Yeah,” he finally says, sounding nothing short of totally defeated. “Yeah, you’re right. Maybe I’m the one that ought to feel fucking insulted here.”

“Come to bed,” he insists once more.

Finally, finally, Bill complies regardless of how fleeting this moment is going to prove to be in the end. It is getting late, after all. There’s a gabled house to scurry back to, and no afterglow lasts forever. Although when Bill tucks his chin over the top of Jay’s head, he has to confess if only to himself that he really does hate to lose it each and every time. 

---

Jay,

Quick note to tell you that I’m in town again. I thought you should know so you don’t lose your head in the case that we run into each other by accident. It would have to be an accident because (I also think you ought to know) I won’t be stopping by this time. I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t get it to fit into my schedule. Believe me, I’ve tried. Give Alma my love, and I’ll drop you a line when I can. 

Don’t get worked up over it, babydoll. Next time, you’ll see.

Forever yours

 ---

Alma is upset with him again, and it’s a miracle that he’s realized it this time. He thinks the only reason that he was able to recognize it at all is because she was scrubbing dishes from side to side rather than in circles, but it was enough to set her to tears when he finally asked if anything was the matter with her. Even still, she won’t tell him in any direct words.

The trouble is that he barely knew Alma when he married her. It just seemed like the right thing to do after so long of dragging his heels at marriage’s doorstep. She happened to be a girl he liked, a girl he could get along with just fine. Easy on the eyes with a wicked sense of humor that was entirely serviceable for the first three years or so. No one would ask any questions about Alma De L’eau’s husband. He fought in the war, after all, and no one should ask any questions about the war.

In the days since, he’s often wished that he could’ve known more about her as Alma Arnold before he had to know her as Mrs. De L’eau. The little idiosyncrasies could’ve been familiar to him by now, the subtle tells that betray her mood. At this point, trying to figure all of it out would be like trying to teach an old dog new tricks, burdensome to even consider with everything else he’s got on his plate. Whatever the issue is, he’s going to need to hear it from her in no uncertain terms.

Not that he’ll ever get exactly what he needs from her, of course. God bless her. “Just. Don’t you think it’s stuffy in here?” is all she says, and he can only stare for an extended moment trying to understand her meaning.

“So, open a window,” he finally says, although he knows instinctively that it’s an obtuse response.

“God, Jay, how can you say something like that?” she demands. “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

He does know what she means but only by half, and he sincerely doubts that she would like to know how he came to understand even that much. For years now, he’s been trying to tighten his grip around the things that matter to him and watching as they slip like sand through his fingers. Rather than say so, he ducks his head to glance at his watch.

“I can’t do this right now, all right? I have to go pick up Bill from the airport in an hour,” he tells her, and it really isn’t an excuse. There’s no conceivable way he can sustain a marital spat just now, not when Bill’s long-awaited visit after two missed opportunities is the only thing that’s he’s been spending thoughts on since Bill announced himself a week ago in a clandestine phone call in the middle of the night. It’s the Thunderbird Invitational again. Hard to believe a year has flown by.

Hands planted firmly on her hips, Alma turns in a slow circle all the way around. “Right. Right. Go pick up Bill. What do I care?” she says, her breaths still coming to her in stutters.

“Please, Alma?” he begs, exhausted though he doesn’t have much idea what he’s begging for. Not that it does him a lick of good, in any case. She’s shut down already, and he won’t get another word out of her for another day or two if the patterns hold.

He’s careful not to slam the door on his way out. After all, it’s not exactly her fault that this thing is going to sit unresolved for the weekend. It’s just that he already knows it’s going to be turning over and over again in his mind when the hours get quiet. Stuffy. Stuffy. What the hell did she mean by stuffy?

It couldn’t be that she knows about him and Bill. No, they’ve got their secrecy down to a science. Have for years, too. There isn’t anyway she could’ve cracked into all that. So what does stuffy mean?

Even at the airport gate, he’s stewing on it, damn it to hell and back. And it’s not as though he can ask for Bill’s opinion on it once he gets here. No, Bill has been fairly reluctant to discuss Alma at all since that night in the motel room, even going as far as to request that they take their dinner outside of the house this time around. And he would never say that Alma is why, but Alma is why. There are things that you learn about a man.

At least the look on Bill’s face upon first sight of him hasn’t changed. It’s that close-lipped smile that threatens to crack into a grin at any moment, like he’s holding back a joke that Jay will hear once they’re in private. It stretches the scars around his eyes in a way that Jay has come to adore wholeheartedly, though telling him so would only serve to embarrass him. He keeps that fondness as much a secret as the fact that the friendly claps on shoulders and the “Leyden…” that comes out of his mouth as a greeting are only the precursor to much grander things.

“De L’eau,” he returns, pinching the collar of his suit and tugging. “Jesus, what are you dressed for? Church?”

“Hell, wouldn’t want to be underdressed, Leyden. I know you fly in a suit, almost like a real gentleman,” he says, scanning him from head to toe and finding his prediction to be true though Bill scoffs over it. “Figured we’d hit up that place you like before I get you to the motel. That bar with the, uh…” He snaps his fingers, waiting for this memory to catch up with him.

Bill wiggles one set of fingers up near his brow. “All the antlers?” he prompts him.

“That’s the one.”

Bill slings his arm up over Jay’s shoulder as they begin to make their way out of the airport to where the car is waiting for them. Such a gesture could be brushed off as friendly, but only for so long. “Sure know how to make a guy feel special,” he says. Then, just as quickly as the arm went over his shoulder, it slips off. The ensuing distance between them is essential for keeping up appearances, though Jay would readily admit to hating it if asked. “How long do you figure you can stay out for?”

Unbidden, Alma jumps into his mind and seems to linger there with her reddened eyes and trembling voice. He’s going to have to face all of it before the weekend is over, and that has a tendency to turn things sour if he dwells. He can allow himself to think of that future almost as little as he can allow himself to live in the past. They both seem rife with enough troubles to eat up the little space that he can allow for just him and Bill.

“You’ve got me until you’re sick of me,” Jay tells him, determining to forget it all for the time being.

Once more, Bill scoffs. “Yeah,” he says. “We’ll see about that.”

---

At least this time, he picks up a magazine and narrows his eyes at the pictures in the dark. “I’m getting fucking sick of goddamn Norman Rockwell,” he grumbles.

“Only you could say that, Bill,” Jay sighs, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the illustration he’s fixated on. It’s only a copy of the front cover, and it’s an old issue to boot. A couple signing a marriage license, the wife-to-be dressed in cheerful yellow gossamer. Beautiful and homey, like all of goddamn Norman Rockwell tends to be. The guy has this way of making life look ideal, pristine in a way that he guesses neither of them are entitled to anymore. Not for years gone by, now.

Bill only humphs and turns the page.

It’s only too easy to tell that he’s still stewing on it, is all. But this time, when Jay decides it’s better to leave it alone than to press, he means to stick to it. Or at least, he certainly won’t bring up any issues if Bill won’t. There are better things to focus on.

The skin of Bill’s stomach is soft, his hair still damp from the washcloth that’s still wet on the foot of the bed, and Jay is struck once more with how much he loves to be able to touch it, even only the tips of his fingers tracing cursive writing. In all of his years of living, nobody else feels the way that he does.

“I know you’re not trying to get round four in,” Bill remarks through the side of his mouth, brows raised as he closes the magazine and places it on the nightstand. It’s only then that he realizes that his petting has gotten pretty damn heavy.

“I don’t know,” Jay answers, propping himself up on his elbow. Admittedly, he’s tired and overdrawn when it comes to sexual drive. (He’s not quite a young man anymore.) It just seems like this recent minor upset ought to be something that he gets Bill’s mind off of rather than letting it fester. “I guess not.”

“Good. I’m beat. Already gotta hit the course early tomorrow,” he says, stretching his arms high above his head. “Christ knows it won’t make any damn difference, but still…”

He mentioned this back at the bar. The curse of the Thunderbird Invitational. Bill might work his ass off, have his best season to date, and still lose it all to a hot-shot rookie whether by inches or miles. Or so he says, and Jay has no choice but to believe him. He really doesn’t keep up with that kind of thing. “If you keep losing, why do you keep coming back?” Jay questions, thinking that maybe he’ll even learn something with the answer.

It’s something he expects Bill to laugh off or at least shrug off with a noncommittal noise. Instead, he freezes up, keeping his gaze on Jay from the corner of his eye. After a beat, he finally questions. “When do you have to be back home again?”

“I don’t know. Not soon. Why?” Jay laughs out, hoping the sudden pang of nerves doesn’t show through his voice. Who knows what facing Alma is going to look like after all of this, anyway. Jay gathers up the loose fabric of the blanket on his hip, and asks, “You’re not gonna answer the question?”

Even so, Bill goes tense all over again, slumping down further in the bed. “Jesus, fine. I don’t know why I keep trying. I don’t know, all right?” he says. “Don’t ask me that right now.”

Jay tightens his grip on the blanket. “All right. All right,” he says, defensive. “We’ll talk about something else. Anything. Take your pick.”

Such an assurance only seems to relax Bill in pieces and only for a little while. They distract themselves for a couple of minutes with that fourth round even long after swearing to each other that they’re both too tired for it. Otherwise, they could run themselves in circles rehashing the same unpleasantness over and over and over again.

It would be the war first, and then it would be Alma. Then it would be the stretch of miles and miles in between California and New York. Then it would be everything that the church and the law has to say about the two of them. There’s no room for any of it. Not in the meager time that they’ve been allotted.

By the time that he can no longer make the moments stretch, all of it has been pushed to the back of their minds where it belongs. He sits on the edge of the bed, knowing that he has to leave even with the love of his life hanging on his back and pressing kisses to his shoulderblades. He turns his head at the last moment to let Bill claim his mouth instead, still hungry long after they’ve both had their fill. In a way, he guesses that the dull ache in the pit of his stomach ain’t gonna disappear anytime soon.

---

The following evening, Bill stops by for dinner, apparently preferring the company of a tepid married couple to the loud parties of champagne glasses and country clubs that an invitational like the Thunderbird affords. Alma never understands it, which Jay is sure she’ll make a point to tell him later on. Not that it matters. 

It’s getting rarer and rarer for Bill to stop by here and visit him on his trips instead of the other way around. Always and ever, he cites his reluctance to be a bother, how he’d hate to put Alma out with an unexpected guest, and he hardly ever listens when Jay tells him, “Don’t be stupid.”

Well, it doesn’t matter. He’s finally here after all. His coat is hanging on the rack, his voice is in the hallway, and all of the excuses from before sort of fall away into the dark recesses of backstage.

When Jay emerges from the home office to greet him, he and Alma are already exchanging their usual pleasantries. It’s good to see him after so long, and it’s good to see her, too. She hopes his trip wasn’t too bad, and he assures her it wasn’t. She’s got a shepherd’s pie in the oven, and that sounds just fine to him, etc.

“Bill,” he calls as he approaches, and Bill finally turns to him when he does with a smile that could make the darkest night look like a Sunday afternoon. “Thought I’d have to drag you kicking and screaming to get you back to this house.”

“Eh, give it an hour or two. I’ll kick and scream as much as you want,” Bill replies, clapping Jay between the shoulderblades once he’s near enough. The warmth of his hand can be felt even through his vest.

“Dinner will be ready in about a half-hour,” Alma says, cutting in with a cool tone. “Jay, why don’t you help Bill make himself at home until then?” She doesn’t say anything else, only scurries back into the kitchen, her hair bouncing behind her as she goes.

Bill leans in close to Jay’s ear. “I’m telling you,” he whispers. “She doesn’t like it when I come by.”

And Jay, knowing it to be the absolute truth, says, “And I’m telling you. Don’t be stupid.”

Because, in the end, what does Alma really know about Bill? What does she know about anything? She knows absolutely nothing at all, and that’s on purpose. Nothing about the islands, nothing about the image he was struggling to maintain before she met him. One of their big arguments early on, he recalls, was over a sideways comment that she made about Bill’s missing fingers after he’d left the house. Something about how she found the sight a little grotesque, and Jay had exploded at her for it. After all, she doesn’t know that those scars are the evidence of his survival, and she doesn’t even have the slightest idea that all of his loyalty belongs to the man who he was sharing a bed with the very night before their wedding.

Back then, years ago now, he and Bill had laid quietly side-by-side in the bed that would have to belong to more than just the two of them starting just the next day. And that was if, in fact, they didn’t decide to move their meetings to the cold embrace of hotel rooms altogether instead. 

They had traced the lines of each other’s palms while they still could without the obstruction of a golden band and had spoken to each other of a hundred regrets that had brought them safely to this snapshot moment in time. It was all boiling down to the same recurring thing: they were sick and tired of losing each other.

“I should have been there with you,” Jay had told him. “All the while, I should’ve been there. Okinawa and everything.”

“Like hell, Jay,” Bill had answered. “What would you have done? How were you gonna stop that from happening? Be serious.”

Of course, there never was any point in explaining it to Bill. How if he hadn’t cracked up in Gene’s arms that night, they might’ve left him alone. This would never be accepted as truth, no matter how much Jay insisted.

“Besides,” Bill had continued when Jay had been silent for too long. “It’s not like you ever got all that far away from me… I mean, not really. You know?”

Though he had agreed at the time, it’s a statement that Jay is still struggling to fully understand to this very day. 

After dinner, Jay gives Bill the very best of the liquor cabinet and a cigarette. Alma has declined every invitation to join them. She’s got this new obsession with a theoretical child that they not only don’t have but aren’t expecting to have any time soon, and keeping away from alcohol and tobacco is all part of it somehow.

There in the sitting room, they have a little reunion of their own. All of the war talk is contained in this little space, compressed but no easier to digest. The good memories of that time can’t be spoken of all that loudly, lest the lady of the house overhear. The most that they can offer each other is a knowing glance at intervals. Funny. Jay can remember a time when they were reclined on this very sofa, legs tangled together without a thought in the world of somebody walking in and catching them.

“Look, Jay, I better head out,” Bill says after the time has run itself down and there are no more stories to tell. He winces as he stands and starts quietly whistling the opening bars of Ricky Nelson’s “Poor Little Fool.”

With a nod, Jay follows him to his feet ready to steady him with hands at his elbows if need be. “You all right?” he asks.

Bill nods. “Fine,” he says, waving him off. 

“If you’re sure…” he agrees, reluctant though he does. “I can see you out.”

In the light of the front porch, Jay lingers in the doorway, and Bill shuffles his feet. Slowly, Jay is beginning to understand one reason why he doesn’t like to come by anymore. How unnatural it all feels to be seeing him out of his home.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, I guess,” Bill remarks, turning his head just slightly to glance at his rental car from the corner of his eye. 

Jay hums his assent. “Take care of those knees,” he says.

Bill narrows his eyes. “I’d be more worried about yours, De L’eau,” he teases, and Jay couldn’t keep from laughing down at his feet if he wanted to. After a moment or two of just standing together pass in quiet obscurity, he reaches out with one hand and grips Jay’s fingers with the ones he’s got left. Quietly and from the back of his teeth, he tells him, “I love you.”

Jay nods, running his thumb over Bill's knuckles before pulling back, remaking that essential distance. Suppose, after all, that someone were to look through a window. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, you too.”

---

Bill has already lost the invitational by the beginning of the weekend. The underlying frustration of the thing is already showing through when Jay shows back up at his motel room door. His smile is thin. The hand on his back as he guides him in, light. Barely touching him at all.

“Sorry to hear about it, Bill,” he says, all politeness as he makes for the stocked hotel room ice box to pour himself a drink.

“Just how it goes,” he sighs. “That fucking rookie. Fresh out of high school, I swear to God.”

The rookie’s name doesn’t matter, seeing as it changes every year. Bill’s revolving door of nemeses has been ongoing since Peleliu when he decided that Ken Caswell of all people was too big in his britches and covering it up by pretending at meekness. Jay figures he had probably changed his mind by the second time that Caswell saved his life.

Eager to change the subject to warmer things, Jay swirls his drink in the motel glass and grins. “Well, you’ve still got the place for the whole weekend, don’t you?” he asks, taking his seat on the edge of the bed. “I guess you’ve got some time to kill.”

Something is amiss again. This time he knows it when Bill sort of stalls halfway between the bathroom and the bed, mouth partway open like he hasn’t quite decided what to say.

“What?” Jay questions. “You don’t want to?”

“Sure, I want to,” Bill answers, lifting one hand to worry his forehead. “I mean fucking… look at you. I mean who wouldn’t want to, you know?”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,”  he answers, setting his glass on the nightstand and leaning ever so slightly back on the arms stretched out and braced on the mattress behind him. “So why don’t you just… Come on?”

Another moment’s stalling. “And that’ll be good for you?” he finally questions.

Jay tilts his head to the side, looking askance as he does. “And… when hasn’t it been?”

Drawing his lower lip between his teeth, Bill nods his head thoughtfully. Braces his hands on his hips. Paces the room once before turning back to him. “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he says. “Sometimes, a guy’s got to wonder is all.”

“What the hell is there to wonder about?” Jay questions with brows downturned. He is really beginning to dislike the turn that this conversation is sharply taking.

The next, seemingly inevitable silence is marked by Bill just staring at him like he’s trying to commit his face to memory. That bodes ill, too. Not to mention the pointlessness of it, considering how much a body can change over the course of time. Finally, he surges forward to take Jay’s face between his hands, thumbs over the apples of his cheeks. “Babydoll, I want you to listen to me,” he starts carefully. “Our whole life has been stuck in four walls since the day we got back. And with all the pressure, I mean… They’re gonna close in on you one of these days, and there ain’t gonna be a thing I can do to stop it.”

It’s all happening too quickly, slipping like sand. Jay lifts his hand to wrap weakly around Bill’s wrist as if such a hold could keep him steady or keep him right where he is. “What are you saying?” he demands, mouth feeling as though it’s full of cotton. “Bill, what are you saying?”

Bill has always been one to wear his heart on his sleeve and every thought all over his face. Certainly, there isn’t any disguising it now. Even in his silence, Jay can hear what he means. He means to remove himself as one of the pressure points from around the walls that close in this little bit of surviving he’s gotten up to since the war. “I thought we had an agreement…” Jay says before he can give Bill a chance to answer. “Is it—Is it not—?”

“Oh, Christ,” Bill mumbles, leaning forward to rest his forehead atop Jay’s head. “Christ, don’t make me do this.” It may be the first time that Jay has ever heard him pray.

“What did I do?” Jay demands, mumbling the question against the scarred skin of Bill’s neck. Already, his voice is beginning to tremble, and he can’t help but hate himself a little for it.

Bill tilts his head until he’s talking into the long parts of Jay’s hair. “Baby. Baby. You didn’t do nothing that you shouldn’t have, all right?”

With one hand on his chest, Jay pushes him back, feeling every point of contact like a brand that will be slow to heal if ever it does. “It must be something,” he insists, surprised at how easily the little tremors of the voice are disguised by sharpening the edges. “And you’re not telling me, which is all well and good for you. But you’re you, and I’m me. And I gotta know, Bill.”

“It’s just not good for you, all right?” Bill answers, pacing to the center of the room with his hands spread outward in surrender. “You’ve got a life, and it’s not good for you.”

Jay shakes his head. “You can keep saying that, but that isn’t everything,” he answers. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

Bill shoots him a warning look but answers him nonetheless. “It’s just…” he starts, growing more visibly agitated by the second. “Jay, every damn time I think about you going home after we’re done here and fucking her, and it makes me sick. I could throw up.”

“It’s just what I have to do,” Jay counters. “It doesn’t mean anything with her. It’s no different than… I don’t know… Taxes or something.”

This does seemingly nothing at all to assuage him. Of course, once Bill gets going it’s a difficult thing to get him to stop. You might think he was furious if you didn’t know him. “Yeah? Doing taxes with you sounds pretty damn nice,” he snaps. But, of course, Jay does know him, and he knows him better than the rest. Sometimes it feels as though he’s known Bill for his whole life. This isn’t fury. It isn’t rage. It’s getting the damn thing done and breaking his own heart with Jay powerless to stop him. He softens up just enough to continue. “There ain’t anybody else I got in New York. I wouldn’t be able to fucking live with myself. There ain’t anybody else, anywhere. There’s only you, and I…”

Here he stops, fingers twitching at his sides. Jay supposes that he shouldn’t make him say anymore. After all, he’s explained himself pretty thoroughly. Or enough that he leaves little room to be argued with, anyway. The fact of the matter is that, at the end of the day, it’s not in him to make Bill stay where he no longer wants to be.

“Okay,” Jay finally agrees, voice small and wishing to God that he could tie up the whole thing nicely with only two syllables and a nod of his head. No good. It’s still seeping like a wound with no signs of stopping.

Bill does him the kindness of kissing him one last time before he goes, and then the night is over. Now, Jay has still got the time. He could go anywhere he wants to. Somehow, home doesn’t seem like an option.

---

“Alma,” he calls into the house the moment he steps through the door. “Honey, I’m home.” God help him, he can hear the slur in his own voice, smell the alcohol all over his clothes, feel the dull stick of his shoes to the carpet. He’s squinting against the very first golden rays of the day assaulting him through the living room window. She won’t take kindly to being woken up so early.

Still, he calls into the house as he kicks off his shoes near the door. “Alma, honey, it’s morning.”

It takes a minute or two for her to finally emerge from the hallway in her linen nightgown and auburn hair loose around her shoulders. Her slender fingers are pressed into the corner of her eye as she shuffles forward, casting him a quizzical look.

Just looking at her, he knows intellectually that she’s beautiful. He knows there are too many dead boys he left behind whose only dream was a sight like this one, and he knows those same boys ought to have been given the chance that he’s squandering. He stands right there in the doorway, statue still and sobering up faster than he ever has, and he tries like hell to love her. It just keeps coming up to him blank.

“Well, come on in,” she says at long last, no remarks for him on the hour or the state of him. Her tone is softer than she usually employs with him. Unexpected. Like she’s speaking to a guest. “I can make you some breakfast.”

It’s too early for breakfast. Too early, even, for the newspaper. Not that he has the steam in him to say so. All too easily he can see it devolving into another argument, and he’s sick of those by now. Furthermore, he doesn’t quite feel sober enough to win, which defeats the point of the whole thing.

He follows his wife into the kitchen, watching her blankly as she flutters around for pancake mix and eggs. Time passes wordlessly until he’s got the plate in front of him and Alma’s hand resting carefully between his shoulder blades.

She must see him about to let it all go before he even feels it. “Oh, honey,” she says, rushing to his side and pressing his head to her chest. “Honey, why don’t you tell me what’s wrong? You know I get so worried.”

Jay only shakes his head and doesn’t speak. He knows from the feeling in his throat that his voice would break. Instead, he keeps still and lets her manicured nails press through his dress shirt into the skin of his shoulder. They stay that way for longer than he remembers ever having done before.

---

Bill,

This isn’t gonna be a fun letter to write, so you’ll excuse me for cutting the fluff and getting down to business. I won’t sit here and lie to you about being all right and moving on like a couple of fellas in our situation should. It’s been a miserable few months without any word from you. Christ, I miss you like a limb, but I guess you’d know what that’s like.

I guess ultimately I’m writing to beg you to let me get a few letters in edgewise. Nothing that would upset the state of things as they are, but enough to put us both at ease enough to call each other friendly. I don’t resent you in the slightest for what you did. I wouldn’t even know how to start.

You’re right, of course. And you know how I hate to admit it, but you usually are. Had those walls caved in on us, there’s no strength left in me to hold them up. But I guess I’m tired of losing and having to smile through it like it doesn’t sting. If nothing else, I know that I can at least tell you that and that you’ll understand.

So, if I can write you a letter here and there, I’ll be happy and all the stronger for it. You know where my heart is, and I know how to keep it contained. Promise.

Love always, however you want it and no matter what you say,

Your Jay

---

The Thunderbird Invitational comes and goes the following year, and some rookie hotshot wins the trophy as Jay understands it from the magazines that he reads. There hasn’t been a word from Bill outside of a six-word telegram, and Jay knows better than to keep asking for any more than that.

The telegram, he keeps tucked in the drawer of his nightstand where Alma never goes. It wouldn’t exactly give him away should she find it. It’s only that he doesn’t want anybody else’s eyes on it. This much he does want kept in only four walls.

It reads: I’d give anything to say yes.

---

Alma goes to her mother’s house on an inconsequential Wednesday afternoon during his lunch hour. She just packs a trunk and leaves, furiously wordless and trembling as she does. Jay doesn’t have it in him to try to follow her. To chase and try to salvage. There was no argument or explanation that he could counter, anyway. All she kept saying was that she’d had enough. That she was sick of their stuffy life.

Now, he keeps his chin tucked into his chest, his arms folded over it, as he sits on the loveseat and watches the clock tick the rest of his break away. It’s years and years of trying to make it work disappearing with every minute as the hands move and she drives further and further away. All he feels is the time.

Maybe he should try to feel some shame, too. Shame that his first order of business once he regains himself is to wire up to New York. He can’t quite muster it. 

Once he’s gotten through the operator, there’s an eternity of static as he waits for Bill’s voice. There’s no guarantee, of course, that Bill will pick up. That Bill will want to hear from him. That Bill hasn’t long since moved on from everything they had and everything they were. The fear he’s got down in his gut has his hands shaking like the tremors of an earthquake. Or like they did on the islands under heavy artillery.

“Hello?” Bill finally says on the other side of the world.

“Bill, it’s over,” he says all in a rush, releasing the breath he had been holding all the while as the phone rang. In fact, it sorta feels like he’s been holding that breath for a year and change. “With Alma. It’s over.”

There is no sound at all on the other line for the better part of a minute.

“Can I come see you?”

It’s another long silence before Bill speaks again. So much so, in fact, that Jay begins to wonder if he’s left with the phone off the hook. “Yeah…” he finally says. “Yeah, Jesus, De L’eau. I think you’d better.”

It’s all he needs. He’s got his ticket booked with a travel agent within the space of a couple of hours and packs everything he can carry with him in his old seabag for his flight the following morning. It’s a night in which he doesn’t sleep, knowing that it will be only a few hours before he leaves this house empty without an intention in the world of coming back to it. Let Alma have it. Let her marry a good man and raise a lot of good children in this place. As for him, he never intends to be stuck in four walls ever again.

---

The flight is a long one, and Jay has learned rapidly that he could never sleep on a plane with all that rattling. Funny that he ever managed under artillery. Upon landing, he almost feels he could nod off right there on his feet and sleep like a horse, standing up and everything. His eyes are threatening to shut on him at any moment.

Even so, he could never miss his Bill. Not even in a crowd of a thousand and three. At the airport gate, he’s sitting facing the window, features in profile with his elbows braced on knees that jitter. The stupid, sentimental bastard is wearing a suit, and the swelling of his heart at the sight brings him some renewed energy.

“Leyden,” he calls out to him. Bill jumps up at the sound and turns to him with wide eyes before freezing in place. Jay grins. “What are you dressed for? Church?”

Bill doesn’t move. Not for the longest time, anyway, and when he does it’s only a tentative step forward. Funny how he’s never been so hesitant until now. You’d think they’d never seen each other before and that this was the love at first sight moment that children read about in fairytales. Well, why shouldn’t it be?

“Jay,” he finally says at length.

“Bill,” he answers, and that earns him a grin.

“So,” he says as that brash confidence that Jay first loved him for comes creeping back to him like blood in the cheeks. “I didn’t make this up in my head.”

Jay shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No, I don’t guess you did.” 

Bill nods, seeming to finally allow himself to accept this.

“And I, uh…” Jay continues, “I figure I’ll be here for a while if you wanna show me around.”

“Yeah, I uh…,” Bill says. “I guess this is where I should tell you that I’ve never really been one for sight-seeing. Not even way back then.” 

Of course, there’s no questioning what way back then means. Isn’t that a nice feeling to always be understood? “Bill, I know that,” he laughs. “Or did you forget I was over there with you all the while?”

It takes a beat for Bill to answer, but when he does, he does it laughing in turn. “No,” he says. “No, I didn’t forget.” Then striding up to him at long last, he crushes him close. It’s all becoming easier in the anonymity of the city where nobody knows him and with no secrets worth keeping from anybody. If there’s an odd look thrown their way, Jay doesn’t give a damn. Bill’s chin is on his shoulder, his hand at the nape of his neck, and they linger that way for a second or two longer than they should.

Now there’s time, and now there’s space. Let the war talk, and the law, and the churches, too. He’ll be damned before he lets the walls close in on him again.

Jay finally pulls back, hands still on Bill’s shoulders. “I’d give just about anything for somewhere to catch some sleep,” he confesses quietly. “It’s been a long time.”

With a grin, Bill loops around to put his hand on the small of his back, guiding him out of the gate and out of the airport altogether. “Yeah,” he assures him. “I’ve got a place for you.”