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Eldoon was planning to let Klavier down easy when he had shown up at his door in need of a shoulder to cry on.
Alcohol seeped from Klavier’s pores, its stench clung to his clothes like smoke. His eyes were puffy and red: he’d already walked a trail of tears before showing up.
Eldoon despised the fact that his night was no longer his own, and would have to be given over now to comforting someone he had stopped caring about.
It didn’t happen quickly, it didn’t happen suddenly, but it happened. Eldoon found nothing in his heart for the weepy heap of alcohol in front of him, but common human decency prevented him from shutting the door in his face.
“Come in,” Eldoon said, with the paucity of words that came naturally when the well of nice things to say had run dry.
Klavier shambled into Eldoon’s apartment. The air was briny and damp with the vapor of boiling pasta. Eldoon had been hoping to try a new recipe just before bed.
Eldoon saw him stumbling, went to pick up his weight, and sat him down on the couch.
“He hates me.... He can’t stand me! He doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore… Ohhh....” Klavier, in strained, slurred anguish, said. A wail was on the tail of those words.
Eldoon moved to the kitchen. He turned off the stove in bitter resentment and took off the pot he had been working on. He fetched a glass and filled it with cold water.
“Here.”
“Danke, danke... Herr Nudel...” A dopey smile from Klavier to go along with his thanks.
Klavier took the cup and began drinking from it with both hands like a child.
Eldoon sat down next to him, clasped both hands, stretched them out in the space just ahead of his knees, and hung his head in silent despair.
Klavier continued to blather, finding his ability to express his grief refreshed after the cold glass of water.
“Iiiii don’t want to be around him a-anymore. He said... ‘sometimes I see Kristoph in you and I can’t look at you anymore.’ He has so much hate.... he never forgave, never forgot…” Klavier’s words trailed off into silence, as if a wound was rising, rising, rising, and had finally reached the surface.
“Apollo…” was the singular word Klavier was able to let out before his sobbing started up again.
Eldoon remained still, purposefully positioning himself on the periphery of Klavier’s sadness.
“He… he is so cold sometimes. It’s like a... switch. And he never s-says anything either. He just stops talking to me.... It’s like he doesn’t see me anymore but sees Kristoph or Daryan or whatever other monster...”
Eldoon remembered the better days. The days of happiness, the days of cheer. The days of laughter shared across the serving window of his food stand.
“Why.. why aren’t you saying anything?” were the words that snatched Eldoon out of his reverie and firmly planted him back in this horrible, interminable moment.
“I.. uh.. was waiting for you to be done.”
Klavier raised both palms in an upward sweep of confusion.
“I’m done... I’m done...”
Eldoon remained speechless, not for lack of words, but due to his unwillingness to play this game anymore. His silence lingered in the air between them, and sound only returned to the living room when Klavier put his head in Eldoon’s lap and the couch leather shifted.
Klavier offered his hair to Eldoon’s hands like a saddened pet, but Eldoon was wholly fed up with moody creatures. Eldoon’s hands, having refused to sift through the long strands of silky, sandy hair, flew up in protest. While he had decided to postpone the break-up on account of Klavier’s pitiful state, he knew that what began with this gesture ended with more midnight visits, drunken calls, and vomit clean-up duty in his own house, as it had before.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
At this statement, Klavier raised up his head with indignation.
“Why not? Huh? Why?” Klavier demanded with vehemence befitting a jilted rockstar.
“You’re just… using me. You only come when things between you and Apollo are rotten.”
The usual lightheartedness in Eldoon’s cadence was all gone. He spoke in a pained voice. His words came out like birds with clipped wings: flapping hopelessly and then diving to the ground with a sad thud.
The frayed rope snapped. Eldoon was all used up and thrown aside, the way he saw it. They were both happy at first, but it all came down, way down, all the way to the bottom, hitting every jutting, jagged edge. It was over. Eldoon forfeited his right to speak many times before, but not this time.
“I’m tired, Klavier. I really am.”
“What..?”
“There is nothing more to say. You know exactly why this is happening.”
“I don’t! I really don’t… please… my Nudel…, “ Klavier said, with a pleading hand embracing Eldoon’s face accompanying these words.
Eldoon grabbed the hand by the wrist and gently put it down at his side.
“Please… don’t make this any harder than it already is. You were never serious about this, and I was just an old man happy to be loved. Just leave, Klavier.”
Eldoon went quiet, having said all that could be said.
Klavier, in Eldoon’s long and bony features, saw a mask of stone turning away from him.
Klavier got up to leave, accidentally turning over a shin-high table in his ungainly walk to the door. Eldoon got up to assist him, holding him up and helping him stand until they faced each other, one man on either side of the door frame.
Klavier stood with a plea for help scored on his face.
“Goodbye, Klavier.”
A tanned hand reached out to try and push against the closing door.
“Please... please let me at least stay here. I don't want to go back there.”
“No. Move your hand away.”
Klavier’s hand did not move away, but merely stopped resisting, going limp as the slowly closing door pushed it back. A lock clicked into place.
Eldoon, still behind the door, saw Klavier move away from the peephole. Eldoon's vision became cloudy, moist.
Klavier called for the elevator as the feeling of being utterly abandoned took up abode in his lungs, his stomach; and hung all its belongings on the edges of his face, pulling it down into a heavy grimace.