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Roman, you’re a moron. The words of his father rang inside his head as Roman poured another bottle of brandy down his throat. The sounds of misery and shrieks of laughter intertwined themselves outside his window, the family name barely protecting him from becoming one of the boars punished for his perceived slights against their father.
Fuck Kendall! How dare he sniff out his weakness like a hound dog, when he knew very well that it was his own knife sticking out of their father’s back. And now he had the audacity to tuck himself under their father’s wing, suck his dick, and pretend all was well? It was absurd!
He wanted him dead, he thought, he wanted to slit his skin open and slide into it and finally receive their father’s infinite love and forgiveness.
Even then, he still wouldn’t want you, a small voice in the back of his head whispered, he’d still know you were sick. He’d sense the wrongness in you no matter whose skin you were in.
Roman took another swig.
Had he really thought that if he had landed the Pierce deal, he’d earn his father’s love? He’d be at his father’s side, affectionate hands caressing his shoulders while his siblings looked on in envy? How much of a moron really was he? He’d never be Kendall.
And yet here he was chugging brandy like it was life itself.
And Frank! That fucker weaseled his way back into his father’s life like he wasn’t right there with Kendall, bullet pointed at his boss’s head. So what if he knew Shakespeare? Roman could learn. He could talk about Ulysses and Oedipus and starving kids in Ethiopia. He could learn to be a real person.
A real person. What even was that, besides exactly what he wasn’t? Was it the lies that people presented about their feelings and their relationships and their desires? Did that make people real? Because he could pretend. Look at him and Tabitha. He’d pretended himself into the perfect all-American couple, for god’s sake!
He thought about Tabitha. Was she dreaming about another man’s dick while he sat here drinking himself into an ugly stupor? Why did she stay with him, anyway, if he never gave her what she wanted?
Why did anyone stay with him? Was it pity? Love? The thought of someone earnestly loving him filled him with a certain nausea that he couldn’t push away with all the alcohol in his system. That couldn’t be it regardless, he had nothing to offer whoever loved him.
His thoughts were beginning to get mumbled, all tangled together in a shrieking choir screaming about how wretched he truly was. There was no reprieve from the words that shifted between the voice of his father and his own.
Tossing himself into the bed, he closed his eyes and imagined a world where it was just him and his father, Kendall rotting in the ground, no longer standing in between them, and everything was well.
…
Shiv crawled out of the man’s bed, feeling sick to her stomach, her latest lay sprawled on the sheets, oblivious to the whirlwind swirling around Shiv’s head. Her hand hovered over Tom’s number. He’d been MIA since 2pm yesterday, and he was flying back in soon so he really should’ve called her by now.
Shiv slipped back into her clothing, like she was slipping into armor. The man, the nobody she’d slept with, had access to her in a way that few others had. Sure, she ran the risk of him telling Willa about what an odd conquest she’d been, but, really, what power did Willa hold?
It’s easier with a stranger, she realized, easier to let her guard down when so little was at stake. With Tom, or even with Nate, there was always a risk that the power would tip out of her favor and she’d be left in the wreckage.
Her hand once again lingered over Tom’s number as she considered giving him a call, asking him what the fuck he was doing over in Hungary. A different number, her father’s, also called out to her, and she wondered if she should call him, to verify again that she hadn’t dreamt up the offer. But she refrained, knowing any hint of groveling would send the scale tipping over in her father’s favor.
Would he be angry, she wondered, knowing she had utterly failed at keeping Connor’s name out of the news. A small childish part of her wanted to whine and claim it wasn’t fair, remind him it wasn’t her fault Connor’s bloodline had more than a few screws loose.
She looked back at the man, the poor fool she had laid with, but he was still asleep. What did it say about her, how giddy she had been upon finding someone who didn’t know a thing about her rotting family tree, and all its sick branches, how thrilled she was to have a man’s tongue in her mouth that didn’t wanna suck the riches right out of her?
She loved Tom, she did, it’s just, sometimes he was just so needy. She asked for nothing and yet was expected to give back warmth and compassion and patience and all those things that she thought were locked away forever. It was uncomfortable, like plucking a stray hair, but that was the price to pay to know somebody would always stick beside you.
Leaving the apartment felt like she was waking from a dream. The message she received from Gerri was what brought her back into reality.
“We need to talk. Call me.” the message read, and Shiv smiled, knowing she was back in the real world, the night of teenage fantasies behind her.
…
Connor smiled as he paced the room, Willa was lounging on the king-sized bed, laptop sitting on her lap.
“This is big, Willa! After tonight, who on this earth is gonna count me out of the race?”
“Mhm.” Willa mumbled, the sound of her keys tapping under her fingers, nearly drowning out the sound of her agreement
“I can just see them out there, the elites, trembling in their boots at the sound of me coming up from behind.”
“Sure, honey.” Willa didn’t look up from her laptop as Connor celebrated his official foray into the world of American politics.
“You know, soon, nobody will be able to look down on us, not even my family. Because you,” Connor came up to Willa and leaned in for a kiss, which she returned with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes “will be first lady of the United States of America.” She laughed, and he laughed, and the entire world seemed to be right for the first time in, maybe, his life.
“First lady? Wouldn’t I have to be your wife first?” She laughed and Connor hardly noticed the edge that crept into her voice.
“Well, we could get married, married with lots of little babies running around the lawn of the White House.” Despite the words that came out of Connor’s mouth, he couldn’t quite picture the image he was painting. “We’d have two or three, and they’d be the happiest kids in the world. But we don’t need to worry about that yet!”
“I never knew you wanted kids.” Willa said, still staring at her laptop.
“Oh yeah, when I was a boy, I used to play with my action figures by pretending I was my father! I’d hug them and kiss their foreheads and yell at them, slap them when they did something wrong.” He laughed, and Willa suddenly looked away from her laptop “It was quite fun for a ten year old boy.”
“I bet.” She looked at the floor, an expression on her face Connor couldn’t really read. Then she looked at his face and smiled, he smiled back.
“Anyways, once my siblings were born, I’d grown out of it, traded action figures for real children.” Connor smiled, “I think I was just happy to be in my father’s life again, and I loved my siblings. Still do.”
“Uh-huh. You never-”
“Slapped them? Of course not, I loved them.”
“But your father?”
“He loved them too.” It was odd and unpleasant, the feeling building inside him, so he decided to switch gears “Anyways, how’s your play coming along?”
“Good. It’s coming along good. The actors are really dedicated so that’s great.” The silence that built between them was cavernous and piercing so Connor decided to turn off the lights and climb into bed.
“I love you.” He said as he leaned in for a kiss. She put her laptop to the side and kissed him.
“I love you.”
…
The walk to his father’s room was cloaked in a suffocating silence, every step another tick away at the bomb that would detonate when the two stepped foot in the room. Every wall was marked by a macabre display of stuffed heads that Kendall once would’ve found tacky, but now was unable to muster any feeling about at all.
Just do what he wants, Kendall thought to himself, do what he wants and you won’t join them. But the phantom touch of his father’s hands dangled over his shoulders proved to Kendall that he was already one of them.
Once reaching his father’s room, he rigidly made his way to his father’s dresser and started counting out the pills, not wanting to hear what his father had to say about him, or Roman, or any of the suits leeching off of him.
“Parasites!” His father boomed “They’re all fucking parasites.”
Kendall finished sorting the pills and quickly moved over to his father to get him to take them “Here.”
As if noticing Kendall was in the room, Logan suddenly smiled “But you did good tonight, son.”
“Uh huh.”
Kendall began to head towards the door, but his father stopped him, “No. You stay.”
Kendall looked back at his father, but obeyed, gingerly sitting on the edge of the bed.
Logan put his hands on his shoulders and looked down at him, but Kendall kept his eyes above the dresser, “You’re the only one I can trust.”
Kendall nodded, and his father let go and headed to the bathroom, the door open as he shouted out to Kendall about his plans for the Pierce deal, and what to do with Roman, and other things that Kendall’s mind tuned out.
His eyes were still staring at what hung above the dresser, two guns. Did they even work? Were they loaded? Something akin to giddiness welled up in his gut at the idea of blowing his brain out right here in his father’s room. Maybe he’d give his father a heart attack and they’d die side by side, descending into whatever afterlife existed together.
But he was too tired for that, and besides, he’d stuck a gun into his mouth just hours earlier and hadn’t been able to pull the trigger, what says he’d be able to do it now? He wasn’t man enough for that.
His father emerged from the bathroom, seemingly more relaxed but looking at Kendall expectantly.
“Uh huh.” Kendall responded and his father sighed, moving to get into his sleepwear. Kendall once again made his way towards the door just to get blocked off by his father.
“Tom- Tom saw you today, while he was out hunting.” Kendall looked away, embarrassed at still contemplating suicide like an angsty teenager, or maybe he was just embarrassed he was caught. “I don’t want you alone,
for a while at least.”