Crawling Between Heaven and Earth

Songs

I went to a workshop in the Oregon coast. One of the assignments was to write, in twenty four hours, a ghost story set in a particular room of a particular hotel assigned to us. I’d never written a story under that kind of deadline, with no time to think or research, and I felt as if I were staring down an abyss from which no idea emerged. Then I noticed the antique radio in the room. Phil and Nick came to life at that moment. Of all my characters they remain—no pun intended—two of the most haunting.

Phil rode the accelerator the two hours from Portland airport to the coast, fuming on single lane stretches behind eighteen wheelers, and speeding up around them as soon as opportunity offered.

He must find Nick; he must talk to Nick; he must explain.

The impossibly tall trees clustered together on either side of the road, forming a green tunnel that enclosed the road on either side, reinforcing Phil’s impression that there was no turning back, no turning around. He was on a one-way road back to the past.

Twenty years back.

He lit one cigarette from the end of the other, the nicotine bitter on his tongue, soothing in his bloodstream. Clouds of smoke filled the small rental car.

Tobacco smoke on Phil’s nostrils masked the chemical smell exuding from his every pore. Take enough medicine and you’ll start smelling like a pharmacy.

It had been hell refraining from smoking all the way from Denver, in the plane.

Damn, oh, damn, they should have flights for the dying only; for those beyond risk of illness from passive smoke—great flocks of moribund, shuttled through the sky in a cloud of bitter, soothing smoke.

Cyanide or hemlock, sir? Will that be all?

If only it were that simple.

He chuckled, deep in his throat.

If that could be all.

To close one’s eyes and end it all.

He longed for that nothingness like a tired child longed for bed after a long day.

If only he could be sure of that rest, that nothingness, he wouldn’t submit to this nonsense of drug cocktails and the indignity of losing his senses and faculties one by one, of watching old age arrive prematurely and install itself in every mirror.

He could stand not seeing his nephew and niece grow up. He’d come to accept that chances were one-year-old Stacy would become a woman with no memory of him. Ian would learn baseball from someone else. It wasn’t like his sister would ever mention him to the kids now. Not now.

But what if consciousness and memory subsisted after death?

He lit another cigarette and pushed the car, faster, faster, through the asphalt-paved tunnel amid towering trees.

His dreams, if dreams there were after death, would be of Nick. Even Nick’s name, after all these years, still brought a reaction. Nick, Nicky, Nicholas Stevelanos. His heart went out to meet the syllables full of joy and winced away from them like a guilty child.

Giving up Nick had been Phil’s greatest mistake ever. Abandoning Nick in that motel room, to face the cold morning alone, had been Phil’s most egregious crime.

The one he didn’t want to answer for eternally.

So now Phil would go back. He sucked in the bitter smoke, pressed the gas pedal and made himself think of finding Nick as a sure thing. He’d go back to the motel and Nick would be where Phil had left him twenty years ago.

Twenty years.

They’d been only twenty two. They’d just finished college. That last summer together, after four years as Nick’s roommate—as Nick’s lover—Phil had told himself over and over that he wasn’t really gay; that he just happened to really like Nick; that anyone would like Nick.

At the threshold of adulthood, Phil couldn’t bear the thought of telling his large Italian family that he was gay, that he had a lover, that they would be living together. Phil had run from Nick to avoid facing up to the family; to avoid facing up to the world.

Like it had helped. Like Phil’s family hadn’t found out. Like he hadn’t ended up being shunned and given the cold shoulder anyway. By everyone except Tessie, his sister, who lived in Denver.

Even Tessie had turned remote and distant a year ago when he told her he’d tested HIV positive. She’d said something or other about not knowing he was promiscuous. As though he’d caught it from being promiscuous and not from sweet talking I’d-never-want-anyone-but-you Mike.

Though maybe Mike had a point when he’d said that Phil had been unfaithful first, that Phil had always closed his eyes and thought of Nick.

Phil made a face at his memory of the final argument with Mike, as he passed an eighteen wheeler.

Mike could never compare to Nick. Nick who had had the voice of an angel the mind of a guiltless imp. Nick, with his large black eyes, his pointed little chin and his just-a-little-too-long fur-fine black hair always disarrayed around his pale-skinned face.

That face would have been at home in an Elizabethan portrait, painted on a board, in an old fashioned inn, the background all black and only Nick’s face staring out.

Only no portrait could capture Nick’s voice. Nick’s strong, clear voice that could lend depth to the most trivial of songs.

Phil had tried to find Nick, off and on, through the last twenty years. When regret shook him, when another relationship collapsed, Phil hired detectives to find Nick.

The detectives had traced Nick’s family. No clues there. His parents, once solid denizens of Akron, Ohio, had divorced. His father had moved to Italy, or maybe France. No one seemed to know for sure. His mother had dropped off the face of the Earth. Nick’s older sister had married an Australian and moved across the globe. Letters addressed to her came back unopened.

So it had come down to Phil personally looking for Nick. And he was looking for Nick where he’d left him; in the same place where they had parted. As though Nick were a piece of clothing Phil had misplaced or a book he’d left half-read on the kitchen table, face down, waiting to be picked up and resumed.

The arrogance of his action burned clear into Phil’s mind, as he turned off the highway and up the little curving ridge towards Gateways motel.

It was where it should be and, thank God, didn’t look so different. Someone had got the brilliant idea of painting the boxy structure white with a blue trim, and of sprinkling little Swedish folk-couple motifs all around. A little picket fence encircled the handkerchief-size garden. Twenty years ago, the house had been green, and the garden an overgrown patch.

Phil got out of the car, pulling his collar up against the chill wind from the sea. The houses around the motel looked as he remembered them: modest fifties cubes in Earth tones. Gold-port was not your most fashionable seaside resort.

His heart beat fast, in anticipation, though he couldn’t say what he anticipated, not even to himself, without laughing.

Nick couldn’t be inside this shabby motel, waiting for Phil. And yet, Phil’s heart beat near his throat.

Okay, Nick, okay, last chance, he thought. He threw his cigarette butt down, stepped on it. Last chance to see me still looking more or less as you knew me. Last chance to see me grovel and beg your forgiveness. Last chance to hear me tell you I was an idiot and I should never have left. Last chance, Nicky. Oh, please, give me a last chance.

A blonde woman, walking her dog, shot Phil an odd look. He forced a smile in her direction and hurried down narrow cement steps into the motel.

The motel lobby looked just as Phil remembered—maybe large enough to hold three thin people. Mildew stained the wooden wall paneling. The receptionist’s desk was a narrow, waist-high table. It all smelled of stale crackers, though no crackers were in sight.

A cheerful, matronly blonde smiled at him from behind the desk. “You’d be Mr. Cesari?” she asked. “Phillip Cesari?”

Phil nodded.

“I’m Joanna. I’m the manager here.” She reached under the desk for a key, handed it to him. “Room three, right? Well, they’re actually efficiencies, with a little kitchen, you know? Glad you requested it in advance, because normally it would be booked, with the weekend coming up.” She pointed him out of the office. “It’s out that door to your left as you go, down the sidewalk, and through the gate in the picket fence. Then straight ahead, down the five steps. If you find anything wrong, let me know.”

Phil followed her instructions. Out and down to the left and through the garden gate, to a patio door that his key opened.

Inside the room, memories returned. Phil’s mind showed him the suite as it had been superimposed on the suite as it now was. The violently green shag pile carpeting peeked through the ecru Berber of the nineties. The wide, wide brown couch trembled like a double exposure over today’s three prim blue and pink armchairs.

On the couch, Nick reclined and smiled his cat smile. There was a pad of paper on his knees. He would be writing a song. Nick’s long hand moved over the paper, holding the pen; Nick’s black eyes stared straight into Phil’s.

Phil stared and smiled at Nick, then swallowed, shook his head. Nothing there. His memory played tricks on him.

The living room smelled musty. The only pieces of furniture Phil remembered was the brown Formica dining room table and the four metallic chairs clustered around it. They sat in front of the counter that divided the kitchenette from the living room.

The small kitchenette had been painted white and decorated in blue Swedish motifs.

Incongruous for an Oregon coast motel. Or maybe not.

Phil knew little of the region and its ethnic composition. Twenty years ago, he and Nicky had come from Ohio for a month, because Nick’s parents had paid for them to take a vacation. Twenty years ago, neither Nick nor Phil had been interested in anthropological studies.

Phil felt a vague discontent.

In the bedroom that formed a short leg of an L off the living room the four poster bed had endured a coat of pastel pink paint, but it was the same bed Phil remembered in its natural pine state. Teddy bears adorned the top of the built-in dresser, the built-in vanity and the bedside table. Phil dropped his suitcase on the bed and frowned.

He’d thought

Back in the living room, Phil looked around again, as if expecting Nick to materialize out of the pale yellow walls.

An old radio cabinet just inside the door called Phil’s gaze. It was narrow and its domed top stood waist high. Its ivory buttons were almost as yellow as the horrible paint someone had slapped on the fine old wood. Worse, someone had nailed pieces of wood on either side of the dome, so as to balance a TV on top of the radio.

Nick’s grandparents had owned a radio like this, but it had been kept, waxed and spotless, in a corner of Nick’s grandmother’s living room.

Phil’s discontent remained.

A sense of let down set in, after his frantic race to get here. A feeling of emptiness made his throat close.

Some part of him, some deluded part that still believed in happy endings and premonitions, must really have expected to find Nick here, sleeping on the bed, as Phil had last left him.

Phil glared at the mirror on the wall, above the built-in chest of drawers. His sunken eyes glared back at him, from within dark circles.

So, he didn’t have active AIDS. Something to be grateful for, these days, that the final illness could be kept away with drugs. But those same drugs robbed him of energy and strength, of desire to live and hope. Daily, almost hourly, they reminded him of the death sentence that hung suspended over his head.

He ran his hands back through his brown hair, trying to ignore the grey threads. If cancer came—when cancer came—then the hair would be gone and perhaps, before long-drawn death finished her invasion of his ravaged body, he would long for his hair back, grey and all.

For now Phil should sleep, recover from the journey. He needed his rest, a regular schedule. Dr. Michelopolis had been very specific about that. All the medicines in the world would not save him if he didn’t eat and didn’t sleep.

So first the medicines.

Phil pulled the first of his tablet case from his bag. The label, glued to the plastic cover of the giant daisy wheel, read “Six p.m.” It was five local time, so it would be six in Denver. The compartment for today contained the fifteen pills he’d carefully sorted and counted into it this morning, before leaving home. He had five such cases, carefully labeled with the hour at which he should take the medicines.

Centuries from now, future archaeologists would open his grave and pry into his remains for clues into the twentieth century. They’d think they’d stumbled onto a new breed and he would be embalmed in some museum, displayed as the first Homo Chemicus.

He took his tablets to the kitchen, set them on the violently yellow counter. Same counter, twenty years later. Nick had liked the color. He had said it was cheerful.

Phil frowned at the counter.

Cheerful.

He got a glass from the overhead cabinets, filled it with tap water and started the endless job of swallowing tablets: one, two, three tablets.

At first, a year or so ago, when he’d been prescribed this mix to keep full blown AIDS away, he’d read the indications on each of the medicines prescribed for him. The cross-linking of side effects had given him nightmares and he’d given up.

He now took what Dr. Michelopolis told him to take. Two of the blue, three of the red, four of the light pink and half a dozen of the yellow.

Oh, and swallow his multivitamins, everyday, like a good little boy and take calcium to prevent the medicines leaching calcium from his bones. Four, five and six. Seven, eight and nine. The tiny pink one and the mammoth purple capsule were last.

He’d gotten so that he could swallow each pill dry, but he forced himself to drink a little water after each, and then drank a full glass afterwards.

Done, he noticed a thin phone book on the counter and a glimmer of not-quite-hope made him reach for it and turn to the s. He ran his finger down the Stev-column—from Steva to Stevenson and back up—but there were no Stevelanos listed and, therefore, no Nicholas Stevelanos.

Phil closed the book, pushed it away, set his empty glass down next to it.

He hadn’t really expected it to be this easy. He couldn’t expect it to be this easy.

To begin with, there was no reason for Nick to be in Gold-port. True, no one had picked up a trace of his leaving Goldport, but that could just be shoddy investigation. Surely, if finding Nick were as easy as looking in the phone book, one of the detectives would have managed it.

Of course, Nick might be living with someone and the phone under his partner’s name. Gay men could be as hard to find as women who married and changed their names.

The thought of Nick’s living with someone else hurt and Phil flinched from it, like a man favoring a twisted ankle, putting all his weight on the other. Even to himself, Phil couldn’t pretend that it would be logical for Nick to have lived celibate for twenty years now. He couldn’t hope that Nick had never found anyone to replace him; never found a love to compare to the sweaty groping and shaky promises of a twenty-two year old’s crush—composed as much of lust and relief at finding someone who understood, as of friendship and confused admiration.

Phil made a face at his hollow eyed mental image of himself.

Sure, boy. Nick has never found anyone to compare to yourself as a clumsy virgin. What about you? Didn’t you find others? How many Phil? Can you count them? Should we make an accounting of every one-night-stand, every grope in the dark, every time you thought you’d fallen in love and crossed your fingers and believed, really believed in ever after?

And yet, through it all, ups and downs, hopes and disappointments, he had remembered Nick, hadn’t he?

Maybe Nick remembered him.

Maybe. Or maybe, maybe, just maybe, Nick only talked of him as a joke, a youthful mistake.

Nicky, with his sensitive fingers, so nimble on the guitar strings, his perfect voice, his renaissance features, his quick, quick mind. Nick had deserved better, even then. Maybe he’d found it.

The maybe felt like a nail, driven into Phil’s future coffin. A shiver went up Phil’s spine. Tired. He was tired.

He stumbled to the bed, shoved his bag to the floor, pulled his jacket off, and fell, face down, on the mattress. Sleep overtook him immediately, as if a switch had been thrown.

Sleep brought a dream, a dream he could neither define nor describe when he woke on his back, in the dark room, staring at the ceiling and listening to the radio.

It played very low, just loud enough to be perceived as a whisper over the sound of the raging waves outside the window. But when the voice of the announcer came on, even low, what he said made Phil sit up, stark awake, trembling.

“That was Nicky Stevelanos, folks, with his latest ballad The Songs I Wrote For You. All the talking heads say he hasn’t grown as a musician and that his songs need to develop some different rhythm and some different theme. Yeah, right. Bet you he’s laughing all the way to the bank, uh? Now, let us listen to one of his older hits, Saying Goodbye and see if any of you agree with the talking heads, uh? Call me and give me your opinion, right? The phone is”

Phil repeated the phone number to himself—bemused—and got out of bed, and hung, speechless by the radio. Laughing all the way to the bank? Nicky was living off his song-writing? Off his singing? Was he well known? He must be a local phenomenon, or Phil would have heard of him in Denver. The detectives must truly be incompetent, not to have found Nick.

Would the radio announcer know Nick’s address? Oh, please, please, please.

It would be some other Nick, though. Someone with the same name. Unlikely but possible….

The seconds before the song started stretched in Phil’s perception, endless and barren. He licked lips that felt too dry.

Then the song started with a whisper of acoustic guitar, followed by Nick’s voice. Unmistakably Nicky’s voice, clear and pure and perfect, a voice that couldn’t be forgotten if you tried to forget it.

Phil’s emotion caught in a knot at his throat, a pulsing in his chest. The song Nick sang was something that Phil had never heard. And yet, Phil couldn’t avoid thinking it had been written for him. The line about “My hand shall not hold yours ever again,” wrung his heart and “Though I still want you, I don’t expect your kiss, ever again,” might as well have been an accusation aimed at Phil.

Closing his eyes, Phil could imagine that Nicky was right here, sitting in the living room, on the old brown couch, his guitar held like a lover, his eyes closed, his voice caressing every note as it dropped from his lips.

Nick sang for him, for him alone. Nicky had forgiven Phil’s desertion, Phil’s indefensible cowardice.

He wanted Phil back.

The song ended. The music stopped. Phil waited for the announcer’s voice. Nothing. Not even static.

Slowly, Phil opened his eyes, glared at the yellow-painted radio, now as dead as the table or the yellow counter top.

He punched an ivory button, two. Nothing. He looked behind, to see if the thing was plugged in, but couldn’t even see a cord. The only plug had one cord attached to it, and that was the cord for the television.

Well, Phil still knew the number to call. This was weird, but weird things happened.

Maybe the radio had been on next door. That must be it.

He found the phone behind a teddy bear on the bedside table, and dialed the number from memory.

It rang for a long time, before it was picked up. “Yes?” a woman’s voice.

“Uh… Ah…” Phil had no idea what the station was, or if it was local. No, wait, the phone number had dialed local But what information could they give him on Nick? They’d think he was a crank. “I—You asked for opinions on Nick Stevelanos. I—I’m an old college friend and I’ve lost touch—Lost touch. I don’t suppose you’d tell me what he’s doing these days and the name of his albums? I’d love to”

“Who is this?” the woman’s voice sounded alarmed, on the verge of hysteria.

Great, great. They really thought he was a crank. “I’m Phillip Cesari,” he said. “I’m a—I teach history in a community college in Denver. I—I’m not a crank—I”

“Phil?” the woman’s voice said. “Phil Cesari? Little Cesar? Nick’s roommate?”

Now it was Phil’s turn to be silent. Some woman in Goldport knew his college nick-name, his connection to Nick.

“Where are you?” The woman asked. “I mean, where are you calling from?”

“Uh… Gateways motel.” Right after saying it, he repented. What if it really was some sort of joke? What if

“I’ll come and see you. Don’t go anywhere.”

“Who are you?”

“Oh.” The woman giggled. “I’m sorry, never thought you wouldn’t recognize me. I’m Nicky’s mother. Mrs. Stevelanos, I used be. When I came to town to look after Nicky’s—Well—To wrap up things, I—damn.” Her laugh turned to something that sounded remarkably like a sob. “Damn, I hadn’t thought of all this in years. I have a letter for you. Nicky’s” She drew in breath like a woman drowning. “How are you doing? What have you done with yourself?”

“We can talk when I see you,” Phil said. She had a letter from him. A letter from Nicky. Even if it was a kiss-off letter, it would be closure. “If you’ll come over.”

Minutes that seemed like hours later, she knocked at his door. He opened it and there she stood, tall and limber as Nick had been, with the same pointed chin, the same huge eyes. Only hers were light brown, and her hair honey-blond. Nick’s eyes and hair came from his Polish father.

Mrs. Stevelanos, whatever her name was now, stared at Phil. Her eyes filled with tears.

“You look younger,” Phil said, and caught himself, and smiled. “I mean, younger than my memories of you. I guess when I was a kid, you looked like this”

She giggled nervously. “Grandmother. Yes. I imagine. I was only forty. I had Madeleine when I was sixteen and Nick at eighteen. I never got” She shook her head.

She kept her hands firmly stuffed into the pockets of her short blue jacket, forming little protrusions on the side, as though she made fists in there. “You look older.”

“So my mirror tells me,” Phil said. He nodded. “Would you come in?”

“No.” She looked past him into the living room, looked away quickly. She shook her head. “No. These rooms are all non-smoke, aren’t they? I don’t want to—Why don’t you come out? We’ll walk on the beach.”

Her mention of smoking made Phil remember his own cigarettes. He hadn’t smoked since he’d got here, probably the longest, other than plane trips, that he’d gone smoke-free in the last year, ever since he’d found out that no matter what happened he wouldn’t live forever.

He got his jacket, felt the pocket to make sure his pack was in it, and followed Nick’s mom out of the motel, to the road, and down the short stretch to Anchor Street, and from there to the beach access stairs.

“Imagine after all these years,” she said.

They walked on the soft sand, well away from the sea that broke, heavily, against the sand a few feet away.

Here and there a gigantic log lay, that the waves had carried in. Felled giants they looked mournful, out of place.

Driftwood wasn’t supposed to be this big.

When Phil and Nick had been here, it hadn’t been. There had been very little driftwood, in fact, and the sea had looked like a mirror under the cloudless sky. Though they’d been warned not to swim—and didn’t—they’d walked in the water, with their feet in the chill while the sun burned their bodies.

Just the thought of it, made middle-aged Phil’s feet hurt, as if each of the little bones had been frozen.

He offered his cigarettes to Nick’s mom and lit the one she picked, then lit one for himself.

“Thank you,” she said. “Fancy you coming here, after all this time. Business?”

“No. No. I just—Nick—I was hoping to find some trace of where he is, what he’s doing.”

She stopped and looked at him. Her face, made very pale by the cold wind, looked like the face of one long drowned. “You don’t know?” she asked. “Damn. No one ever told you?”

“Told me what?”

It didn’t take very long to tell. She did it in gasping sentences, between breath intakes.

The morning after Phil had left, headed to his first job in Akron, which would be followed by the job in Denver and the yet better job, also in Denver, Nick had woken up, read the goodbye letter Phil had left behind.

That night they’d found Nick dead in the narrow bathtub, the walls splattered high with his blood.

“They had to put a plastic enclosure around the tub,” Nick’s mother said. “Because they couldn’t get the stains off the walls. They called me. The reason—The reason Stan and I had paid for this vacation for you boys was that we wanted Nick out of the house while we negotiated our divorce. He was so sensitive and everything affected him so” She took her cigarette to her lips, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out in an angry cloud. “Well, the fares to Goldport were good and we thought”

Phil stood. “You—You mean, he killed himself because of—because I left?” And you’re talking to me, he thought. And I’m standing here, alive. And I’ve survived Nick for twenty years and enjoyed life.

“Well…. Probably not just because of that. You were the one stable thing in his life, see.” She looked at Phil, winced, looked away. “I think he knew very well that Stan and I—That our marriage…. And he was never that close to Madeleine. He—Well—You couldn’t have known.” She sucked in nicotine, sighed. Her eyes were focused behind Phil, on the grey waves. Her tennis-shoe beat a tap-tap on the sand. “Please don’t. You were just a kid, yourself. And maybe it was all for the best.” Her words had the singsong quality of a learned speech. “When my husband found out what—what you two had been up to—I knew but I had never—I thought—Well, Stan said he would have killed Nick, if Nick hadn’t beat him to it, so you see.” She flung the butt of her cigarette towards the sea and turned to face Phil. “Please, don’t think I meant to accuse you. Nicky didn’t accuse you. I got his letters out of Stan’s hands. The one to us and the one to you. They were in the same envelope, so I read yours and besides, they had to be read, you know by the police.” She reached into her pocket and handed him a folded paper. “Here. Here, you see.” She wiped her eyes to the sleeve of her coat. “I need to go. God, I need to go. Carl will be home from work any minute now and II met him when I came down to—Well, it doesn’t matter. I—I’ll talk to you later.” She ran over the sand, up the beach access stairs, to the road.

Escaping her memories. Escaping her own guilt.

Phil stood in place, holding the paper. Nicky’s letter. At length he unfolded it, read it. The beginning was clear, business like, strangely at odds with Nick, particularly a Nick crazy enough to kill himself moments after.

“Phil, I knew it couldn’t last and I understand your letter perfectly. My family wouldn’t take it so well, either, and maybe you’re right, maybe it’s nonsense, maybe there’s a woman out there you can love. I don’t know. I don’t think I could ever love anyone else. But I know it’s impossible and I don’t want to be a millstone around your neck. Go, Phil. Go and be happy. You say you don’t deserve me, but it is I who doesn’t deserve you. Forget me. Get married and raise a dozen Italian brats. Just—if you can—keep a corner of your heart—if not for me—for the songs I wrote for you.”

It was signed in a shaky hand, emotion at last betrayed.

Phil could see Nick sitting at the rickety kitchen table, perhaps with the letter Phil had left him, reading it.

That letter would have come like a thunderbolt out of a cloudless sky. Nick wouldn’t have had any idea of Phil’s doubts; Phil had hid them so well. Phil’s letter, Phil’s absence, must have been a pounding shock. And Nick had taken his life… while unsound of mind.

He wouldn’t ever know that Phil himself had contemplated suicide rather than leaving; that it had taken all of Phil’s self-control not to kill himself.

Phil stood in the whipping wind, holding the letter in one hand: the last letter Nick had ever written.

Phil should have killed himself. Then they could both be dead together. They could have departed, hand in hand, in search of whatever lay on the other side. They could have been together in their dreams.

Phil swallowed and swallowed again, to keep his emotion in check, but by the time he got back to the motel, there was a taste of salt and tears down his throat.

The songs I wrote for you.

The songs Nick wrote. God, the songs he wrote. The pure emotion in Nick’s voice hadn’t lied. Nor could it endure betrayal.

The radio program had been a dream. The phone number actually belonging to Nick’s mother had to be a bizarre coincidence. Chance.

Phil sat on the bed and finished smoking his cigarette before realizing he’d brought it indoors, into the smoke free room. He threw the butt in the toilet and flushed, and stood staring at the little tub veiled by a pink shower curtain. Nick had died here. This small bathroom with its tiny built-in, triangular corner vanity, had been his last sight in this world. Nicky’s large, expressive eyes had stared at that ceiling as he died. His blood had run down these drains.

Nicky was not middle aged, and fat, and happy elsewhere. He’d remained twenty-two. He’d never be older than twenty two.

Crap, oh crap. It didn’t matter if Nick had committed suicide as much because of his parents’ divorce as because of Phil’s desertion. Phil had deserted Nick. Betrayed Nick. Made a mockery of the love they’d shared for four years.

He might as well have opened Nick’s veins himself.

For a moment, Phil stood, with the letter in one hand, looking at the bathtub. If he had any courage at all, he’d splatter his own blood all over these same walls.

But then the dreams in his eternal sleep would be of Nick. They would always be of Nick, now.

Again and again, like Sisyphus pushing his rock up an endless slope, Phil would write that last letter to Nick. Again and again, Phil would catch a glimpse of Nick in his sleep, Nick’s mobile face at rest, Nick’s voice stilled. And Phil would leave, unable to do anything else, knowing fully well he was killing the only person he’d ever truly loved.

Phil dragged himself to bed and lay on it, fully dressed, with his jacket on.

In that island between waking and sleeping, a radio announcer’s voice came to mingle with the sound of the waves roaring on the shore.

“And we have Nicky Stevelanos right here with us. So, how do you like Goldport?”

Nick’s voice, maybe a little graver than Phil remembered it, answered, “Fine. It hasn’t changed much in twenty years.”

“No, no. We don’t change. It’s a point of pride with us. So, you were here twenty years ago. May I ask”

“Just a vacation. With a friend.”

“And I heard you actually had trouble finding a room here? Because everything was booked for your own beach concert?”

“II was in—I gave a concert, in London, and it was hard to get connecting flights, so yes, I got here just hours ago and everything was booked up.”

Nick sounded embarrassed. He’d always hated public situations.

How could Nick live the life of a star?

“So you got into a little third class motel, didn’t you?”

There was something to the way the announcer’s voice lifted at the end that suggested that Nick had glared at him to prevent him giving out the motel’s name.

God, Nick would hate celebrity.

“I’d stayed there before,” he said. “It’s a nice little place.”

“Isn’t it kind of an odd stopping place for a star, though?”

An odd, embarrassed laughter. “Probably. But then I’m an odd star.”

“So, how come the tabloids have never got hold of anything about your love life?”

Sharp intake of breath. “My love life is in my songs. I have no love, outside my music.”

“So we hear. Besides being the only folk star to survive and do well in the eighties, you’re the only star to be celibate.”

This time the laughter was genuine. “Just private.”

Somehow, somewhere, Nicky’s life had gone on. It had gone on without Phil.

“I had a great romance, long ago. And yes, all my songs are to that one person, though that person died. Many years ago,” Nick said, from the radio. “I never—I could never love—All my love is in my music.”

Phil fell asleep, lulled by the familiar voice, the comforting certainty that Nick still lived somewhere.

Later, he was half aware of Nicky coming in, closing the door behind himself.

Nick Stevelanos, internationally famous folk star, came into his rented motel room.

He couldn’t believe that nit-wit announcer had almost told every crazed little fan out in Goldport where their idol hung out. And he couldn’t believe luck had shunted him to this one room, of all the rooms in the world.

The room where Phil had died.

Nick took off his red jacket, dropped it on the floor, by the door; pulled off his leather boots, flexed his toes against the low-pile carpet. His jeans felt damp on his legs and his blue sweatshirt was the same he’d worn on the plane: rank with sweat and the peculiar smell of closed in spaces.

Tomorrow, he had to give the beach concert. If he could master the energy.

He was so tired.

He needed

He knew very well what he needed. He had it on hand, too, in the pill box inside his bag, on the bed.

But he had promised himself he wouldn’t take pills again. Or, if he did take them, it would be the last time. He’d make sure he took enough to kill himself.

He had to make a decision.

Either give up the pills for good, or give up life.

Because they were robbing him of life.

At first drugs had been a way to dull the pain, to fade Nick’s memory of Phil lying dead in that bathtub.

These many years later, Nick could still feel the heart-stopping shock; he could still smell blood and sudden death; and still recoil from that body he’d loved so long and so well and that had, suddenly, become a grotesque, grey thing.

That memory required ever more pills to quiet it, until the pills, and the unreality they bought, had taken over Nick’s life. Little by little.

The arrest at JFK Airport, on his way back from London, had been the last straw, and damn hard to hush up.

If word of that got out, Nick’s squeaky-clean performer’s image would be gone forever; and likely his career with it.

He looked at his bag, then around at the room. It had changed, but not so that it didn’t teem with memories of Phil.

He could remember Phil sitting at the cheap dining room table, looking at Nick with his pensive brown eyes.

Those eyes

How long had they been so sad? How long had Phil flirted with death, before throwing himself in her arms that night twenty years ago?

What luck that this would be the only room left in town for Nick Stevelanos. What madness to have booked a concert in Goldport.

Nick could remember feeling he had to come back to Gold-port. Even if the beach concert didn’t net any money. Even against the advice of his promoter. But he couldn’t remember why he’d felt that way. The pills could do that to you.

Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps he was meant to end it all here, where Phil had ended it.

He walked towards the bed, towards the dark bulk of his suitcase on it. He’d take the pills. Take the pills and be damned.

Damnation had to be better than this half-life.

The pills were inside the lining of the suitcase, where only Nick and JFK security—would look for them. Nick felt for the hard round case—a large daisy-wheel medicine keeper—brought it out. It was full. He’d replenished in New York, after the airport.

Its contents would be enough to

Nick stopped. He could swear Phil lay on the bed. Phil’s image wasn’t quite solid, but solid enough for all details to be visible. He was fully dressed, in an unzipped blue jacket, dark pullover and black pants. Darker clothes than he’d ever worn. He was not Phil as Nick remembered him, either—the twenty-two year old, dead and grey in a puddle of his own blood—but an older Phil.

A living Phil, whose chest rose and fell with each regular breath.

Phil as he would have looked if he’d only been a little stronger. If he’d only dared

Fine lines etched Phil’s features, adding character, but detracting none from his classical good looks. Even the white that had threaded itself through Phil’s brown curls, didn’t make him look old.

Nick stretched his fingers, tentatively, to touch Phil’s curls. He remembered the soft tickle of Phil’s hair against his palm.

His hand touched only air. Nothing was there. Nothing. It was just an image of Phil.

It was another sign, Nick thought Another sign that he was supposed to end it all that night. He opened his case. He’d need water with these many pills.

Half-asleep, as Phil was, it had seemed perfectly rational hearing Nick come in. He’d often go for walks after Phil had gone to bed.

Lying in bed, Phil had heard Nick come in, and drop his boots and jacket, as he’d done so many times during their vacation together, or even before, in the apartment they’d shared through their college years.

He heard Nick’s walk across the floor, felt Nick standing by the bed.

What was he doing there, standing by the bed. Why didn’t he undress and get in bed?

Phil managed to wake enough to half-open his eyes and stare at Nicky.

Nicky looked pale and tense; older and terrified.

What did Nicky have to be so scared about?

Nick stood by the bed, fumbling with the catch of the box. It was so difficult to open it, so difficult to do this with Phil looking at him.

Would Phil have killed himself, had Nick been awake and watching?

He frowned at the image of Phil.

Phil stared back at him, surprised, confused. He looked half-asleep, a state that always made him morose.

Ghosts didn’t age. Yet Phil looked older—forty? forty-two?—as old as he would have been, if he’d stayed alive.

It was as if in some way Phil had gone on living.

In a world Nick couldn’t reach, Phil still lived and breathed.

By some miracle, Nick could see him. Maybe even, could communicate with him. He smiled at Phil.

Phil smiled back, a soft smile, and closed his eyes.

Nick thought of the closing sentence in Phil’s suicide letter, We’ll always be together in the songs you wrote for me.

They weren’t together.

And yet, maybe, in a way, they still were. They could see each other. He looked at Phil, who looked asleep, but smiled still.

They obviously could see each other.

Nick grimaced at the case of pills in his hands. The catch gave under his fingers. Nick stared at the pills inside. Years of oblivion. Hours of escape. All of it in this circular plastic case.

He looked at Phil, on the bed.

Phil had settled back to sleep, the way he always did, with his arms wrapped around the pillow, his face resting sideways on the soft folds.

A wave of warmth washed over Nick. Phil hadn’t left him forever.

If Nick killed himself, he’d be leaving Phil.

Nick couldn’t do that.

He walked back to the bathroom, shook the pills from the case into the toilet, flushed. He wouldn’t take these again. He wouldn’t need the crutch again. He would keep his career. He would keep his music. The music he’d written for Phil.

In some other world, in some unknown way, Phil would know about those songs; Phil would hear them.

As Nick undressed, he looked at the vintage radio in the corner. It was a beauty, just like his grandmother’s radio. Its wood case gleamed, waxed to a soft sheen.

Looking at it, Nick thought that maybe, just maybe

The music. Perhaps, the music could

Nick walked up to the radio, pushed the ivory buttons, changing stations, until his own voice, his own songs poured out. Advantages of being a star. Someone, somewhere, always played your music uninterrupted.

He set the volume to low, and went back to the bed, and lay down, and turned the lights off.

In the space between sleep and wakening, he felt Phil’s weight on the other side of the bed, heard Phil’s regular breath, felt Phil’s head come to rest on Nick’s shoulder, Phil’s soft brown curls tickling Nick’s bare skin.