Chapter Text
[W]ho else could I love, he asked, his voice softening, we grew up together, in the same country, with the same language, we became adults together; who could I meet wherever I go next who could know me like that, who could love me as much as he could love me, who I could love as much?
-Garth Greenwell, Cleanness
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.
-Shakespeare, Sonnet 30: When to the Sessions of Sweet Silent Thought
I was lonesome for you.
-Allen Ginsburg to Peter Orlovsky, 21 October 1961
*
Matt almost bails on the cottage weekend. He calls Rivette full of excuses. “It’s been a hell of a week,” he says. “I’m so fucking tired. I just want to sleep.”
“We have beds chez Rivette,” Rivette tells him primly. “We have all the comforts of modern life and alcohol too. Come on, Matthias. This could be the last time. Don’t you want to go out with a bang?”
He says—by now it’s a familiar refrain, so familiar la bande practically sings along, and Rivette’s doing just that, harmonizing—“Toronto’s not that far.”
“Come on,” Rivette says. “If you don’t come who’s going to bring Max to us? You know Frank’s old beater broke down at the bottom of the driveway. We’re watching the tow guy right now. Listen.”
He listens: nothing but Montreal traffic. The wind and his heart.
“Beater,” he repeats. “What is this, Grease?”
“Come on. For Max. You know how much he’s been looking forward to it. Getting out of town.” Rivette lowers his voice. “Getting away from—”
“Okay, okay,” he says. “Coliss-fucking-Christ, you’re worse than my mother, okay, fine.”
*
“Trouble in paradise?” Brass asks in the cottage foyer, ooh-ing, when he hears that Sarah isn’t coming.
There’s an awkward shifting, of feet, of eyes.
“What?” Brass says.
“Brass, you pancake,” Rivette whispers. “They broke up.”
“Well,” Brass says. “Well, fuck. Well, listen, no one liked her. Right, guys? You were too good for her. Way too good. She…she was stuck up, she…”
“Dude,” Frank says, “shut up.”
He hates the way Max is looking at him, all eyes, all sympathy. On the drive up from the city, Max had watched him like a hawk. I’m not going to drive us into a tree, he’d said. I know that, Max had said. At a stoplight they had both stared at a billboard. A happy Quebecois family: man, woman, child, margarine. He had felt his heart clench.
“It’s okay,” he says now, addressing the group. “It was mutual. It was…we’re still friends, okay? Sarah and me.”
“It’s not too late,” Brass says, doing a one-eighty, and he has to laugh: short, sharp, and brittle. “No, seriously. I’m serious. She still loves you, man. You know she does. Call her. Tell her you’re sorry. Whatever she wants to hear.”
Shit, I feel responsible, Brass says. And he is. Six years ago at Concordia a blonde had written her number on Matt’s palm after class, and Brass had said—two weeks later, Brass would drop out—Brass had said, shitting Christ, wasn’t that Sarah? Sarah Moreau from secondaire?
He had admitted that it was.
You like her, Brass had said. You’ve always liked her. I saw you kissing at Karine Mercier’s party. After your little rehearsal with Max. The main event!
What? he’d said sharply, but Brass had bubbled on. Call her, Brass had said. The rest of us are going to be bachelors for life, but you won’t, you’ll be happy. Gimme your phone, I’ll dial for you. Is that a two or a seven?
From the soft pastel depths of the cottage, Martine Rivette calls out a hello. “Who’s that?”
Rivette rolls his eyes. “Matt and Max,” he bellows. “Who else?”
“Do they want some orange juice?”
“Not now, Mom!”
“What?”
“I said—”
“I can’t,” Matt says. Max’s gaze drops; he sees it drop, a dark flash, to the floor. “She wants to hear that I’m not moving to Toronto. So.”
“Oh,” Brass says. “Well. Well—shit.”
*
The firm is called Hartley-Himelstein. It started as a small family office in 1988, Hartley and Hartley, in Guelph. The merger with Himelstein in 1994 brought Hartley and Hartley out of exile. Now there are three locations in Ontario, one in B.C., and the Toronto office is looking for an expert in Quebec real estate law. They would be bringing Matt on as a non-equity partner, the headhunter said, but it would be a salary increase of over 40 percent.
My entire family is here, Sarah had said in April, when Matt told her he would be flying to Toronto to meet the managing partner. (Take Friday off, he had said. Let’s make a weekend of it. We can look at apartments.) My entire family, you know Louise is due in February, and… Seeing that he was unmoved by talk of babies, she had continued, Christ, Matt, so is yours. Your entire family!
“My dad’s in Chicago,” he had said.
“Don’t nitpick,” she’d said. “I hate it so much when you nitpick. You know what I mean.”
“Toronto’s not that far away.”
“It’s far enough.”
Fine, he’d said. You don’t have to come. You don’t even have to move with me, I’ll come home on weekends.
“You know you won’t do that,” she’d said. “You know how it is with you. It’s always work first and me second.”
“Sarah,” he’d said, stung.
“That’s the truth!”
“I’m doing this for us. The money…”
There’s more to life than salary, she had exploded. There’s family, there’s friends. There’s Parc La Fontaine on Sundays with the person you love. Oh, pardon me, you wouldn’t know, would you? You’re never around, you’re at the shitting office from morning to midnight. You’re acting just like your dad.
She had seen his face and apologized at once; had followed him to the door apologizing while he jammed on his shoes. He had gone to the office: nowhere else to go.
We can make it work, he’d said when he came creeping home. Sarah was cooking pot-au-feu in penitent silence. We can, Sarah, believe me.
No, she had said sadly, we can’t.
She had said, Christ, Matt. What about Max?
*
“So,” Max says. “Toronto.”
They’re sitting side by side on Rivette’s dock, occupying a pair of deck chairs that were manufactured before they were born and that Martine and her ex-husband brought back from their honeymoon in shitting Naples. The lake is calm and the afternoon air is mild. The sun is setting, everything’s orange, and Max’s face is as smooth as the water.
“Yeah.”
“Ditching us for those anglophone fuckers.”
“Yeah.”
“For Justin fucking Trudeau. Always knew you couldn’t resist a pretty face.”
He glances at Max: Max is smiling at the far shore. At the trees with their mottled foliage dotting the horizon like pom-poms.
“Trudeau’s from Quebec. Sort of.”
“He’s about as ‘from-Quebec’ as the fucking Queen of England. Go to Ontario, then, swear allegiance to her moldy ass, see if I care.”
“Your majesty,” he says in English.
Max grins. Kicks his foot.
“I’m taking the train there,” he says. “Hogwarts Express.”
“How long’s the—”
“Five hours.”
“Shitting fuck. Some express.”
“It’ll be nice. I’ll read a book. Two books.”
“You’re such an old geezer.”
“Fuck off.”
Bobbing near the neighbor’s pier with Rivette floating between them, Brass and Frank trade insults. Yo mama’s so fat…
His mama had taken the news calmly, then straightened his collar with a hand that shook. Toronto, she had said. Well, well! Toronto!
“Look,” he says to Max, just like he said to his mother, “I’ll be back for Christmas. I’ll be back almost every weekend. By plane”—he snaps his fingers—“it’s like that.”
“Wasn’t enough for Sarah, I guess,” Max says.
Sarah had gone to her sister's. The apartment was under his name. He had offered to help her pack and had been rebuffed, had stood against the wall like a shadow as she boxed up his coffee maker: not spite but forgetfulness; after six years who could remember what belonged to whom? I'll get another one, he'd thought, a better one, in Toronto.
Their friends are blowing water at each other like whales. He pretends to find them fascinating. After a moment, Max’s gaze drifts away.
*
After supper, Martine beats a tactful retreat to her bedroom, to give them, the boys, the childhood friends, some time to talk. Erika, on the other hand, has no tact; Rivette chases her off but she clings. “Like, it’s my fucking house too?”
“Go away,” Rivette says.
“Yes,” he says, “let us braid our hair in peace.”
That gets him a smile. “O-kay,” she says, and shimmies into the hallway. A parting shot: “I wish you weren’t going. Like, can’t you switch places with Marco?”
“Toronto,” he begins.
“Isn’t far,” Frank and Brass chorus. “Shitting Christ, we know.”
“It’s not that far from New York either,” Erika says. “Just a thought. Okay, bye.”
She twirls into the dark. Frank looks at him and whistles.
“Blood of Christ.” Rivette leans across the table, hissing. “Don’t rebound with my baby sister, you fucking pedophile.”
“What,” he says, “you don’t want to braid my hair?”
“Piss off,” Rivette says, while Frank laughs. “Die.”
“I’ll braid it,” Max says, sliding a hand up his nape. “Barbie Ruiz.”
Brass guffaws. “Lawyer Barbie.”
“That’s Biglaw Barbie to you.”
“Pardon me, Monseigneur Barbie, Esquire.”
“Excuse me, I think I’m Barbie,” Frank says, tossing his head.
“And I’m Spartacus.” Rivette plucks the joint from Brass’s fingers and makes a face like a tragedy mask. “Moving to Toronto to do the exact same soul-sucking shit. Where’s your sense of romance?” Then he winces and corrects himself: “I mean, of adventure?”
He lets it slide. “Toronto is an adventure.”
“Puh-lease. Max running off to Australia, now that’s an adventure.”
Max has been scratching his scalp, lightly, the way you’d scratch a cat. Now Max stops. He turns his head and blinks. “Since when are you going to Australia?”
“I’m not. Rivette’s tripping.”
“He’s fantastasizing,” Brass says.
“Fantasizing,” he says.
“Fuck you. That’s what I said.”
“Fantasizing about men in speedos on Bondi Beach,” Frank says.
Rivette elbows Frank. “All day, every day, baby. It was hypothetical, Matt, so stop panicking. Max isn’t going anywhere.”
“I wasn’t panicking.”
“What would I even do in Australia?” Max says, snorting.
“Sell feet pics,” Brass suggests. “Get that sandal tan. Drive the girls wild.”
“Girls and boys,” Rivette says.
“Right, and boys. No discrimination and feet for all.”
Everyone laughs. Dude, you’re sick, Max says. Brass shrugs and rolls another joint and passes it around, and the conversation swirls toward other topics: Rivette, Cambridge, hot roommates.
Shariff arrives at ten, to a round of high fives. “What’s up, bitches?”
“We’re talking about Brass’s foot fetish.”
“Get fucked, Frank, I’m not the one who gets hard when I see a chick in a turtleneck!”
“That was one time.”
Under his ear, Max’s hand starts to move again: scratch, scratch.
*
Midnight. The Rivettes’ grandfather clock sounds twelve distant chimes, and Erika pops up in the mirror behind him like fucking Bloody Mary. She’s in her pajamas and honest-to-fuck bunny slippers. “Um, like, can you do me a favor?”
“Body of Christ,” he says, yanking at his fly, “can you knock?”
Max, brushing his teeth beside him, grins in a gush of froth.
“Whatever,” Erika says. “But, like, can you?”
If it’s a goodbye kiss, he thinks, Toronto won’t be far away enough, Rivette will hunt me to the ends of the earth and peel me like a tangerine. “Can I what?”
“You know how I’m, like, doing a masters in film?”
Max gargles and spits. “No, Erika,” he says, “you never mentioned.” It’s all she’s talked about for years.
Erika ignores Max and beams at him: Rivette’s smile in a honey-blonde halo. “So, like, I need a leading man? I’m making this movie?”
“To pay for school?” Max mutters. “Why don’t you stick to stripping?”
“Whoa,” Erika says. “Like, what the fuck?”
“What the fuck, Max,” he echoes, stunned.
“Sorry.” Max turns red. Turns to Erika. “Sorry, that was shitty. I…sorry. Excuse me.” He shoulders between them, flicking the light off on his way out.
He breathes in the empty blackness. In the space Max leaves behind.
Erika switches the light back on. “Who pissed in his beer?”
He shrugs.
“Anyway, will you? Be my star? My asshole friends, like, bailed?”
“I can’t act for shit.”
“Uh, like, what are you saying, you’re a natural? Trust me?” Another Rivette smile. “Sleep on it, tell me tomorrow?”
Erika’s fingernails are painted neon orange. She clacks them against the doorframe and says goodnight. Goodnight, he says, bewildered: am I a natural? The toothbrush he puts in his mouth is Max’s; he realizes when the wet bristles touch his tongue.
The guest room is quiet, the curtains drawn but not all the way. A piece of moonlight sits on the carpet like a perfect square. Max is already in bed.
Matt slides in beside him. What was that about, he asks, but Max is asleep or pretending to be and doesn’t answer.
*
Erika asks again at breakfast, in front of her mother and brother and Max and the gang and God. Before he fell asleep the night before, he had wondered, fleetingly, if this was a scheme concocted by the Rivette siblings, some insane plan to boost his ego, but Rivette’s violent reaction puts that theory to rest.
“Leave him the fuck alone,” Rivette says, while Brass hoots. “If you need an actor, I’ll do it. I’ll be in your stupid film.”
“But I need two people,” Erika says.
“I’m gonna kill you,” Rivette says. “Is that what you want?”
“Marc-Antoine,” Martine says, “don’t talk to your sister like that.”
“But, like, I do, Marco,” Erika says, stamping. “It’s, like, a dialogue not a soliloquy?”
Rivette topples an empty beer bottle and spins it. It stops between Shariff and Frank, who eye each other.
“I’ll do it,” Frank says.
“I’m Spartacus,” Rivette murmurs.
“I will,” Frank says.
“Oh, spin the bottle.” This is Erika’s weird, skinny, sly-eyed friend Matisse. He showed up at the ass-crack of dawn, dressed like a cross between a science teacher and a rodeo clown, hauling a bagful of filming equipment. He peers around Erika’s shoulder with the heavy-lidded smile of a sunbathing reptile. “Appropriate."
“Appropriate?” Rivette’s sputtering. “Dare I ask why?”
“Because that’s the scene,” Matisse says smugly. “Two guys kissing. Two guys making out.”
Around the table, mouths fall open. He thinks Rivette might explode.
“It’s going to be like super impressionistic,” Erika says. “But also totally expressionist—”
Max whispers: “You can’t have those things at the same time, can you?”
“You’re gonna be like, two women—”
“Easy enough,” Brass says, flipping Frank’s hair.
“Or two men—”
“What,” Shariff says, “is happening.”
“And then, bam, you’re kissing!”
“Bro,” Brass ventures, “you look like the shitting Kool-Aid Man.”
Rivette is turning purple. Then comes the eruption: “Fucking Christ and his chalice of blood, twenty-four thousand a year and New York City rent to talk like a bimbo and come up with the stupidest shit imaginable—”
“How much is Mom paying for you to go to Cambridge and talk like a fruit and lick assholes, you bony f—”
“Marc-Antoine. Erika Clarisse!”
“Sorry, Mom.”
“Sorry,” Rivette says. “And sorry, Erika, but I’m out. Frank’s out. We’re out. Take Brass.”
Brass: “Hey—”
But Frank sits back. Folds his arms. Says, “We’re in.”
Erika squeals. “Oh my God, like, Francis, you’re like the fucking best!”
*
Rivette insists on a locked room for his close-up. Erika insists on throwing the curtains open. (“Sunlight is, like, truth, right? It’s like symbolic?”) She pouts until Martine intervenes. The rest of the gang hurries outside to crouch in the grass.
“Front row fuckin’ seats,” Brass says. “Shariff, you’re gonna film this, right?”
“I thought it was already being filmed.”
“Fuck that,” Brass says. “I mean for blackmail.”
“Right, right.” Shariff pulls out his phone.
“Horizontal, man. Horizontal!”
“Christ, are you planning on submitting this to Just for Laughs or something?”
“This year and every year for the rest of our shitting lives. I’m never going to let Frank live this down.”
But there doesn’t seem to be anything to live down. Frank appears supremely unbothered, Matt thinks, lounging on Martine Rivette’s powder blue loveseat with his arms spread over the backrest. He and Rivette have traded shirts: Frank looks like Steve Jobs and Rivette, shrunken into the cushions, like a teenager on his way home from school. Erika stands in front of them, bouncing from foot to foot and gesticulating, talking at warp speed. Matisse is beside her, pointing the camera at Frank and Rivette like a gun.
“Your money or your life,” he mutters; he catches the white edge of Max’s grin.
Erika claps her hands together. The lecture is at an end. Frank looks at Rivette and leans in.
“Blood of Christ, is that it?” Brass says, disgusted. “I’ve seen people kiss their grandmas with more passion.”
“Up in Saguenay.”
“A Brassard family Christmas.”
“Fuckers.” Brass rears up and bangs his palms on the glass. “Tongue,” he shouts. “Use tongue!”
Rivette grabs a stuffed football from the loveseat and hurls it at the window. It goes wide.
“Fuck off!” Rivette screams. Erika joins in, swiveling like an owl. “Go away! You’re ruining our concentration!”
They run shrieking toward the lake and collapse on the neighbor’s sunlit pier in hysterics.
“What’s there to concentrate on,” Brass says. “Not popping a stiffy?”
“You know Rivette’s had a crush on Frank since forever,” Max says.
“He does not.”
“Does too. It was love at first sight in fucking maternelle.”
“That was you and Matt, dumbass.” Brass sits up. “You know, you guys should have stayed behind to give them some gay kissing pointers.”
He says dryly, “I think Matisse has it covered.”
“Bull fucking shit,” Brass says. “One look at that virgin and you know the only person he’s ever kissed in his life is his mama.”
“Just like someone else we know.”
“2007,” Brass says. “Logan Street. Karine Mercier.”
“You kissed Karine Mercier?” Shariff says. “Damn, Brass.”
“I wish!” Brass points. “Matt kissed Max. They kissed each other!”
“What,” Shariff says, “like, on purpose?”
He looks at Max. Max twinkles. A slight nod. He says, “We tripped.”
“Slammed our faces together.”
“Had a baby.”
“Gave it up for adoption.”
“You made out in a corner for fucking half an hour,” Brass says. “I saw you. I went out for more beer and you were still sucking face when I got back! No one had to tell you to use tongue.”
“A treasured memory for young Brassard,” Max tells Shariff. “He takes it out to polish every night.”
“Body of, I don’t, but I bet you do, Maxime,” Brass says. “I was traumatized! I wish I could erase it from my brain! All that moaning and groping and—”
“All right, all right, enough,” Max says. “We were drunk, we barely remember. It was a long time ago, okay?”
“But it feels like yesterday. His hands on your ass—”
“Christ, Brass,” he says.
“And your hand on his—”
“I’ll erase your memory for you,” Max exclaims, and shoves Brass into the water.
*
Supper is subdued. At least Erika and Matisse have gone out, driving into Sainte-Anne-des-Lacs to eat pizza and plot their next crime against cinema. I don’t want to talk about it, Rivette had said when the shoot was over. Frank had said blandly, you know I don’t kiss and tell.
Brass had yelled, pissing Christ, my phone’s in my pocket, what’s wrong with you?
You looked like you were getting too hot under the collar, Max had said. He had held out his hand to haul Brass in. Peace?
Brass had slapped it away. Just because your mom’s being a bitch doesn’t mean you have to be one too, Brass had said, and for that Matt had given Brass another shove when he tried to climb out, and then everyone was yelling and the pier was rocking and Shariff and Max were holding his arms, holding him back.
“My goodness,” Martine Rivette says, trying to pass the potatoes, “what’s the matter with all of you? Is it the lamb?”
No, no, Madame Rivette, they say, the lamb’s fine, the lamb’s delicious.
“Spoiling your appetites with that devil mari.”
Frank cracks a smile. “It’s usually the other way around,” he says. “Madame.”
“I do wish you would call me Martine.” She gives up on the potatoes. “I’ve only known you all your lives. Well, light up and come back to the table when you’re ready, eh? I don’t want leftovers.”
Shariff raises his eyebrows: why not? They shuffle out to the patio and smoke a bowl. As the moon rises he tries to slip Brass three hundred dollars.
“Shitting Christ,” Brass says, “for the weed? Forget it, I only paid fifty.”
“For your phone.”
“Monseigneur Moneybags, Esquire, to the rescue.”
“Take it or leave it.”
The crickets are singing. Erika and Matisse crunch up the gravel drive in Martine Rivette’s BMW. Their headlights streak through the leaves, capturing a tableau: Shariff mid-toke, Rivette smiling at last, Frank slapping a mosquito, Max with his eyes full of moonlight.
Remember this, he tells himself. This is the last time, or almost.
“Leave it,” Brass says. “It’s cool, man. I was saving up for a new phone anyway.”
*
In the guest bedroom, warm and happy and high enough that the walls are undulating in the corner of his eye, Matt lies on his side and pillows his cheek on his palm. “Alors, Monsieur Leduc,” he says, “do you have an explanation for your behavior this weekend?”
Max looks at him: moonlight again. “Ten bucks says Frank and Rivette are making out right now.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“Scaredy-cat,” Max says.
“I don’t make bets I’ll lose.”
“Like I said.”
“Seriously,” he says, “you’ve been acting like a prick.”
Max shrugs, one-shouldered.
“Is it your mom after all?”
Another shrug.
“Fine, don’t tell me.” He rolls over to make sure his phone is silenced and sees a text notification: Sarah Moreau, sent 11:53 p.m. “Fuck,” he says. “It’s…should I…”
“Would you have done it?”
He puts his phone down and rolls back. “Done what?”
“Starred in Erika’s crazy movie.”
“Maybe,” he says. “With my luck I would have had to kiss Matisse.”
“He would have creamed his pants.”
“Gross.” He grins. “Well, it would have been Matisse. Or Shariff. I don’t think Frank would have volunteered to save my ass.” He does his best Rivette: “I’m Spartacus, I’m Spartacus, coliss.”
“I would have,” Max says. “Volunteered.”
“It’s, like, two guys?” he says. Erika now. “Like, kissing?”
A third shrug. “’S not like we haven’t done it before.”
“As Brass keeps pointing out.”
“Dude has a fixation. A complex.”
I’ll tell you who doesn’t have a complex, he says. Frank Lavoie. Frank was stone-cold. Did you see him? No expression.
“Like this.” Max’s smile flattens into a careful blank. “Secret Agent Frank.”
“And he just went for it, like—”
He doesn’t know what possesses him. The remnants of ‘that devil mari,’ as Martine Rivette joked at supper, or recklessness, or heartbreak. He puts his hand on Max’s shoulder. He puts his lips on Max’s lips.
Just a peck. Just a brush, a Brassard Christmas special.
He pulls back. Max is staring at him. His mouth is open and starting to tremble.
Matt, Max whispers. Fuck. Matt.
He inhales; he leans in.
*
In the slate gray light of dawn, the bed is stained and empty. “Max?” he says pointlessly, as though Max might be hiding in the closet to scare him. Songbirds answer.
He bundles the sheets into the washing machine on the ground floor of Martine Rivette’s contemporary cinderblock palace. He passes Rivette in yesterday’s movie studio, sitting on the pastel loveseat in a bathrobe, staring into the morning mist rising from the lake.
A tap on the door frame. Rivette blinks at him. He has a cup of coffee and bags under his eyes.
“Christ, Rivette, did you get any sleep?”
“Guess.”
He goes upstairs for a cup of his own. Checks the bedrooms and hallways and comes back.
“Have you seen Max?”
“Max? No.”
Rivette sounds dazed. He sits. Wipes a drip of coffee off his thigh. “Everything okay?”
“Oh, everything’s fine,” Rivette says. “Just nursing a broken heart. As usual.”
“Frank?”
Fuck, Rivette says, I guess it’s pretty fucking obvious.
He stammers. “Oh, well. Max said. He, um. Max…but I had no idea. I swear.”
"Oh, Max," Rivette says. "Max, of course, no surprises there."
"What does that mean?" he asks, sharp, but Rivette has moved on, sinking back into his own river of misery.
“Pathetic, isn’t it?” Rivette says. “And he’s stuck here until his car is fixed. I think I might die. I might actually die, Matthias.”
“Sorry.”
“Frank said he was sorry too. He just doesn’t feel the same.”
“Well,” he says. “I know how that is.”
“Christ, I know,” Rivette says. “I can’t imagine. Six years down the drain. We all thought you were going to marry her. We told Max to save up for his best man tux, we were taking bets, will it be this week or the week after…”
I don’t make bets I’ll lose, he remembers, and he remembers Max: Scaredy-cat. And later, softer, when Max thought he had fallen asleep—
“Look at us,” Rivette says. “Having a heart to heart a week before departure. We really should be braiding each other’s hair.”
He chuckles and rubs his face like he’ll be able to massage the blush out of it.
“And you,” Rivette says. “You’re up early. Couldn’t sleep either?”
“I slept a little.”
Rivette looks him over. His bleary gaze sharpens. “Holy shit,” he says, “holy fucking shit, Matt, is that—what is that?”
He slaps a hand to his neck. As if he’ll be able to feel it. All he feels is the throb of his pulse. And the memory of hard sucking heat.
“It’s just a shitting mosquito bite.”
“My ass! If you and Erika—”
“Fuck,” he exclaims, “absolutely not. Absolutely fucking not.”
“Okay,” Rivette says, mollified. “Okay, okay. My mistake. Sorry.” He clutches his cup. “I swear to Christ, if my sister managed to score last night and I didn’t…”
“I thought you were going to defend her honor.”
“Please!” Rivette cries. “She’s 24. That flower was plucked ages ago.”
“Fucking Christ, Rivette.”
“Don’t ‘fucking Christ’ me, it’s not like I spied on her. She told me." Rivette shudders. “I’ll never be able to unhear it.”
“Sarah texted me last night,” he says.
“Oh,” Rivette says. “Oh. So…”
“So I don’t know.” And he doesn’t. When he’d checked his phone that morning the message was gone, Max had deleted it.
And what, he thinks, am I supposed to think about that? He had said to Sarah, Sorry, my phone’s misbehaving, could you resend? Sarah wakes up early on Sundays, for yoga; he’ll know what she said soon enough.
“Maybe she’s realized she loves you more than she loves Rosemont.”
He snorts. “I doubt it.”
“It might work out,” Rivette says. “I hope it does.”
“Thanks.”
By nine o’clock, he knows Sarah is ignoring him, and everyone knows that Max is missing. They launch a search and find him an hour later by the lake, staggering up through the trees, shivering in a threadbare t-shirt and basketball shorts with mud on his knees.
“I got lost,” Max says. His head rattles uncontrollably on his neck. He digs blue-tinged fingernails into his biceps. He isn’t looking at Matt: can’t or won’t.
“Shitting Christ,” Rivette says, diving at Max with a blanket, “were you trying to walk back to the city?”
*
The drive to Verdun is chill: light traffic and Charlotte Cardin on the radio. Max passes out before they hit the highway and sleeps until the midpoint of Pont Gédéon-Ouimet. He wakes with a start, wipes his mouth.
“Criss,” he says.
“Sweet dreams?”
Max looks at him, finally, then looks away. The mark on his cheek is like a bullseye; Matt had kissed it, repeatedly, the night before. The stain seems to spread as Max blushes.
“Are we going to talk about last night?” he says.
“What’s there to talk about?” Max says. “We were stoned, it happens.”
“Does it?”
“Sure it does.”
“Okay,” he says, “and this morning, what was that?”
“What was what?” Max says. “I went for a walk.”
He swallows his question about Sarah’s deleted text. He knows Max won’t answer. Max is slouching in his seat, red-cheeked, red-eared, and sullen, fiddling with a half-smoked cigarette.
At the bottom of the Rivette driveway, Max had waved at Shariff and smiled away Martine Rivette’s offer of a packed lunch. Then he had said, “I might go back to the house.”
“Forgot something?”
“No, I just…maybe I’ll ride home with Frank and Brass. Save you a trip.”
“I thought Frank’s car was still in the shop.”
“It is. It’ll be ready Monday.”
“Well, if you’re staying an extra night…” He had powered off the Jeep.
Oh, Max had said, into the hush. Oh, in that case. Let’s go. I don’t want to keep you from your packing. Really, let’s just go. I should check on my mom.
“I’ll go with you,” he’d said. “We can stop there first.”
No, Max had said; no, no, it’s fine.
So: past the turnoff for Hochelaga and straight to Rue Gertrude. The leaves on Max’s street are beginning to pile up; some trees are already bare—or dead. He thinks, next week it’ll all be frosted over. Next week, I’ll be in Toronto.
“We’ll see each other before Mom’s party on Friday?” he says. “We’ll text?”
“Mm,” Max says, noncommittal.
He hovers by the curb, hazards on, until Max's door slams.
*
In May, he had driven himself to the airport for a 6 a.m. flight to Toronto Pearson. He had slept on the plane and wandered groggily through Arrivals until he was flagged down by a gangling clotheshorse in a houndstooth suit.
“Matty, right? Matty Ruiz?”
Neat blond hair, sky-blue eyes, and a blinding smile. And big hands sparkling with rings.
“Uh,” he’d said. “Yes?”
“It’s me, your pen pal. Kevin dot McAfee at Hartley-Himelstein dot com. I'm here to roll out the red carpet.” They had shaken hands; McAfee’s hand had been hot and callused. “Isn’t today gorgeous? What a gorgeous day. Nice to finally meet you. Nice to finally”—McAfee’s fingertips, like his gaze, had lingered—“put a face to the name. Where’s your plus one?”
“Oh,” he’d said. “She couldn’t make it. Last-minute, uh, last-minute conflict. Uh, scheduling conflict.”
“Too bad.” Grinning like it was the best news he’d ever heard, McAfee had let go of him to check his phone. “I’d ask my old lady to join us, but I just dropped her off at Terminal 3. Vancouver for a week. To see her mother. Better her than me! My mother-in-law isn’t a bitch or anything, she’s just fucking weird, all New Age and shit. She lives in one of those, what do you call 'em, Airstreams.”
“Oh,” he’d repeated, politely.
“Jeezus, listen to me rambling on,” McAfee had said. “Shall we? Oh, why am I making you lead the way, you don’t know where the fuck you’re going, do you?” He had slapped a brochure against Matt’s chest. “Est-ce que vous préférez que nous parlions français?”
The three-day whirlwind had begun: dinner, more handshakes, interviews, lunches, another dinner, a gala. All very anodyne until nine o’clock on Friday, when McAfee had texted, hey man not sure what ur up to tonite but me n the boys are hitting the club. u want in?
He had been trying to call Sarah all evening without success. He had sent Max a picture of the Toronto skyline from the CBC Tower without response. He had looked at the ceiling, at the single globular light belonging to a class of fixtures Brass liked to call titty lamps, and said, OK.
SWEET, McAfee had said, and texted him the address.
The club had turned out to be a strip club, and he had found McAfee sitting alone, singles in his pocket. McAfee had taken off his jacket, his wedding ring; had said, sweating, effusive, “Look, man, we’re all just animals, right?”
“I’m an animal?”
“Yeah, man,” McAfee had said. “You’re a lion, you’re a dog, you’re a fucking tiger…” Possession is a lie, McAfee had said, licking his lips, and monogamy is a farce, and that’s why all marriages fail. I see, he’d said. I mean, McAfee had said, where’s your girl? Think about it. Shit, McAfee had said, I know you just got here, but do you want to get out of here?
Back in Matt’s hotel room, under the titty lamp and in full view of the high-rise across the street, McAfee had gone to his knees and licked Matt’s dick from root to crown. Wait, Matt had said, while McAfee was kneading his ass, wait, hold on, Mr. McAfee, Mr. McAfee.
“Jeezus,” McAfee had said, “call me Kevin. You make me feel like a fuckin’ prep school teacher.”
Sorry, he’d said.
“Kev works too.” Oh, don’t worry, McAfee had said cheerfully, as Matt tried to stall him. I’m only here ’cause Cindy’s on mat leave. I’m in transactions. I work on Floor 35. You’ll never see me again, McAfee had said, winking. Unless you want to.
He had said, gasping, “So do you do this for all the guys who lateral in?”
“Only the cute ones.”
Actually, McAfee had said, you’re the first. Because you and me, I think we understand each other.
Yes, he’d said.
Yes what?
Yes, Kev.
Easy, tiger, McAfee had said, holding him tight as he tried to thrust. The next day there had been bruises on his hipbones, and he had been frantic, thinking Sarah would notice, would demand an explanation, but when he returned to Rosemont Sarah still wasn’t speaking to him, and by the time she had cooled off enough to let him back into bed, the bruises had faded into nothing.
In bed at the lake house, Max had crawled on top of him. Max had put his tongue in Matt’s mouth and his hands on Matt’s ass and squeezed, and Matt had said, tighter, harder, tighter, more.
Fuck, Max had said, over and over, fuck, fuck, chanting, biting him, grinding against him until their boxers were damp; they had rubbed themselves together, tip to tip, and in the morning he hadn’t been able to remember who had moved first, only that he had been made for Max’s hands, molded for him, and vice versa. He had looked at his legs and thought it was a pity Max hadn’t scratched him; he had noticed the hickey in the Rivette bathroom mirror and jerked off into the toilet, panting, staring, remembering.
When he gets home, he strips and showers. He wipes the fog from the mirror and turns his head from side to side, admiring his reflection; he touches the hickey; he touches himself.
I think we should talk, he tells Max. Dinner? Pizza Pizza? My treat.
sry, Max says, closing tonight
Tomorrow?
im closing all week
His stomach lurches. Can you still make it on Friday? he asks. Max doesn’t reply.
*
His final week in Montreal is so busy—packing, paperwork—that it’s Thursday night by the time he realizes Max hasn’t responded to a single one of his texts since the weekend. Oh, well, he thinks, I’ll see him tomorrow. (You’re coming, right? he’d asked Rivette. All of you? Rivette had said, wouldn’t miss it for the world, my dear, yes, all of us, except Shariff, obviously.) And on Friday he walks into his mother’s house in Rosemont to her excited whisper: “Look who's here! You have a special guest!”
His heart leaps. Then he looks over her shoulder and sees Sarah waiting for him on the living room sofa.
“Christ, Mom,” he says.
“Shh!” his mother says. “Go on, go in!”
“Maman—”
“I’ll be just outside,” Francine says, “pruning!”
The door shuts. He swallows.
“Hi,” Sarah says.
“Hi.”
Sarah’s hair is curled into ringlets and she’s wearing a party dress, the party dress he likes, midnight blue satin printed with huge flowers in magenta and rose. It’s a touch too formal—he’s wearing jeans—but she’s as pretty as a picture. As always, he thinks, and tells her so.
“Thank you,” she says, also formally, and then she looks down.
“What’s up?”
“I hope you don’t mind that I’m here.”
“Of course I don’t mind,” he says. “But—”
“I wanted to send you off properly.”
“Christ, Sarah,” he says. “For the last time, Toronto isn’t—”
Her makeup is smudged, navy blue mascara to match the dress, blurring under her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about Toronto.”
“That’s going to be difficult,” he says, “since this is my farewell party.”
“I’m not going to come with you.”
“I thought we’d settled that already.”
“I know, but.” A wet glance at the sofa, where there’s a cardboard box and a gift bag. “I brought you a going-away present. And, um, and the coffee maker. It’s yours, after all.”
“Sarah.”
“It’s just, I just,” she says, small. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I was thinking,” Sarah says. “I’ve been thinking, and I think…I think we could make it work. Long-distance. I want to make it work. I do, Matt.”
Last week he would have said yes. He would have shouted it and hoisted her into his arms. But that was another life, he thinks, another me.
“Okay,” Sarah says, inhaling. “Okay.”
He kisses her anyway, one last kiss; tastes her lipstick and the fragment of mint dissolving on her tongue. It was like this at Karine Mercier’s party, he thinks, all those years ago, Sarah and her garish red lipstick and her minty mouth and underneath it, like a live wire, the memory of Max.
Bang! “Where is he,” Frank yells into the foyer, “where’s the traitor going to Toronto, we’re here to run him out of town,” and Brass whoops, and then they see Sarah and tumble into wide-eyed silence. Rivette is right behind them, gaping.
“Where’s Max?”
Frank shrugs. “Running late, I guess. Said he didn’t need a ride.”
“Guys,” Rivette hisses.
“Um!” Brass says. “Um, we’ll give you a minute.”
“It’s okay,” Sarah says. She wipes her under-eyes, gingerly, with her knuckles. “I was just leaving.”
*
The gang goes outside to smoke. He loiters in the kitchen, where his mother is making something out of a 60s cookbook, endive spears with some horrific paste in them, tuna salad or worse. A meat sauce congeals on the stove.
She catches his glance at the clock. “I’m sure he’ll be here soon,” she says. “Go out there, join them!”
He doesn’t move.
“Eh bien, suit yourself,” Francine says. “Give that sauce a stir, then, make yourself useful.”
What is this supposed to be, he says, poking at it. This slop.
How dare you, Francine says, laughing. That’s exactly what it is, good eye: it’s slop. Sloppy Joes for Max. “You know how much he loves them.”
“He doesn’t love them enough to be here before they're cold.”
“Don’t be like that,” Francine says. “I’m sure he’s doing his best. That mother of his…”
She trails off, sighing. He bites his tongue and stirs.
“You used to try to help in the kitchen,” Francine says, “when you were no higher than my hip. And now look at you. My tall handsome son.”
“Mom…”
“Oh, stop,” she says, waving him away. She dabs at her eyes with a corner of her quilted jacket. “It’s my house, you’re my son, I’ll cry if I want to.”
“I’ll be back before you know it,” he says.
“Don’t try to bamboozle me,” she says. She finds a spatula and flaps it at him. “That’s what I told my own mother, your poor grandmother, God rest her soul, I said, now Maman, don’t cry, the city isn’t far, there’s a train, I’ll be home every Sunday to give you a kiss. Do you know how many times I went home, that first year? Once.”
“I’ll be back more than once,” he says. “My friends are here. Max is here.”
“In that case, I don’t understand why you’re going at all.”
A roar from the garden. He snaps his head up in time to catch Max’s wave.
*
Sorry, Max says. They wouldn’t give me another night off, so I quit. He slams a bottle onto the filigree of Francine's garden table: Glenlivet, eighteen years old. My severance, he says. Unofficially.
“Fuck yeah,” Brass says. “Way to stick it to the man.”
“Christ,” he says. “Seriously? Are you going to be okay?”
Max looks at him—frowns—looks away.
“Well,” Frank says, “now that you’re here, the party can begin.”
“Excuse me, pardon me,” he says, “I thought this was my farewell party. I’ve been here since five.”
“Staring at the clock the whole time,” Rivette says. “Wouldn’t even come out to play.” He tucks his chin, stiffens his lips; parrots: “‘Where’s Max, where’s Max?’”
Sorry, Max says again, quietly.
Francine calls them in. Afterward, there’s a cake and a round of presents, a round of speeches. Max stands up and clears his throat and talks so poignantly about the early years of their friendship that Francine bursts into tears.
*
They take two cars to Shariff’s. Max and Brass ride with Frank. Rivette takes shotgun in the Jeep. His mother sees them off, fluttering a handkerchief.
“Christ,” he says, “you’d think I was going to the other side of the world.”
Rivette smiles. Then he says, “What’s going on with you and Max?”
“What?” he says. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”
“Very convincing.”
Rivette looks out the window. Come on, Rivette says, if everything was fine you would have shed a tear after that magnificent speech instead of sitting there grimacing like an Easter Island head. If everything was fine, it would be Max beside you and me riding shotgun with Frank.
How’s that going, by the way? he asks.
Don’t try to wriggle out of this, Rivette says.
“I don’t know,” he says, “he’s pissy, won’t tell me why.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it was the matter of your imminent departure.”
“You’d guess wrong.”
Ooh, Rivette says, Lykke Li, turn it up. Rivette cranks the volume and sings: I, I follow you, I follow you, deep sea baby…
It’s his mother, I think, he says. Manon’s doing something again, going nuts.
“Mhm,” Rivette says. He drums his fingers against his lips. “You still have some lipstick, here. Higher. To the left. Pretty long-lasting stuff they make these days, huh.”
“Esti,” he says; he lifts his hand and scrubs.
*
Shariff’s filled his house with string lights, enough beer to start a riot, and enough pot to quell one. He’s invited thirty other people: old friends, school friends, friends of friends. What, he says to Shariff, you couldn’t get Karine Mercier? No Karine Mercier and no Rolling Stones, you call this a party? And Shariff laughs. And they hug. And he says, thanks, this is awesome.
It’s hard to find Max in the hubbub, but he does, and then he sticks close, putting his arm around Max’s neck, replacing it every time Max tries to pull away. When they’re good and tipsy, Rivette insists on a game of charades. Rivette house rules.
“Dibs on Shariff,” Rivette says.
“Fuck yeah,” Shariff says. “Team Postgraduate Degree. Prepare to have your asses kicked.”
“Whatever,” he says. “Max, are you ready to conquer?”
“That’s not fair,” Brass complains. “You guys can read each other’s minds.”
“I can read your mind, Brass,” Frank says. He stares into Brass’s eyes and rubs his temples and squints. “Oh, yeah,” he says, “I’m getting something. Pizza. Beer. Mani-pedis and Bridget Jones’s Diary.”
“Francis Lavoie sucks cock,” Brass says, “are you getting that?”
“All right, all right,” Max says, “stop flirting. Let’s play. Let’s get this over with.”
But for all Brass’s protests about the telepathic powers of Matthias and Maxime, they perform exceptionally poorly. Max mimes like he’s trapped in a full body cast; they hold three points to Shariff and Rivette’s team’s thirty, and the girls from McGill, partnered up with Frank, have a domineering 65-point lead.
“Christ,” he says, as Rivette calls time and Max flops down, “what the fuck was that?” Ergonomic keyboard? Do you even know what ergonomic means? That was a velociraptor on stilts, he says, that was fucking terrible. You should have done this instead. You should have—
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Max says, “give it a rest.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Well, stop saying it,” Max says. “Stop talking.”
A murmur ripples around the room. “Hey, Max,” Brass says, “relax. It’s just a game, okay?”
“It’s a stupid fucking game.”
“Excuse you,” Rivette says.
“Excuse me for wanting to win my last game of charades in Montreal,” he says. “Next round, you should—”
“Fuck you, Matt,” Max explodes. “Sorry I don’t know any big fucking words. Sorry my English sucks. Stop correcting me. Stop telling me what to do.”
Max is standing. He’s standing. Frank says, “Guys, chill.”
“I’m sick of it,” Max says. “I’m sick and fucking tired of it. I’m tired of you. Get back with Sarah, go to Toronto, I don't give a fuck.”
“Max.”
Max leaves. The front door slams behind him.
Everyone’s looking at him, people he knows, people he doesn’t. Then, as his eyes grow hot, they look away: at each other, at the scattered drinks and the floor. Like people looking away from the aftermath of a crash, unable to bear the sight of blood on the sidewalk.
In that frozen moment, he thinks, no one likes me, I kill the mood, I always kill it, it’s me they want outside.
“I should go,” he says. His voice sounds a thousand kilometers away. “I—it’s late, I should head out.”
That gets them moving again. The ice splinters and his friends surround him. No, no, they say. Brass says, come on, man. Rivette says, you’re in no fit state to drive, stay here, sleep it off. Shariff says, use my bedroom. Frank says, we’ll play a different fucking game.
Frank says, he’ll be back, you know he will. I’ll talk to him. Stay. It’s your fucking party.
He lets them coax him back to the couch. The players break into clusters. Brass starts a card game. He watches TV and pounds vodka from the bottle.
*
The party winds down. He can’t sleep. He sits on Shariff’s bed and stares at the door and waits.
At one o’clock, it starts to rain. Under the rumble, he hears voices. Rivette’s rockets above the rest: how could you, leaving Sunday, you need to figure yourself out. He turned her down, Rivette shrills, if you’d showed up on time you would have known that. Then Frank, a murmur, placating. Then Shariff’s bedroom door opens and a figure in the hallway steps forward and becomes Max.
“Oh—” Max says. “You’re still—you’re awake.”
He looks at Max; tries to speak, chokes; covers his eyes.
“Oh fuck,” Max says. “Oh Christ, Matt.”
“Sorry,” he says through his hands. “I’m really drunk, they got me so drunk, sorry.”
He hears the floor creak as Max crosses it; then Max is kissing his knuckles. He drops his hands and Max holds them and kisses his eyelids. His mouth.
Max, he says, kissing back, don’t shut me out, you’re my best friend. I won’t tell you what to do anymore, so please. I’m really sorry. Please.
“No,” Max says, “I’m sorry.” His jeans are open and Max’s hand is on his cock. “Is this okay?”
Yes, he gulps, and Max kisses him again and starts to stroke him.
Tell me what to do, Max whispers. Tell me what you want.
You, he says, I want you.
Criss, Max says, somewhere between a prayer and a hiss of pain. He kisses Matt’s throat, Matt’s ear, and pumps Matt until he shouts. Hush, Max says, shush, baby, shh.
He cups Max’s face. He kisses the stain. “Touch me,” he says, “touch me, fuck me—”
“How am I supposed to do that without lube,” Max breathes, tender, “it doesn’t work that way, esti, don’t be silly.”
Just—pretend, he says, and Max groans and turns him over and slides between his thighs and bites his shoulder and—
“Jesus motherfuck,” Shariff says. He starts to stammer. “I am so sorry. We heard. I thought.”
“Is Matt dead or what,” Brass shouts.
Without another word, Shariff closes the door.
Oh no, he says, oh fuck, Max, sorry.
Shut up, Max says. Shut up—do you want it or not?
Yes, fuck, yes.
Max pulls his hair. Grinds between his legs, against his balls. Then take it, Max says. Take it. Look, I’m inside you. I’m inside you now, so deep, do you feel me? I’m inside you, I love you.
*
Another lonely morning, another set of soiled sheets. Rivette and Brass are asleep on Shariff’s comically gigantic sectional, head to head; Frank is on the floor, sandwiched between the McGill girls, a redhead and a blonde; Max is nowhere to be seen. Shariff is awake and quietly gathering bottles.
Shariff’s washing machine is broken. He shifts from foot to foot and says, “I’ll, uh, I’ll take these to the laundromat.”
“Shitting Christ,” Shariff says, “just toss them. Give them to me, I’ll burn them.”
“Sorry.”
“Hey, whatever, man. I hope everything’s okay now. With you and, um.”
He had woken up with his head splitting and reached across the bed for Max. Finding the space beside him empty, he’d rolled onto his stomach and prayed for death.
“Look, don’t worry,” Shariff says, misreading the look on his face. “I don’t judge. Okay, bro? Your secret’s safe with me.”
*
McAfee texts: just heard from cindy
if u keep pushing ur start date I’m gonna start thinking u don’t wanna come!!
He tells Max, I changed my ticket. I’m not going tomorrow, I’m going Monday. Can we talk?
No answer. He goes to Max’s apartment on Gertrude and knocks in the downpour: nothing. Sunday: nothing. He drives to Hochelaga and rings the bell until Manon Leduc buzzes him in.
“Oh, it’s you,” Manon says. “I thought it was that worthless son of mine crawling back to apologize.”
He grits his teeth. “Apologize,” he says, “why?”
"Are you blind or what?"
It looks like yesterday’s storm has blown through Manon’s apartment. A lamp is overturned, a glass broken; the TV screen is black and cratered, lines spidering outward, and there are shards in the carpet. Manon looks at him, fidgets—the motion is so familiar and so beloved that he has to close his eyes—picks at her face, her hands. Manon’s hair is lank, her skin jaundiced. Her apartment smells overwhelmingly of potpourri and roses; under the sickly sweetness, he tastes the sourness of bile.
“Did Max send you?” she says. “He must have. He’s such a good boy. Did he tell you he was supposed to give me a hundred dollars?”
For cigarettes, she says.
It’s so hard to think without nicotine, she says, without my patches, my cigarettes, the withdrawal is just so terrible. Twenty dollars, ten, anything, I’ll use it on cigarettes and then I’m sure I’ll remember where Max is.
He takes her to the SAQ and makes her wait outside while he buys a handle of gin.
“Oh, thank you,” she says breathlessly, but he doesn’t give it to her.
“Where is he?”
Her face contorts; he thinks of Gollum. I don’t know, she says. I don’t shitting know. He’s a grown man, why is it my responsibility?
Think harder, he says. I know you can.
Fuck you, she says, why should I tell you, you’re no good, I’ve known you were no good since you were kids on the playground. That gin’s my medicine, I can’t believe you would try to keep my medicine from me.
You’re sick, Max’s mother says. They say I’m sick but you’re sicker. I can see it in your eyes.
He meets her hostile stare and smashes the bottle on the ground.
*
He texts Rivette. Have you heard from Max?
Rivette says, I thought you were leaving today.
I was. I need to talk to him.
I knew it, Rivette says, I knew something was going on.
Yeah, he says, go gossip with Frank about it.
Low blow, dude.
Sorry.
I'll live.
He inhales. He looks at the shards on the sidewalk. Well, he says, let me know.
Knowing Max, Rivette says, he’s gone on another insane nature walk. I’ll call you if he turns up in Sainte-Anne-des-Lacs, covered in leaves.
*
I’ve known you were no good since you were kids on the playground. The playground in the Plateau where he and Max used to build castles out of mulch has been refurbished, sharp metal corners replaced with humped high-density polyethylene. He walks past a gaggle of screaming children and finds Max at the edge of Parc La Fontaine with a split lip and a bloody nose.
“Christ,” he says.
“Don’t,” Max says, twitching away.
He holds his hands up like he’s being robbed. “At least tell me why you’re ignoring my texts.”
“My phone broke,” Max says.
He looks at the blood. He looks at Max’s clenched fists; he thinks of Manon’s ruptured TV and can imagine how it happened.
“Listen,” he says. “I changed my ticket. Twelve o’clock tomorrow. I want to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You said that you love me.”
Max laughs: so ragged it’s almost a bark. “You were drunk,” he says. “You misheard.”
"You said it at Rivette's," he says. "I wasn't asleep. I heard you."
"You heard wrong. You were dreaming."
He shudders. “Coward,” he says.
Okay, Max says. So what if I love you. Of course I love you. You’re my best friend. But what does it matter if I love you, you’re leaving tomorrow.
Tell me not to go, he says.
I’m not going to tell you anything, Max says. I’m not like you, I respect your choices.
Max looks at the sky. His eyes are red. He says, “I went to the notary on Friday. I transferred power of attorney to my aunt Ginette. It’s not hard. You bring groceries and make sure there’s no cash lying around. And”—a miserable smile—“you learn how to duck.”
“Max,” he says.
“I can’t do this anymore,” Max says. “You should go to Toronto. I won’t stop you. My dad left. My brother left. If I could get out of here I would too. I wouldn’t even look back.”
He says, raw, "Wouldn’t you?"
*
“You changed it again?”
This is what Francine says when he appears in her garden unannounced on Monday, hoping to be fed lunch. Can I stay a couple days? he asks. Christ on his throne, Matthias, Francine says, why don’t you just cancel it altogether? Email them, send your regrets, tell them it was a mistake. Tell them you received a better offer. Is this because of Sarah?
This has nothing to do with Sarah, he says. I’m going. On Wednesday, I’m going.
That sends her into a tizzy. She tries for the umpteenth time to foist an old suitcase on him, even though everything he owns is already en route to Toronto in the back of a moving truck. “And my friend Gabrielle, my friend in Greektown, her contact information, do you have that? Are you sure? Let me find it for you.”
Oh, she shouts down from her study, the drawer in the foyer, check that too.
He chuckles. Shakes his head. Tugs the drawer open and sifts through the mass of receipts and index cards. He finds his father’s business card and the cards of various plumbers and handymen who have probably gone out of business. At the very bottom of the pile is a yellowed sheet of paper covered in rainbow streaks of marker, decades old. Ferme des M. He doesn’t remember captioning it; he doesn’t remember who drew the sheep, the cows, the bloody-looking apple tree, the geometric approximations of ducks or chickens or the v-shaped gulls in the sky. In a red tractor sit two stick figures side by side.
Ferme des M, his mother’s handwriting affirms on the reverse. Matt and Max, 7 years old.
He replaces the drawing in the drawer. Sits on the tile by the front door and puts his head in his hands, and that’s how his mother finds him, five minutes later, when she comes down the stairs.
She cries out, "Matthias! Are you ill?"
"I'm fine." He scrubs at his face. I'm fine, it's nothing, don't look at me. Give me a moment.
Francine dithers, then decides water is the best remedy: a nice tall glass of cold water, she says brightly, I'll get one for both of us. By the time she returns he's composed himself. He follows her to her table in puffy-eyed silence and eats a salad of tomatoes.
*
The sky on Wednesday is the color of steel. And that’s what you’ll have to be from now on, he tells himself: steel. Smooth, stainless. Impenetrable. He thinks of the architecture of Toronto, those outgrowths of steel and crystal and glass. He thinks of McAfee.
Driving his Jeep, Francine drops him off at Gare Centrale. “This horrible car,” she says, “this boat, this spaceship, it has its merits, are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to drive there?”
“I like trains,” he says. A child’s simple declaration. Tears come to his mother’s eyes.
“Oh, Matthias,” she says.
I’ll wait with you until the train comes, she says.
No, don’t, he says. I’ll lose it if you do.
What a sight that would be, she says, because I’ll be wailing right next to you. Okay, then. Okay, my darling. I’ll see you when I see you.
“Toronto,” he starts, and stops, and bites his lip; Toronto is far, Toronto might as well be on the moon. He says, “Christ, Mom, what am I doing?”
“I don’t know, my love,” Francine says. “But that’s how it is when you’re young. You strike out on your own. You explore, you learn. And you come home, if you have to. If you want to.” She kisses him and holds him close. “Come home soon.”
He waves goodbye and goes inside; rides the escalator down, as if into hell.
*
His train arrives. Ten minutes until doors close, until departure. He stands on the platform hesitating. Why did I do this? he asks himself. It was unnecessary. If I wanted to break up with Sarah, I could have broken up with her. If I wanted to tell Max I loved him, I could have done that too. If it was about the money—
A gull cries: an incongruous noise here, indoors and underground. He looks for it, frowning, and sees Max skidding toward him across the concrete.
“Matt,” Max says; then, winded, he doubles over.
“What are you doing here,” he says, “how did you…”
Francine told Martine, Max says, gasping. Martine told Rivette, and Rivette—
Has eyes in his head, he says.
“Rivette told Frank,” Max says. “Frank drove me.”
“Oh,” he says, “so it was a team effort. Did Brass come? Shariff? Did they help boost you over a fence?”
Max looks at him and swallows. “Don’t go.”
“Christ fucking shit,” he says. “Fuck you. Fuck you, Max.”
It wasn't about the money, he thinks. It was about this. About Max's eyes on me: Max's eyes on me, eyes I love, unblinking, staring so hard they're starting to water.
“Don’t go,” Max says. “I’m sorry. You called me a coward and you were right. I was scared. I didn’t want to ask. About Toronto. About Sarah. I didn’t want to beg and beg just to hear you say no.”
He says no. To see Max blanch. To see that it still hurts, that he still matters enough to Max to hurt him.
“I can’t back out now.”
Max says, “Please. I love you.”
All aboard, the disembodied voice says. This is the final call for…
He pulls Max onto the train. The doors close.
“What are you doing?” Max demands.
“Come with me,” he says. “You need a vacation. I’ll bring you back next weekend.”
“I don’t have a shitting ticket.”
“I’ll buy one for you.”
“A jacket—”
“I’ll buy that for you too,” he says. He leans in. Whispers: “And lube.”
“Christ.” Max’s face is red. “I don’t…I don’t even have a toothbrush.”
He says, grinning, “A toothbrush, oh no, I’ll go bankrupt.”
“What if the fucking train’s fucking sold out?”
They have a whole row to themselves, the whole back half of the carriage. Max’s hand is in his hand: hot, sweating, holding on tight. Matt says, “Then you can sit on my lap.”