Sunday, October 18, 2009

Forgetting Adam (3)

3.

It was of the modern variety and created the illusion of grass, like cloth flowers created the illusion of application. Brian lay on his back and looked at the overcast, fall sky. He wished he was laying on real grass and that he was looking at clouds with definition, rather than clouds that could not be distinguished apart from one another. Today is fixed, he thought: created in subterranean crypts of God's heaven, in secret so as to not upset the oblivious above, His angels devised Brian's downfall and it was to begin with overcast skies and artificial turf.

Mary walked slowly over to where Brian lay. She wore a cream sweater and an old ski hat with a ball of yarn on top. Brian kept his eye's closed, hoping that his girlfriend would leave him laying there for a few more moments. She didn't say anything but she did sit down next to him and fingered the stick that she was holding, picked up as they walked the park path. He was content to let her sit there as long as she didn't speak. He opened one eye to see what kind of mood her face hinted at. She looked vaguely sad. He was more than vaguely sad, though, so he didn't feel much empathy. He closed his eyes again.

Adam had once told him that he could never live in the city. They were waiting in line in front of the Riviera for a show and a homeless man asked them for a square. Adam had never heard that expression for a cigarette before and assumed he wanted drugs. He shook his head no and the bum moved on. Brian told him what the bum meant, and Adam blushed. "I could never live here, I'm too naive."

That was when they were 19. Six years later, Brian was living in Logan Square on Chicago's north side, laying on his back thinking about having a cigarette himself, but mostly thinking about what Adam would think of him if he were still around.

Adam had once said that he didn't want much, just a piece of land and a dog and some vegetables in the ground. That was when he was 18. Even then, Adam knew more of what he wanted in life than Brian ever knew for himself.

Mary got up and went over to the swing set in the playground to poke at the mud and wonder at the broken beer bottles near the landing area of the slide. She was a good girlfriend. They had fun when they went out and stayed in together. He couldn't put his finger on it, and that's why he never left her, but there was something in the way.

He knew what Adam would think of his job. He could never sit in one place for more than an hour, and the thought of sitting at a desk, looking at a computer for eight hours a day would have made him wary, to say the least. Like Mary, Brian didn't mind it if he thought of the job as a temporary thing, but he could never stop thinking about the future and he knew he could not do it forever.

Worse still, was the thought that the wrong person fell off the rail that day. But that thought only crept up during the darkest moments of his regular reflections. Mostly, he blamed himself for not being close enough to help Adam when he fell. He knew he shouldn't blame himself, it wasn't really his fault, but sometimes the moments we have no chance of controlling are the moments that haunt us the most. That's why he imagined himself at the center of a heavenly conspiracy to ruin the rest of his life. If there was justice anywhere, he thought, it wouldn't even be fair in heaven. They wouldn't care if he couldn't have done anything, he was witness to his friend's death and he made the choice to tell people that he had in fact not witnessed it, out of some misplaced instinct that he would be blamed for the death of his best friend if people believed he was there when it happened. He was convinced that he would pay for that lie, harmless as it was. Even if harmless, it was selfish, and he knew it.

Mary stuck the stick in the mud with violence and returned to the soccer field Adam lay on. "I'm going home if your are going to brood here all day." Brian didn't say anything but he did open one eye. She walked away but he knew he would forgive her in the morning. She always did. Maybe that's why he knew he couldn't live with her. He didn't want to be forgiven anymore.

Forgetting Adam (2)

2.

Adam thought he might be dead. He didn't hurt anywhere, if that was any indication. He wasn't asleep either, he was sure. He remembered tripping off of the rail and then everything went black. But he wasn't unconscious: the cement columns to either side of him were solid to the touch and he could feel a cool breeze, with a touch of dankness to it, like his grandmother's basement. He was confused. Maybe he hit his head on a railroad tie as he fell. There had been a train coming in the distance. Maybe the train struck him as he lay unconscious. Either way, he was still drunk. Fear was rising in his throat and after a moment, resting a hand on one of the columns, he leaned over and vomited whiskey and beer onto the scuffed paving stones he was standing on. He wiped his mouth and tried to dispel his rising sense of alarm--he had never thrown up in a dream. He looked around. He was on a road.

It led into the distance behind him, disappearing over the horizon. It cut a straight path through the flat landscape like it was conjured up in straight-edge ruler's dream. Dull green prairie grass, waste-high, tumbled in waves across the plains on either side of the road. The light was failing but the sky above Adam was devoid of any setting sun or any clouds. It was as if a painter had muddied his sky-blue with a puddy gray and haphazardly pushed his brush against the canvas.

In front of him the road ended at a wall beyond the two columns he rested between. The wall was black, pitted, and made Adam queasy when he tried to follow its lines as they ran off into the distance on either side of the road. He couldn't be sure, but he thought the wall curved slightly, like it was one immense circle. It was a short wall, only eight feet tall. Where the road ended, there was a brown wooden door.

Adam thought he heard thunder over the wall, as if he was inside a house hearing distant thunder through closed windows. His heart started to beat very fast, and he thought he might be having a heart attack until he recognized the pain in his chest as heartburn. Looking at the door, he wondered at the acid rising in his stomach. If he was dead, he wondered, why did he have heartburn? Why was he still drunk? And if he could feel these things, why couldn't he feel the bruises he should surely have from tumbling off of a railroad tie? And if he was hit by a train... He stopped himself there, and tried to swallow away the rising bile.

Thunder rolled beyond the wall again. Adam looked up and thought he saw light crackling some distance inside the walled circle, like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. The fizzle of the crackling light reached his ears moments later. He took a step toward the door, not knowing where else to go or what else to do. As he approached the door he could feel the ground beneath him shake and then a louder clap of thunder reverberated off of the invisible barrier above the wall.

Wiping his mouth again, and swallowing the taste of vomit and bile at the back of his throat he tried to push the door forward since there was no latch or knob or handle to speak of. The door didn't budge.