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.