The Miles (24 page)

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Authors: Robert Lennon

BOOK: The Miles
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MILE 25
“D
id you bring them?”
The desperation in Riser's voice was palpable. It was early morning and the sun swept through the room with determination and promise. The beautiful light and the smell of clean sheets made the sight of Riser crumpled helplessly in bed all the sadder. Liam handed Riser the crisp paper bag, and he feverishly opened it.
“I never would have guessed that a change of wardrobe would be your highest priority right now.” Liam no longer knew what to say. He had hoped that Riser's initial stint in the hospital would shock him into reality and make him want to live again, but here it was just over a month later and he was back in the same hospital room festooned with tubes and monitors, looking more acutely sick than ever.
“These jeans were the Holy Grail.” Riser extricated the dark denim from its tissue paper wrapping and held the pants up to offer the evidence to Liam. “Helmut Lang—$345. I refused to allow myself to buy these until I was a size 28.”
“They're a very smart look,” Liam offered clumsily.
“Help me up so I can try them on?” Riser raised his two bony arms in the air solicitously.
“But there are all these wires and tubes, sweetie. Maybe you should just lie there and rest.”
“I've been in this same position all night long ... I'll have bed sores soon, Li. Please just help me up. All this shit moves. Trust me.”
Afraid Riser's bones might snap like twigs on impact, Liam gingerly shimmied his friend off the mattress. Riser leaned his upper body against Liam's shoulder, and Liam hoisted him up.
“Oh shit, the room is spinning.”
“Just stand still with me a second and everything will come into place. You've just been on your back too long.”
Riser squeezed the flesh between Liam's neck and his shoulder. The pain rippled through Liam, and he bit the inside of his lip to stay silent. He knew Riser was not in total control of his actions.
“I'll lift my leg, Li.” Riser paused and looked as if he had lost the ability to form words. When had Riser taken to abbreviating his name? Liam wondered. “I'll lift my leg up and you can just slip the pants on. Okay, Li? It'll be a team effort.”
The pin-legged pants glided over Riser's emaciated legs, and Liam helped button the fly so that the jeans were on right and proper. Any pretense of humility on Riser's part had disappeared.
“I nearly killed myself to fit into these.” Riser turned to Liam and laughed. “I guess truer words have never been spoken, hunh?”
“You're going to be fine, babe. Stop being so dramatic. Let's sit down and watch some Saturday morning cartoons.”
As he bent down to sit in the leather recliner next to Riser's bed, Liam's phone began to ring. There were signs every fifty feet throughout the hospital ordering people to turn off their cell phones, but somehow Liam had neglected to realize that his was still on.
“Who is it?” Riser sounded as though he was afraid to have an interloper steal Liam away from him.
“It's just Gary, sweetie. I can call him back later.”
“Holy shit. Today's the half marathon in the park, isn't it? You missed the race against the Bobcats because of me. Goddamn it! Bad enough that I can't run for the team. Now I am causing our best runners to miss key races. Once a fuck-up, always a fuck-up.”
“Riser, we're a team. We take care of each other. We help one another out. There are
plenty
of Fast Trackers who raced out there this morning, and I am certain that they did us both proud.”
When Liam had gotten the call from the station nurse just before midnight, he took a taxi to the hospital immediately. He was both concerned that Riser's vital signs kept fluctuating so wildly and incredibly flattered that Riser had listed him—over Matthew or Ferdinand or anyone else on the team—as his emergency contact. The visit wore on through the wee hours of the night and then, just after daybreak, Riser asked Liam to trek over to his apartment and fetch his favorite pair of jeans. Liam conceded the morning's race to his friendship with Riser, though he did begin to worry over which Fast Trackers would show up to run the half marathon. Each time the thought entered his mind, Liam felt ashamed and tried to dismiss it. Now, Gary was calling—probably with the results—and Liam had to just look the other way, searching for old episodes of
The Smurfs
on the static-laden TV hanging from the corner of the ceiling.
“Liam, you should go enjoy the day. Please. I am the one who is bed-bound. You? Go out and have mulled cider in the park ... It's autumn in New York, for chrissakes.”
Something about the little blue men marching through the heavy snow of the old television set lulled Liam into a sense of peace. The volume was too low to hear, but Liam could easily figure out the one-dimensional plot—the Smurfs were scrambling into hidden brushes in the forest because the evil Gargamel had been spotted. Liam wished the divisions between good and evil were so clearly drawn in real life. Liam fought the heaviness of his eyelids and wriggled in his chair to shake himself awake. As he turned to draw Riser into conversation about the program, Liam noticed that the sleepiness must have been contagious. Riser's body was swallowed by the whiteness of the hospital linens. His hip bones jutted up sharply, exposing the largeness of the twenty-eight-inch waist of the Helmut Lang jeans. Riser had worked so hard to get into them, and the jeans now swam on his underfed body. In the honeyed morning light, Riser's skin had the cold alabaster quality of a marble statue. The veins in his hands and his stomach rose to the surface in a desperate but sensual way. Riser's mouth had fallen open as he drifted into sleep, elongating the concavity of his face. He looked ethereal and beautiful but almost like something imagined, something that had never inhabited the earth.
Liam pressed his lips to Riser's forehead and whispered the word
good-bye
. He would call Zane or Matthew or Gary after he left the hospital and inform them that they should visit. It felt important that Riser not be left alone. As he made his way toward the elevator bank, Liam ran into the officious nurse who seemed always to be consumed by hospital protocol. She smiled sadly at him.
“It's been a long morning,” Liam said.
“I can imagine,” she replied. “You're a good kid to come stay with your friend overnight.”
“I'm his emergency contact.” Liam chuckled uncomfortably. He didn't want to talk about Riser anymore and pushed the button to call the elevator a second time.
“That's quite a responsibility,” she said and paused. “In this disease, there is a loss of perspective. You are going to be key in helping your friend regain his.”
Liam looked to the ground in silence. He did not know why people felt a need to offer unsolicited advice.
“I know it's not my place,” she continued. “But if you work in a hospital long enough, you feel like you can see into people. Your friend is a sensitive soul. I think he's lost. Someone he trusts—like you—can set him on the right path again.”
“You try telling a gay man he needs to pack on ten pounds,” Liam said. “No matter how obvious it is to us, he's just programmed not to hear that.”
“Just promise me you'll help your friend by treating this like a disease and not a dieting fad.”
The nurse stood waiting for a response as Liam entered the elevator. The woman peered at him for another moment before consulting her chart and walking down the hall to her next patient. She scribbled down notes as she strolled off. Liam filled with anger and fantasized about storming after her and pulling all the bobby pins out of the tight bun of her hair.
“My friend is strong!” he yelled to no one as the doors to the elevator closed shut.
As Liam made his way through the hospital corridors and onto Seventh Avenue South, the bolt of early afternoon sunlight punched him squarely between the eyes, and he had to hunch over for a minute to let his vision adjust to the daytime. The day had grown unusually warm for October. Liam slunk under the shade of a little florist's awning on the corner of Greenwich, where he dialed Gary's phone number.
“Liam!” Gary's urgent tone was jarring. “Liam, Liam, Liam! Where the fuck have you been all morning? I've only tried your cell phone about eight times in the last two hours. You know I'm not a patient man.”
Liam remembered the incident with Mitch at the Brooklyn Half Marathon—the scorn, the tears, and the bitter accusations—and smiled at the understatement. It amazed Liam how easily Gary could laugh at his own zealous lunacy.
“It's been a crazy blur of a morning, G ... ”
Not waiting for Liam to finish his thought, Gary launched into the news that had prompted him to call so many times in the last few hours. Fast Trackers had obliterated the Urban Bobcats in the half marathon that morning. And that wasn't even the news that was going to knock Liam off his feet. No, there were several other surprises, Gary teased. He pressed Liam to guess, but the exhaustion of the protracted hospital visit had robbed Liam of any playful enthusiasm.
“C'mon, I'll give you a hint. Who do you think came in first for the team?”
“Well, I would have said Zane, but clearly the only answer I can be sure of is ‘
not
Zane.' ”
“Fine, Mr. Grumpy Pants. I'll just tell you. The big shocker was that someone who normally would have been one of the top scorers for Urban Bobcats was the top scorer for Fast Trackers New York this morning.”
There was silence on the line.
“Speechless, aren't you? I told you it was good, Liam. Now, I never lie ... I may embellish, but I never lie.”
Liam could not believe it. After all this time. And he wasn't even there to appreciate the beautiful gesture. Liam was overcome with emotion and quickly thanked Gary for the phone call. Before hanging up the phone, he mustered a few rah-rah words for the team. After the long year of ups and downs, they just might make it. The marathon would still be a huge test of their collective will, but they would actually be toeing the line with the Urban Bobcats knowing that this competition was anyone's to win. Maybe the exhaustion had caved in on him or maybe it was the immenseness of the news, but Liam could not bear to deflate Gary with Riser's sad tale. Liam crumbled into a crying jag after he hung up the phone.
Liam knew that he had to call Didier; he
wanted
to call Didier. But he hoped not to sound fatuous and fawning. Their roller coaster of a relationship these past few months had made the prospect of easy rapprochement seem foolhardy. Though his gesture was grand and romantic, Didier's racing for Fast Trackers did not necessarily mean that he had cast aside his other life. Who knew how long he had been married and the ties he had to his wife. Who knew what the cryptic “loose ends” that Didier had referred to in his e-mail really entailed. Did Liam feel strongly enough about this beautiful “Parisian” to risk ... what? ... What was it that he was risking? As soon as he considered the question, he dialed up Didier. Liam began to walk briskly to ease his nerves. He had made it almost all the way down Fifth Avenue where the foliage of Washington Square Park glittered like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Didier answered after only two rings; he sounded groggy and far away.
“Sorry if I woke you ... I can call back later... .”
“Are you shitting me, Liam? The race this morning may have knocked some of the wind from my sails, but I have been waiting for your call as impatiently as a five-year-old on Christmas Eve Santa Watch.”
“That's pretty wound up,” Liam said with a laugh.
“Where were you this morning? You never miss a race.”
“Look, Didier,” Liam began but was unsure how he wanted to finish. The story was too much to rehash. “There has been a lot going on for both of us. Should we really be doing this?”
“I have no choice in the matter, Liam. I've missed you more than I knew was possible this last month. I can't continue to be on-and-off with you.”
“Come meet me downtown for a late lunch—at Otto on Eighth and Fifth.” Liam would be able to sort this out better face-to-face. “The restaurant is just north of Washington Square.”
“Of course, I know it. Isn't pizza and wine a little heavy for midday?”
“You've just run a half marathon, Didier; I think you deserve it.”
Wrestling with a bad case of overtiredness and anxiety, Liam drank two and a half glasses of Barolo while waiting for Didier at the bar. The day had cooled a bit since the early afternoon and had begun to feel more like autumn; the red and yellow trees outside the bar window helped Liam romanticize the season. Liam loved these early sunsets after the stretch of long days through July, August, and September. He knew that he would tire of the cold and the gray by the depth of winter, but now, here in this moment on this day in mid-October, he could fool himself into thinking that the perfection would last. The bartender came by with the bottle again and filled the wineglass quickly and without asking Liam's permission. At $15 a glass, Liam bristled until the man motioned that this one was on him. Liam knew that the free booze meant that he had already had more than his share. He strove for a toasty buzz, not a drunken stupor.

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