Don’t Let Me Go(69)

Billy breathed in deeply. He realized, in that instant, that he had a chance to potentially draw those two together. Maybe. Eventually. Or, with a few words, he could drive them apart. Definitely. Right now. Forever. All that power rested with him.

“I think there’s some pain from her past,” Billy said. “I shouldn’t even talk about it, because I don’t know. But she’s an unusually good person. If I were you, I’d give her more time.”

Jesse reached over and patted Billy’s knee, causing his whole body and brain to go numb as a style of evasion.

“Thank you, neighbor. I’ll let you get back to what you were doing. When I’ve invited the other neighbors, I’ll let you know when the smudging ceremony is set to take place. Then I’ll offer something more like a formal invitation.”

“You don’t have to go,” Billy wanted to say. That, or the more pathetically direct, “Stay and talk to me.” But all he said was, “Don’t forget your wine glasses. And your Swiss Army corkscrew.”

Jesse laughed as he gathered them up.

“I had a sense about you,” he said. “I’m a good judge of people. And you’re what I call ‘good people.’ I knew that when I first laid eyes on you.”

Billy rose and walked him to the door. All three or four steps of the way. He said nothing.

“Thanks,” Jesse said, his voice soft. “It meant a lot to me, what you said. More than you know.”

Then, before Billy could react, Jesse stepped in and embraced him. Billy stood stiffly, unable to even raise his arms to hug back.

“Back to your choreography. After all, what’s more important than Grace’s big performance? Maybe I’ll go. Is everybody going?”

“I haven’t asked everybody. I’m going to be there.”

As if it were a completely possible thing. As if he weren’t out of his mind in even suggesting such a ridiculously unlikely event.

“Maybe I’ll go,” Jesse said.

Then he let himself out.

“Goodnight, Billy,” he said, from two steps down the hall.

Billy opened his mouth to answer, but no words flowed. Apparently there were none left inside. So instead he just raised one hand in a weak, pathetic little wave.

? ? ?

Billy lay awake all night. Never closed his eyes once. Which is likely the only reason he received no visit from the wings.

? ? ?

“Don’t hold my hand too tightly,” Billy said.

“Why not?” Grace asked. “I’m the only thing keeping you from running away.”

Billy felt Rayleen take his other hand and squeeze it gently.

“Not quite,” she told Grace. “I’ve got him, too.”

They stood in the hall, staring at the front door of the building. Through the glass inset of the door and out into the street. The street!

Billy was dressed in jeans and ridiculously white tennis shoes. He’d had them for a decade, but had never worn them. Not even in the house. Even the soles were still a perfectly untouched white, like a fresh snowfall before anybody wakes up to tramp around in it. He looked down at them disapprovingly, then out at the street again.

Billy felt something rise from his chest and into his throat, and he tried to swallow it back down. But, whatever it was, it remained unaffected by swallowing.

Rayleen asked, “Got your keys?”

Her voice sounded tinny, with a slight echo. Far away. As if Billy were drifting away from the moment. Which he supposed he was.

“Of course I’ve got my keys. I only checked my pocket six times. God. Can you imagine what a disaster that would be? If I went outside and then got locked out?”

“Just checking,” Rayleen said. “Ready?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Seriously? You’re not going?”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going. I said I wasn’t ready. And I never will be. So let’s just hurry up and do this thing before I change my mind.”

Rayleen swung the door inward, and a blast of morning air hit Billy in the face.

It reminded him of red wine. Scary. Distantly familiar. Too long forgotten. Nice.

Together, almost as one entity, they stepped out on to the stoop.

“You OK?” Grace asked, peering up at his face.

But Billy’s throat had tightened and his chest had constricted, so it would have been impossible to answer. Instead he gestured forward with his chin.

They stepped out to the stairs and began to descend.

Five concrete steps. Only five. Billy began to calculate how many years it had been since he’d climbed them, either up or down, but he soon realized the answer wouldn’t serve him well, and so changed the subject in his brain.

Over his head, he heard a bird chirping an excited song in a canopy of trees.

“They still have birds in L.A.?” he attempted to ask, but no sound emerged.

He tried to think, to remember. If birds sang in the trees outside his apartment, he would have heard them from inside. Had he? He couldn’t remember positively, but he didn’t think he had. Did that mean he was now alive in a way he had not been until this very moment?

Duh, as Grace would say.

He whipped his head around to see his building, now three buildings down the street from him. He had walked outside, on to the street, and three buildings away while pondering songbirds. But, now that he saw it back there, looking so distant, the panic found him, caught him, knocked the wind out of him. It felt like a vise crushing his chest. His face felt cold, yet he could feel beads of sweat break out on his brow.