Real Life(71)

He reaches for his phone, scrolls through it until he finds Miller’s number. It’s not too late, he thinks. He dials and waits. The tone goes on and on and on. No answer. Nothing. He waits. Dials again. Nothing. Wallace lies on his back and stretches his arms out. He dials again, watching his shadow on the opposite wall. No answer, just silence opening up on the other end after the voicemail. He hangs up. Dials again, this time pressing the button with more firmness, as if this will draw an answer from Miller. Nothing.

Didn’t Wallace say earlier that he couldn’t bear the thought of a single moment repeating itself? And here he is, dialing over and over again, compulsively, like a crazy person, repeating himself so that Miller might come and repeat the morning with him, hoping that as each second knocks into the other, Miller will pick up and say, Yes, I will come over; I will come see you. But there is only silence, and more silence. Where is he? What could he be doing? A wild fluttering rises inside Wallace.

He goes into the kitchen and makes coffee. In the living room, he lies on the floor and drinks, slow and steady, the hot black coffee. He is staring at his phone, its glow comforting in the dark. He is reading an article online by some obscure poet from Kansas about a new queer art, a new poetics of the body—and understanding very little of it—when the article vanishes and is replaced by a call screen. His phone vibrates. Yngve’s name comes up.

“Hello?” he answers.

“Hello,” Miller says. “Wallace, hi.”

“Miller?” Wallace asks, and there is happiness in his voice, surprise. “Hey, how’s it going?”

“It’s fine, hey, I dropped my phone in the lake. Sorry I didn’t call earlier. Are you at home?”

“Sure, yes,” Wallace says. There is noise in the background, loud music, people talking, shouting.

“Great, hey, I’ll be by in a little bit, okay?” he asks.

“Okay,” Wallace says.

“Perfect, okay, great, okay, see you then,” Miller says, and then his voice is gone, along with the noise. He is drunk, Wallace realizes. Drunk and out with the others, at some bar or the pier. Who knows? But he is coming, or he plans to come, and that is something to which Wallace can affix some hope. He rests the cup against his face and tries to breathe. He is not nervous to see Miller. Too much has happened between them for that to be the case. But there is something else now, not urgency exactly, but a kind of wildness.

He sets the cup on the table and tries to find something to do with himself, with his hands. He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting. Outside in the alley people are shouting again, as on Friday, the first time he was here with Miller. There is a knock on the door, and it takes everything in Wallace not to sprint from his bed. He opens the door and there is Miller, looking down at him drunkenly. He’s still in his clothes from this morning, the cropped gray shirt, the cardigan, smelling like beer and the lake, tanned all over from the sun. His cheeks are chapped and red.

“Wallace,” he says in a voice that is raw and a little raspy. “How are you?”

“Good,” Wallace says. They’ve shut the door now.

“Wallace, Wallace,” Miller says, singing almost.

“How are you?” Wallace asks.

“Great, super, wonderful.” He drums his fingers on his stomach. “We went sailing. You should have come.”

“I was busy.”

“Oh, were you?” Miller asks, squinting. “Were you busy?”

“I was,” Wallace says, nodding, needlessly earnest. Miller hums and then bites his thumbnail.

“You know. You know. You know,” Miller begins. His eyes are bloodshot, his knuckles red, bruised. Wallace looks more closely, and what he took for windburn is actually something else, scrapes and scratches. His body is thrumming with heat.

“What happened to you?”

Miller seems to think about it, smiles slowly. His lips too are cracked, slit, swollen.

“Nothing,” he says, drawing the word out. “Nothing happened to me.”

“Did you get into an accident?”

“No. No. No,” Miller says, wagging his finger, and then biting his nails again. There is dried blood beneath them. “Not an accident.”

“Well what happened?”

Miller laughs, shakes his head. He reaches out and grips Wallace’s shoulder. Fear floods Wallace and he pulls away, but Miller will not let him go, will not unclench. His grasp is absolute. He digs his fingers into Wallace’s shoulder, and it hurts. Miller is still laughing, but this time his eyes are closed. He draws Wallace close to him. The heat is black and close. He puts his mouth on Wallace’s, and Wallace can taste the beer, the ash, the blood, the iron, too warm on his tongue. He tries to wrench loose, but Miller is stronger than he is. He turns Wallace around, loops an arm around his neck, not choking him, but close, holding him up flat to Miller’s chest and stomach.

“I got into a fight,” Miller whispers. “I got into a fight at a bar. You know?”

“Know what?”

“You know—are you afraid of me now?”

“No,” Wallace says, “I’m not.” Miller holds his arm tight to Wallace’s throat now, and air is harder to come by.

He puts his face next to Wallace’s ear and laughs, that low, dark laugh, and he says, almost too quiet to hear, “Do you know that story about the wolf, Wallace?”