Real Life(72)

8





The heat of Miller’s breath against his skin makes Wallace uncomfortable in the dark of his apartment. So does the weight pressing against his throat, making him feel as if he’s suspended at a great height from thin, flexible cables. The hardened skin of Miller’s knuckles is tucked up under Wallace’s chin, where he’s clamped his wrist to keep Wallace in the choke hold. He isn’t choking Wallace exactly, just pressing, but because he is taller and stronger, even the casual tension in his arm carries intent. Wallace, unbalanced by the suddenness of the moment, shuts his eyes for just a second to regroup, to find his center. He lets his arms dangle, lets his body go still.

“Do you remember it?” Miller asks. “The story, I mean, about the wolf and the pigs?”

“Do you mean ‘The Three Little Pigs’?” Wallace asks. “Is that the one you mean?”

“Yes,” Miller says, laughing. “That’s the one.”

“What about it?” Wallace asks. “What about that story?”

Miller presses his cheek to Wallace’s, more hitch and scrape, skin over skin. Whiskey or something else, booze on his breath. He’s holding Wallace against him, cradling his body almost. It would be tender if it weren’t also a choke hold. Wallace might let himself give in to such an embrace, if it didn’t also contain the threat of violence—not that Miller is threatening him exactly, but Wallace has been put in choke holds before, by people stronger and bigger than he, people who have meant him real harm.

“You let me in,” Miller says. “I knocked on your door in the middle of the night and you let me in. I could be a wolf.”

“Are you?” Wallace asks.

“I don’t know. I could be.”

“What happened to you, Miller? Why are you all bruised up like this?”

“I got into a fight at a bar. And then I came here.”

“What did you fight about?”

Miller clucks his tongue. Wallace can feel Miller’s chin pressing down on the top of his head.

“That isn’t an answer,” Wallace says, feeling himself relax because the gesture has shifted, transformed into something less threatening. But he’s still not free to move as he pleases, which he figures should concern him more than it does at the moment.

“I didn’t give one,” Miller says.

“Why not?”

“Who cares?” Miller asks, sighing. “Who gives a damn? I’m here now.” He sounds so tired, so absurdly tired. Then why the question about the wolf, about the pigs? Why go through the trouble of it? Wallace puts his hands against Miller’s arms, rubs them slowly, tenderly.

“I care,” Wallace says, knowing he sounds too earnest. “I’d like to know what happened to you—if you’re okay, I mean.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

There is no answer. Wallace waits for something, anything, but there is only the quiet of their breathing.

“You didn’t seem like you cared,” Miller says at last. “You didn’t seem like you gave a damn one way or the other.”

“What does that even mean, Miller? What are you talking about?”

“Earlier, after brunch. And last night I guess, too, when you left. I told you all that shit about me, and you left in the middle of the night. Even before that, before dinner, you told me you weren’t interested. I should have listened. Why didn’t I listen?”

“What does that have to do with anything? Or the sorry shape you’re in now?”

“What a question,” Miller says, soft shock in his voice. He laughs. “What a fucking question.” He drops his arms from Wallace’s shoulders, pushes gently at his back to make space between them. Wallace steps forward reluctantly and then turns. He is stung by this, a bruise darkening somewhere inside him. He feels in that moment that to even ask what Miller means by this is to prove some point about himself that he can’t comprehend yet. The light from the alley washes Miller in a dirty blue shade. His eyes are not discernible except by the glossiness of their whites. His features are distorted, by shadow or anger or both. He is frightening, though his teeth are gleaming.

“What did I do to you?”

“You fucked with my head,” Miller says. “You got in my head and now I’m all fucked up about it. I never tell that stuff to anyone. I never let anyone know that part of me. But I told you. And you left.”

“I’m sorry,” Wallace says. “I felt like something terrible was going to happen if I stayed.”

“Something terrible,” Miller repeats, his voice leaping up in volume and pitch, sharpening, breaking. “You thought I was going to do something terrible to you? What the fuck was I going to do to you, Wallace?”

“No, that’s not it,” Wallace says. “No, I just felt like something awful was coming our way. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry,” Miller says. “You’re always sorry, aren’t you, Wallace? Other people have problems too, you know. Other people are afraid too.”

“What are you afraid of?” Wallace asks before he can stop himself. The question slips out of him like a small, swift bird.

Miller’s broad jaw is working over something that Wallace can’t see, grinding it up. The tendons flex and bend. There’s a hardness to his face.