So Long, Chester Wheeler(47)

“Take them anyway.”

“Just the painkillers.”

“You need all your pills.”

“I really don’t,” he said.

I sat across from him and tried to look him in the eye. He wouldn’t let me.

“Go ahead and answer me this, Chester. Do you want to live?”

“I don’t get to live,” he said. “Too late to change that.”

“Do you want to live as long as you can?”

“I did. Because I wanted to get here. But now we . . . got here. So . . .”

It burned to hear him say it, because he was avoiding saying he’d actually done what he came here to do. Because he hadn’t. And it was my fault that he hadn’t. I’d gotten us kicked out.

“Look,” I said. “I’m going to ask you to take them anyway. Because I promised Ellie I’d make you take your pills.”

“So? She won’t know.”

“I’ll know.”

Chester only sighed.

I took that as a good sign, so I got up and got back to getting them ready.

He said, “Are we just supposed to stay here, or what? I don’t know what we’re doing.”

“I’m not sure, either. But I think it might pay to give her some time to cool down. Maybe after a while I’ll go in and see if she’ll talk to me.”

I swept the pills into their little bowl and poured him a glass of apple juice. I handed him both and sat on the couch across from him, watching him swallow one at a time. It seemed to require some effort. Swallowing was apparently getting harder for him.

“Thank you,” I said when he’d swallowed the last one.

He set the bowl and the empty glass down on the portable table.

“I didn’t take yesterday’s pills,” he said.

I scrambled around in my brain for some memory of the previous morning. I vaguely remembered handing him his pills and then leaving him alone. Why had I done that? Ellie had warned me. She’d said I’d have to stay right there and watch him take them, or he’d ditch them in the potted plants.

“You didn’t take any of them?”

“I took the painkillers.”

“What did you do with the rest of them?”

“They’re under the couch cushion.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. I wasn’t sure if I should chastise him for ditching his pills or thank him for coming clean about it. I opened my mouth, but I still wasn’t sure what I expected to come out of it.

Chester cut me off.

“What did she tell you about Mike?”

“Not all that much.”

“No, seriously, Lewis. I’m asking you as a friend.”

That made a bumpy landing.

I didn’t think we were friends, and I wasn’t sure if he honestly thought so at that delicate juncture or not. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything.

“I really need you to tell me what she told you. Please.”

Please. That was a new one. Another hash mark on the Chester 2.0 scorecard.

“She told me the two of you were in the war together, and that he saved your life twice. That you were more insecure about fighting a war than you wanted to admit, and Mike was more of a take-charge guy, and he took you under his wing. And that you looked up to him.”

“That’s all she said? I looked up to him?”

I got a bad case of the honests.

“No, not really. She said you loved him so much that it made you worry about your own . . . you know. Feelings.”

At first he said nothing at all. We just sat there in all that blowing AC.

Then he said, “Why would she do that?”

“Out of anger, I think.”

“Well, she got me again. I didn’t think she could possibly hurt me any worse than she did all those years ago. But she just did it again. Go ahead,” he said. “Go ahead and get it over with.”

“Get what over with?”

“You know.”

“I really don’t.”

“The part where you tell me I’m just as gay as you are and make fun of me for that.”

“I don’t think you’re gay.”

“Yes you do.”

“No, I really don’t.”

I waited for some kind of response, but he was just staring at his legs the way he tended to do. Then he raised his eyes and turned his head like he was gazing out the window. But all the curtains were still down.

I thought it was interesting that when referring to himself he used the word “gay,” rather than the mild slurs he used on me. I didn’t say so, because I didn’t think it would help. Because I didn’t think he’d see the significance of it.

“Sometimes you just love somebody,” I said. “Maybe it feels romantic and maybe it doesn’t. Only you know that. But sometimes one person can just be an exception to the rule, and maybe it doesn’t mean what you think it means. Especially when somebody saves your life and keeps you safe in a terrible situation like that. It’s going to confuse your feelings around that whole thing. Did you ever feel that way about any other guys?”

“No. Of course not. Only Mike.”

“Then I don’t think you’re gay.”