Release(14)

An anger rises. She pushes the door, sudden, fast, so hard it falls off its hinges. She storms in, her bare feet raising burn marks on the floor, whiffs of smoke vanishing as she steps. “You are here! You are here! You would do this to me?”

She stops in the middle of the room. She is alone, wonders why she thought she wasn’t.

But it was the past, of course.

“I know this place,” she says once more.

She kneels and touches a bare spot on the knotty wooden floor, cleared among the detritus of junkies: food wrappers, used toilet paper, syringes, and a stench that’s almost a presence in itself.

“It was here.” She turns suddenly to the faun, now in the doorway himself. “Wasn’t it?”





He starts for a moment. “Yes,” he says, “it was, my lady, can you–”

But she does not see him. She is not speaking to him.

“It was here,” she says again.

He watches as she places her palm flat against the floorboards. Smoke rises from where she burns it.

“This is where I died.”





“You going to Enzo’s thing tonight?” Renee asked him, shyly.

Karen and Renee didn’t officially know about Adam and Enzo, no one officially did, maybe not even Adam and Enzo, but they knew it in the unofficial way everyone who had been even slightly observant knew (and not wilfully blind like certain parents he could name). No one under twenty seemed to care, but they weren’t the ones who ruled his life at home.

“Yeah,” Adam answered. “You guys?”

“Yep,” Karen said. “I’m not a big fan of the lake, though. Too cold.”

“No one’s going to swim.” Renee looked mildly terrified. “Are they?”

Adam said he didn’t know. “Angela and I are bringing pizzas from her work, though.”

“Why?” Karen asked, scanning end tables, which was easy, as there were only ever one or two. Renee and Adam didn’t have to do anything, so everyone was taking their time.

“Why?” Adam repeated. “Why not?”

“His mom’s a doctor. It’s not like they can’t get their own son’s pizza.”

“They’re paying for it,” Adam said, though now that he thought about it, he couldn’t recall any mechanism being discussed as to how that would actually happen. Had he heard them say they’d pay? “I volunteered,” he said, pondering it.

“That was good of you,” Karen said, not looking at him.

“Karen,” Renee warned, gently.

“What?” Karen said. “If he wants to keep doing stuff for someone and getting nothing back, that’s totally not my business, is it?”

“I don’t–” Adam started. “He doesn’t–” He unnecessarily shelved an end table. “Anyway, he’s leaving town so there’s no point talking about it. And who says there’s anything to talk about?”

“Ain’t no shame in a broken heart,” Karen sang under her breath. Adam pretended not to hear.

Why was he bringing all the pizza? And maybe paying for it. (No. No, the Garcias were nice people. Busy but nice.) He was Enzo’s friend, wasn’t he? Isn’t that what friends did? Friends with an aching chasm of pain between them that only one of them seemed able to see?

“You don’t take any of this seriously, do you?” Enzo had said on their last night together before they became “friends”. It was some months after Enzo had told Adam he loved him for the last time. And two seconds after Adam said it for what he didn’t know was his last time.

“We’re just messing around,” Enzo said, not meeting Adam’s eyes. “That’s all.”

At first he thought Enzo was kidding, had to be kidding. What had sixteen months been if not serious? What, if not love? “Just teenage experimental shit,” Enzo said now. That’s what.

It was a moment where Adam could have saved … what? His self-respect at least. An ending that was true. But he’d seen the panic on Enzo’s face, a face he knew so well, a mouth he’d kissed, eyes he’d seen laugh and cry. Enzo was terrified and that threw Adam, just enough.

“Yeah.” He’d forced a laugh. “Just messing around.” He forced another laugh. “All that I love you stuff, ha, ha, ha.”

“I mean,” Enzo said, “I’m not against doing it now and then, but it’s just friends helping each other out before we get girlfriends, yeah?”

“I don’t want a girlfriend,” Adam had at least managed to say.

“Yeah, well, I do,” Enzo said, not looking at him again.

Because if Adam was honest, was this actually so much of a surprise? If he really gathered all the things Enzo had said to him, had he really ever said “I love you” or had he only ever said “I love you, too”?

He was different than Adam, is what Adam always told himself. Adam used words. Enzo used affection, didn’t he? And he had been affectionate. If he hadn’t said the words out loud much, he’d said them over and over again with a touch, with a kiss, with sex that was hardly just going in one direction.

“Why do we have to label it?” Enzo had asked, all along, it was true. “Why can’t we just be?”