Perhaps it was a sign. Perhaps he was meant to end it all here, where Phil had ended it.
He walked towards the bed, towards the dark bulk of his suitcase on it. He’d take the pills. Take the pills and be damned.
Damnation had to be better than this half-life.
The pills were inside the lining of the suitcase, where only Nick and JFK security—would look for them. Nick felt for the hard round case—a large daisy-wheel medicine keeper—brought it out. It was full. He’d replenished in New York, after the airport.
Its contents would be enough to
Nick stopped. He could swear Phil lay on the bed. Phil’s image wasn’t quite solid, but solid enough for all details to be visible. He was fully dressed, in an unzipped blue jacket, dark pullover and black pants. Darker clothes than he’d ever worn. He was not Phil as Nick remembered him, either—the twenty-two year old, dead and grey in a puddle of his own blood—but an older Phil.
A living Phil, whose chest rose and fell with each regular breath.
Phil as he would have looked if he’d only been a little stronger. If he’d only dared
Fine lines etched Phil’s features, adding character, but detracting none from his classical good looks. Even the white that had threaded itself through Phil’s brown curls, didn’t make him look old.
Nick stretched his fingers, tentatively, to touch Phil’s curls. He remembered the soft tickle of Phil’s hair against his palm.
His hand touched only air. Nothing was there. Nothing. It was just an image of Phil.
It was another sign, Nick thought Another sign that he was supposed to end it all that night. He opened his case. He’d need water with these many pills.
Half-asleep, as Phil was, it had seemed perfectly rational hearing Nick come in. He’d often go for walks after Phil had gone to bed.
Lying in bed, Phil had heard Nick come in, and drop his boots and jacket, as he’d done so many times during their vacation together, or even before, in the apartment they’d shared through their college years.
He heard Nick’s walk across the floor, felt Nick standing by the bed.
What was he doing there, standing by the bed. Why didn’t he undress and get in bed?
Phil managed to wake enough to half-open his eyes and stare at Nicky.
Nicky looked pale and tense; older and terrified.
What did Nicky have to be so scared about?
Nick stood by the bed, fumbling with the catch of the box. It was so difficult to open it, so difficult to do this with Phil looking at him.
Would Phil have killed himself, had Nick been awake and watching?
He frowned at the image of Phil.
Phil stared back at him, surprised, confused. He looked half-asleep, a state that always made him morose.
Ghosts didn’t age. Yet Phil looked older—forty? forty-two?—as old as he would have been, if he’d stayed alive.
It was as if in some way Phil had gone on living.
In a world Nick couldn’t reach, Phil still lived and breathed.
By some miracle, Nick could see him. Maybe even, could communicate with him. He smiled at Phil.
Phil smiled back, a soft smile, and closed his eyes.
Nick thought of the closing sentence in Phil’s suicide letter, We’ll always be together in the songs you wrote for me.
They weren’t together.
And yet, maybe, in a way, they still were. They could see each other. He looked at Phil, who looked asleep, but smiled still.
They obviously could see each other.
Nick grimaced at the case of pills in his hands. The catch gave under his fingers. Nick stared at the pills inside. Years of oblivion. Hours of escape. All of it in this circular plastic case.
He looked at Phil, on the bed.
Phil had settled back to sleep, the way he always did, with his arms wrapped around the pillow, his face resting sideways on the soft folds.
A wave of warmth washed over Nick. Phil hadn’t left him forever.
If Nick killed himself, he’d be leaving Phil.
Nick couldn’t do that.
He walked back to the bathroom, shook the pills from the case into the toilet, flushed. He wouldn’t take these again. He wouldn’t need the crutch again. He would keep his career. He would keep his music. The music he’d written for Phil.
In some other world, in some unknown way, Phil would know about those songs; Phil would hear them.
As Nick undressed, he looked at the vintage radio in the corner. It was a beauty, just like his grandmother’s radio. Its wood case gleamed, waxed to a soft sheen.
Looking at it, Nick thought that maybe, just maybe
The music. Perhaps, the music could
Nick walked up to the radio, pushed the ivory buttons, changing stations, until his own voice, his own songs poured out. Advantages of being a star. Someone, somewhere, always played your music uninterrupted.
He set the volume to low, and went back to the bed, and lay down, and turned the lights off.
In the space between sleep and wakening, he felt Phil’s weight on the other side of the bed, heard Phil’s regular breath, felt Phil’s head come to rest on Nick’s shoulder, Phil’s soft brown curls tickling Nick’s bare skin.
Thy Vain Worlds
This story was born of a—Brazilian—song about heartbreak and abandoned women. I started thinking how some women and men are more vulnerable, more likely to fall for someone who’ll mistreat them or leave them behind. And then I thought that, even if we were masters of the universe, some of us would remain just as vulnerable.
At three p.m. the wind blew, lifting up the endless, red sands of the desert that surrounded the Earth-styled landscaped grounds of the recuperation home.
The ponderosa pines, planted eight deep in a ring around the gardens helped attempted in vain to protect the terran haven. But an attenuated breeze always made it past the trees, carrying sprays of sand that nestled on the manicured branches of the apple trees. Custodians at the home swept up buckets of the sand daily. Not even the tightly shut windows and magnetic screen doors could protect the shiny marble floors and the expensive wood furniture.
The custodians never complained. Gentle, faithful Sherzys, one of the first alien races discovered and contacted, they remained grateful to the humans who’d brought them civilization and science. They knew that every job, not matter how menial, brought them one rung closer to technology.
Kratrina Cryssa never complained, either. A high-strung blonde beauty of pure human extraction, she wore the exhausted look of one having her worst nightmares confirmed. Sitting under the apple tree outside the side door to the home, she pulled her yellow cotton dress away from her sweat-drenched body.
As the wind started and the sand fell like soft rain on the wicker table at which she sat and the three unoccupied chairs beside her, she wondered—not for the first time—why anyone would want to set a rest and recovery home in this desolate, nameless planet.
She swept the sand from her embroidery, held taut in a delicate wooden frame.
Why go through terraforming a useless piece of dirt to set on it a rest home for the emotionally fragile, when hundreds, thousands of habitable planets lay at the disposal of the few billion humans in the endless universe?
Other sentient races existed, but they didn’t measure up to humans. Not in civilization, not in science, not even in administrative capacity. Humans were the Lords of the Universe, so why set their therapeutic facility here? It was an old question, and Kratrina didn’t expect an answer. No one answered her questions any more. From the administrator of the home to her own father, every human she knew coddled Kratrina with comforting, meaningless pap.