Conner kicked his feet out of his pants, walked over to the narrow closet across from the bathroom, and put them on a hanger.
“Don’t think about that cop, Jack. He’s not going to do anything to us. We didn’t do anything wrong, okay?”
“Okay.”
He pulled a pair of running shorts on over his boxers and sat down to lace his shoes.
“So, were you shitting Ben and Griff, or do you really not know where the lens is?”
If I stayed there much longer, I was certain we would get into a fistfight. And I never wanted to fight with Conner again.
So I turned around and made my way down the short hallway beside our bathroom. Conner left the closet door open. Inside, there was a folding ironing board, a safe, two thick terry-cloth bathrobes, and one of those webbed racks you put suitcases on. I saw Conner’s pants and a dozen empty wooden hangers lined up like teeth on a chrome rod that spanned the width of the closet.
It looked strong enough to support my weight.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
* * *
We ran around Regent’s Park, just like we did together so many times in early summer.
The air felt cool and damp. Everything smelled like wet rotting leaves.
For the first few miles, we didn’t say anything. I tried to stay in front of him, position myself so I wouldn’t have to look at Conner; and he kept trying to slow us down, to block me with his shoulder, running me into hedges and the short fences that were set up in places to keep people off the grass.
When Conner and I ran together, we didn’t have to say the words out loud. Sometimes just our pace or position told the other guy exactly what we were thinking.
I felt like shit, and Conner wanted to play.
I had missed him, missed this world, Nickie, so much. But now, all I could think about was getting away from it all—being left completely alone. Alone in a way that I would never bother, or be bothered by, anyone else.
And I could do it now, too.
I’d gotten them home.
Off the hook.
I needed to be left alone now.
Fuck you, Conner.
Fuck you, Jack.
Fuck this place.
As I ran, I pictured the strings, the burning clump of grass Davey fanned smoke from on a hot autumn afternoon in Pope Valley, the nesting dolls that Stella collected; and it dawned on me that every time I had skipped around—jumped onto another string, or deeper into another layer—that whether coming or going, there was always some little thing, here or there, that was almost unnoticeably different.
But things always changed.
When an echo comes back to you, the song is always different.
It was why the pictures disappeared from my camera back in June, and why Conner saw Henry sometimes, but other times it was like Henry didn’t even exist.
So maybe I’d never gotten back home to begin with.
From the very first time I went to Marbury, things got moved, rearranged. And once those things shifted the slightest bit, they never went back to exactly the same spots they’d come from.
That’s what I thought.
Conner elbowed me below the ribs.
That was it.
We stopped running.
I shoved him. Hard. I wanted to punch him so bad I was shaking. Both my hands tightened in fists. Of course he saw it.
“What the fuck, Con?”
He shook his head; his brow tightened up like I was speaking a different language.
“What’s wrong with you, Jack?”
“Stop fucking with me! Leave me the fuck alone!”
Conner’s tone was pleading. “What’d I do, Jack? Tell me what I did.”
I spun around, away from Conner, and threw a wild hook punch at the air. Then I put my hands on top of my head, squeezing, pulling my hair.
“What is fucking wrong with me?”
I wasn’t asking Conner. I was just sending the words out across the slate surface of the lake, skipping like stones, going nowhere but down. I didn’t even want an answer, and Conner knew it.
So we stood there like that for the longest time, absolutely silent except for the panting breaths we gulped. And I think Conner was starting to get scared too.
“I’m sorry, Con.”
He stepped toward me. I didn’t see him, but I could feel his heat as he got close. Finally, he put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed me tight. He was sweating.
I said, “Dude. You fucking reek like BO.”
He gripped my bicep and pulled me in to him.
“It’s all okay, Jack. I’m not fucking with you. We’re here. Safe. Together. Everything is good now. Finally, dude. We made it. I swear to God, everything’s good now.”
I swallowed a lump and nodded.
“What if—”
Conner cut me off. “There is no what if, Jack. This is fucking it. I promise.”
He patted his hand on the back of my neck.
“This can be it, Jack.”
“You think?”
“It’s good enough for me, bud.”
The sky began darkening again. It would rain soon.
And Conner said, “Don’t you think this is far enough? Let’s go get drunk out of our fucking minds.”
This is it.
* * *
Conner didn’t say anything else about the things that were eating us inside.
He just made small talk and teased me, picked on Jack like he always did, calling me gay, testing me.
And we didn’t even clean up. Sweaty and stinking, we got dressed in the same jeans we’d worn on the train, slipped into our T-shirts and pullovers.
Conner put on his wool cap, and said, “There!” like we were racing each other out the door or something; and I just let my damp hair hang in darkened strings that went past my eyes.
It didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered.
Because this was it.
And I knew what I needed to do.
I had a plan.
As soon as we shut the door behind us, I took out my phone.
Conner asked, “Nickie?”
“No. I owe someone a beer.”
We walked to The Prince of Wales.
thirty-four
By the time Henry Hewitt showed up, Conner and I were drunk.
The place was noisy and alive.
I didn’t even try to pace myself with the drinking. I wanted to poison every fear I held on to, work up the courage to finally let go of everything Jack kept balled up in the center of his fucked universe.
Conner laughed. “You know? You know what Gino fucking Genovese and Ethan call this? They say this is getting piss maggot drunk, Jack. We are piss maggoted.”
He stood up, sat, and stood again, wavering unsteadily while he carried our empty pint glasses to the bar for refills.
And that’s when Henry walked in.
Conner glanced at the door one time, but didn’t pay any attention to Henry at all. He turned back to the bartender and noisily ordered another round for us.
I waved and held three fingers up, then pointed to the man at the door.
“Make it three.”
It was almost funny to me, how after all this time when they’d both been so important in my life—in my worlds—Conner and Henry had never yet spoken to each other, sat face-to-face. And now that they were finally here together, it was almost like I could rest my case once and for all that this—whatever this was—was real.
I was the worm and I was the hole. We all were—me, Conner, Ben and Griffin, Henry, Seth, and Ethan, too. But I was the King of Marbury. Somehow I’d been chosen to go through, as Henry was chosen before me. And every time I did it, I fooled myself into thinking, This is it, but I never once got back to a place I’d been before.
I never fucking got us back home.
Maybe I was just drunk, but as I sat there in The Prince of Wales, I decided that the reason I never told anyone except Conner about what Freddie Horvath did to me was that I believed everyone else would think it was my fault.
Everything was Jack’s fault.
But this could be it.