Austin Bunn - The Brink - Stories

“I’ve done ketamine,” Spike tells Bodi. “And I can tell you it is so deeply fucked up that I can’t even tell you.”

Henry stands with them, corralled as the witness, watching Van mix with the crowd in the living room. The fact that his friend, his possession, is socializing with others bothers him immeasurably. “Can I go?” he asks, and it triggers Spike’s sense of action.

“We need to talk to this woman tonight.”

“That’s absurd,” Bodi says.

And Spike answers, eyebrows raised, “Really? You want to tell me about absurd?” and Henry glimpses into their private dynamic, the corners of dismissal and condescension. As he edges away, leaving them to argue, the last thing he hears is Spike saying, with vivifying power, “If we bring the police into this, we look like cowards, and this gay man is not a coward,” and Bodi replying, “Would you stop saying ‘ this gay man ,’ please?”

In the parlor, Van sits on the floor, rubbing his eyes. His shirtsleeves are rolled back and, in the firelight, his forearms look lathed, crafted, tended to. Van pats the back of Henry’s calf, a contact that blooms.

“So are you Henry’s boyfriend?” Ronnie asks.

“I’m more of an evacuation team,” Van answers. A flask sheathed in leather nestles between his legs. “Is somebody going to explain the writing on the outside of this place?”

“Drinking’s not allowed,” Henry says.

“Yeah, well,” Doug says, nabbing the flask, “this whole weekend is off the handle.” He drinks and dashes it back to Van when Bodi approaches.

With a tight, dark expression — a coerced look Henry recognizes from his own marriage — Bodi explains that they’re going out, to meet this woman and try to resolve things. Ronnie tells him that they’re crazy to leave, but Spike will not be delayed.

“The roads are nutsy,” Van says. “But do what you gotta do.”

Bodi turns to Henry. “I’m asking you to be in charge while we’re gone. And please everyone stay inside.” Another job Henry didn’t ask for, does not want. The two men gather their jackets and are gone. Left to themselves, the men look at each other tentatively, as though some central part of the architecture — the force holding them, and the entire situation, together — had just been removed.

“Can we talk for a minute?” Henry says to Van. “In my room.”

“ Our room,” Jed says.

On the stairs, Van slinks behind him, which makes Henry feel like a scold. Once in the garret, Van stretches out on the bed, his eyes red and raw. “You wouldn’t believe the roads,” he says. “Remember that production of A Christmas Carol where the snow-rigging broke? And like mounds of it ended up on the stage?” He pulls his legs to his chest, one at a time, to stretch them, as though he’d come from some exertion.

“Are you high?” Henry asks.

Van stops and considers the ceiling. “God, Mrs. Cratchit had great tits.”

“Drunk and high?”

Van sits up on the edge of the bed and nods solemnly. “I know, I’m a disaster.”

Henry sits across from him. Van is living in the same pair of corduroys, same plaid shirt he last saw him in.

“Why did you come?” Henry asks, hoping for one kind of answer.

“I was going out of my mind in my place,” Van says. “You gave me a mission.”

Van rises and casually sifts through the closet. Out comes a stack of handkerchiefs in different colors. “Is there some kind of karate belt system for gay dudes that I’m not aware of?”

“They’re my roommate’s,” Henry says, finding relief in a subject that is not either of them. “Jed.”

“Which one’s Jed?”

“The drugged-up little monster. I’m sure you saw him.”

Van pulls a brown pill bottle from the closet and examines the label. With a whistle, he says, “Haldol. This is the serious shit.”

At that, Henry sees the door crack open and Jed lets himself in, without knocking. Van tries to shove the pills back into the closet.

“What are you doing?” Jed asks.

“I’m looking for. .” Van says, “this.” It is an iron.

Jed goes to his mattress and stares at them both emptily. “It’s late. What are you trying to iron?”

Van tests its weight in his hand. “Just wanted to know if there was one. Make and model.”

Van is not a good liar when he’s sober, but intoxicated, he’s pathetic. Jed goes to the closet and studies his shelf for damage. “You weren’t looking for that. You were going through my things.”

“Oh, come on, Jed,” Henry says. “He’s just goofing around.”

“You just called me a drugged-up monster. I heard you.”

Henry sighs. He and Jed, the oldest and the youngest, are the two last boys to be picked for the team, and they need to band together. “We’re all trying here,” Henry says, but trying for what? To be themselves, finally, and it is goddamn exhausting.

“I’m going to take a walk,” Jed says.

It’s plainly a bad idea, but Henry wants his time with Van, and he won’t stop him.

“Knock yourself out,” Van says.

Once Jed is gone — they listen for his footsteps on the stairs — Henry whispers, “You see what this place is like.”

Van lies on the bed, against Henry, oblivious to his power. “Maybe it’s good for you,” he says. “We both know you need to get over me.” And the shock of its delivery detonates. All these months, Van knew his secret desire and now speaks it aloud like a boring headline.

Henry wills himself to grab for what he loves. He rests his hand on Van’s knee, the closest he can come. “I don’t think that’s true.”

Van pats Henry’s hand. “I’m on the wrong team, buddy.”

Henry feels the moment between them dilating, narrowing to a point. “I don’t think you’re on anybody’s team.”

Van lifts Henry’s hand off his thigh and deposits it on the mattress. “And now I will avail myself of a libation,” he says, and heads out. Henry hammers his pillow. The question that he came up here to answer — who can I love? — is not a question after all. It is an impossibility. The downstairs phone rings and continues to ring. Henry yells for someone to answer it. Finally, the ringing stops, and in the silence, he hears music.

Downstairs, the men are missing, but the door into Spike and Bodi’s private area is open. From inside comes the murmur of voices and a heavy muddle of incense. He enters, through a long hallway, which opens to a living room where Van and the others have collected, sipping from coffee cups. The room is cramped, more like a passageway converted into a parlor, with Van smoking a joint in an overbuilt recliner in the center of the room, like a cockpit for television consumption. Ronnie attends to the stereo, setting a Judy Collins song on the turntable, while Doug, sways back and forth on a loveseat, mouthing the lyrics.

“Welcome, Chief,” Van says coolly, and offers him a toke. Henry grits his teeth and tries to stare accountability into him.

“This is a really bad idea,” Henry says.

Ronnie combs through the LPs. “This really might be the gayest record collection on the planet.”

“Is there any Cher?” Doug says with his eyes closed. “Please let there be Cher.”

As a stage manager, Henry is known for his quiet control and firm hand, but now he sees the fantasy of it. He has no intrinsic authority, only what is given to him. So he takes a seat on the couch next to Doug and surrenders. When Doug passes the joint, Henry takes a single, ferocious inhale, welcoming the chance for a new personality.

“So Van, if you’re not Henry’s boyfriend,” Ronnie asks, “are you anybody’s boyfriend?”

Van grins and there’s this one crazy tooth that can still break Henry’s loyal heart. It’s as if he wants to pass here, among them. Ronnie swings around to Van’s side and gives Van a shoulder massage with a boldness Henry can only imagine. “You know you have great hair,” Ronnie says. “It’s muy Pirates of Penzance .” The recliner shifts back another notch, setting Van more prone.