4
We wait like sentinels at the end of the ferry ramp, watching the thin stream of foot passengers come across. The sun is sinking, tipping the waves with pink, but my mood is green – queasy and tinged with envy. It’s hard not to feel it, when your brother is Matt Lawless. (He took our mother’s maiden name. Macallan doesn’t have the same rock and roll ring as Lawless.)
I spot him coming down the ramp, hauling the wheeled suitcase we packed for him just three weeks ago. Three weeks, my ass. He was supposed to be in there for at least three months. Depending on the toughness of the nut in question the residential rehab can last as long as a year, and I know from experience that Matt is one of the toughest. You need insane levels of self-belief to get up on stage night after night, not knowing whether you’re going to be showered in roses and ladies’ underwear or hounded off stage by an ugly crowd determined to pelt you with bottles of their own urine. That swagger has served him well over the years, but he’s deployed it so many times that it’s hardened into an exoskeleton, and even if you can get past it, the person inside is so very, very sure of himself.
Out of nowhere, I want my mother.
“Hey,” says Matt, looking shiftily back and forth between Rocco and I. “What are you two doing here?”
“We thought we’d come meet you,” says Rocco. “How are you doing?”
Matt grins. “Cool. Clean and sober. Checked out.”
“Okay,” says Rocco, infuriatingly calm considering what’s at stake here.
“Okay?” I say. “Like it’s that easy?”
Matt shrugs. “Why not? I’m a fast learner. Just ‘cause things don’t come easy to you…”
Asshole. God, why does he do this? Why do I let him do this? My resentment flashes up so hot and fierce.
Rocco gives me a quick, warning look. “Why don’t we go and get a cup of coffee or something?” he says, taking the suitcase and leading the way back to my car.
“Coffee?” Matt snorts. “Fuck that. Do you know how much that rehab place costs? We need to be back in LA. Back in the studio. The contract’s on hold as it is, while you were sitting around in the desert getting all Zen and learning the art of motorcycle maintenance or whatever…”
There’s a snap in Rocco’s eyes at last, and I’m satisfied to see it. I’m not the only one Matt can bait.
“I was trying to keep from killing myself, actually,” says Rocco. “But yeah. Whatever.”
I slam the suitcase into the trunk and raise a sarcastic eyebrow. It’s a small thing, but it feels like a rebel flag. Everyone’s been tiptoeing around Matt for too long, and even the unvarnished truth about end stage liver failure hasn’t been enough to scare him straight. He still doesn’t believe it would ever happen to him, Matt Lawless. He doesn’t even remember being plain Matthew Macallan, let alone dropping the ego long enough to remember he has the same internal organs as the rest of us mere mortals. He’s too far gone, so why not kick the shit out of him a little?
But Rocco’s done it. Rocco’s last remark has somehow penetrated the shell, and for once my brother looks genuinely contrite.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m sorry. That came out all wrong.” He sighs. “I think it’s great you got clean, I really do. But you’re clean, I’m sober, and we need to get back and start doing what we do, otherwise what the hell is the point of us? Know what I’m saying?”
“Why don’t you let me buy you a cup of coffee?” says Rocco, with a calmness worthy of a hostage negotiator. “And we’ll talk about it.”
“Sure. Why not?” Matt gets into the passenger seat, unasked, and I’m seething again.
“Daniel,” Rocco takes hold of my elbow. “Just…look. I know you want to strangle him, and I don’t blame you, but anger is really unproductive in these situations. We cannot get mad at him and give him an excuse to go off on a bender.”
I take a couple of deep breaths. He’s right. Pissed as I am, I can’t be responsible – however indirectly – for my brother falling off the wagon.
We end up in a diner near the ferry terminal, a small, pale blue place full of Pinteresty driftwood arrangements and specials written up in opaque pastel chalks. Matt holds his coffee cup in front of him like a shield. He looks better, his eyes clearer and his hair streaked with new blond, probably from going outside to smoke. The stain between his first two fingers has deepened to a Malibu Ken tan and he flips a soft pack of smokes over and over on the table with the same restless junkie motion that I once observed in Rocco.
“Have you talked to Mom?” I ask.
Matt shakes his head. “No.”
“She’ll want to know that you’re out.”
“I’ll get to that,” he says, but he won’t, because he knows she’ll go apeshit.
Rocco leans forward, the sleeve of his coat riding up, exposing the tip of the dagger tattooed on his forearm. Every glimpse of skin bares something new and even now I can’t stop thinking about how I want to strip him naked and take him to bed like a book. Read the stories behind every last line of ink. And yes, the scars, too.
“Listen,” he says. “I need you to understand something.”
“Right,” says Matt, already guarded. “What?”
“I know that you feel like you’ve got this, but addiction is tricky like that. It will pull all kinds of shit to make you think you’re in control.”
Matt makes a noise like a coffee machine hissing. “Fff-uck. Jesus, Rocco – can you stop sounding like a fucking psychiatrist for five minutes?”
“He’s trying to help you,” I say.
Rocco ignores us both. He’s clearly thought about this piece and he’s going to say it, no matter what. “I was in control, Matt,” he says. “I was always in control. That time they had to pump me full of Narcan in Houston? I was in control. When I was draining pints of pus out of my thigh? I was in control.” His fingers move to the scar on his neck. “Even when I woke up in the ICU and found myself breathing through a hole in my throat right here, I was in control. I could handle my habit. I didn’t even use that often. I was just unlucky. That is what it tells you, Matt. Addiction invents reasons, but it will never, ever show you any mercy, because it has none. All it wants is for you to keep on feeding it. Keep on using.”
I forget how to breathe for a moment. I’m waiting for it to land. Please, let him listen.
Matt sighs. “That was heroin, Rocco,” he says, and my heart sinks. “I’m talking about a beer once in a while.”
“You never had a beer once in a while,” I say. “You’d roll out of bed and drink vodka.”
“Oh, like I’ve never held your head over a toilet.” He shakes his head. “You know, I always thought it was funny how your name means ‘God is my judge’, because you can be really fucking judgmental sometimes.”
Rocco looks alarmed, but I can’t help myself. “Sure. Yeah. It’s just me that has a problem with it. Just me and Mom, and Dad, and Meg, and Rocco…” And all the other people who showed up to your intervention. Jesus, why can’t he see this?
“Danny, I’ve got this, okay?” says Matt, spreading his hands. “I can handle this. What I can’t handle is that place.” He jerks a thumb in the general direction of the water. “I was going squirrelly in there.”
“What was wrong with it?” asks Rocco. “Did you have a problem with the staff? The treatment regime? What can we do to make this easier for you?”
My brother groans. “Dude, you have to stop. Seriously. You sound brainwashed lately. You’re like some kind of therapy robot.” He adopts a flat, tinny voice. “Beep boop – how does that make you feel?”
I feel Rocco’s thigh tense against mine.
“Come on,” says Matt. “When are you going to start sounding like your old self again, Rocky?”
Rocco takes a careful sip of coffee and looks him squarely in the eye. “I don’t know,” he says. “The person that I used to be had his thumb mashed down on the self-destruct button and a life expectancy of about six weeks, max.” He swallows and I’m suddenly afraid for him, because he’s so raw. “So, maybe it would be prudent not to be that person any more.”
Matt reaches across the table and takes hold of Rocco’s hand. The tenderness is unmacho and unexpected and I watch – half appalled – as my brother caresses the ends of his best friend’s fingers. Did they ever go to bed together?
“Your fingers are soft,” says Matt, and raises his eyes to meet Rocco’s. “Does this new person play guitar?”
The tension in Rocco’s body is such that I can feel it vibrate through the banquette seat. “I’m taking things one day at a time,” he says. “You know I can’t make any plans just yet.”
“Yay,” Matt deadpans. “Another fucking Twelve Step cliché. What if you’ve lost it, Rocco? What if the pain was the thing that made you so good at what you do?”
“Stop it,” I say, sickened by this new cruelty. He’s going back to rehab if I have to knock him out with sleeping pills and stuff him in a suitcase, because this…thing is not my brother. This is the remorseless monster that Rocco described, and it’s currently squatting in my brother’s body, smirking and snarling and resisting all attempts at eviction.
“Talk about clichés,” I say. “There are plenty of artists who manage to create without being fucked up on booze or drugs.”
Rocco gets up from the seat. He’s so pale I think he’s going to puke. “I need a cigarette,” he says, and snatches up Matt’s pack, lighter and all. He walks straight out, his back too stiff.
“You fucking asshole,” I say, too mad to hold it in any longer. “That’s his first cigarette in a month.”
“What are you? His nursemaid now?”
“I’m his friend.” And he wants me to be his lover. How’d you like them apples, bro? “What the hell was that, Matt? Why are you hurting him that way?”
“He’s not himself,” says Matt. “He’s a therapy robot. If he’s not playing, he’s not himself. You know how he is – music is his goddamn life. If he’s not playing he’s not healthy, Daniel. He’s a dead man walking. I know what he needs. He needs to be playing. He needs to be writing. That’s how we’re gonna get through this, not sitting around whining about our feelings.”
I smother a smile, weirdly relieved now that I get it. My brother is not a complete monster. He’s just kind of a dumbass. “I feel like there should be popcorn,” I say. “Because you are projecting like an IMAX right now.”
“What?”
“You,” I say, jabbing a finger at him. “You are the one who wants to work it out in a recording studio. You are the one who’s worried that his creativity is going to dry up if he can’t gargle a Joplin-sized bucket of Southern Comfort before every show. This isn’t about Rocco–”
“–yeah, I know. You always had a pathetic little crush on him–”
“–no. This isn’t about me, either. This is about you. These are your insecurities and you need to deal with them, but don’t you dare think about dumping them on Rocco right now, because he’s still damaged. Just go back to rehab and deal with your own shit–”
“–I don’t need rehab.”
“You do, Matt. For God’s sake, he explained this to you. You were there. You saw it all – all the naloxone and tracheotomies and abscesses. You tried to drunk drive him to the hospital and wound up in a car at the bottom of a swimming pool, for fuck’s sake. Just because he used a harder substance doesn’t mean that the basic anatomy of addiction is any different. No, don’t fucking roll your eyes at me like a brat – he knows, Matt. And he loves you. Just like I love you, although God knows I wonder if you deserve it sometimes. All we want is for you to get well.”
I’m crying – hard, angry tears again - but I may as well be watering a brick wall with them.
“I am well,” he says. “I’m getting there. And I’ll do much better on my own.”
“You won’t. Do you know the statistics? People who check out of rehab early usually relapse within twenty-four hours.”
“Statistics? Really?”
“Three weeks of sobriety down the shitter. Are you ready for that when you give in and reach for the bottle?”
“I’m not going to, Daniel.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No,” he says. “But apparently you know I’m going to do the opposite. What are you? A fucking prophet now? Oh – wait, no. You don’t need to be. Because you have statistics.”
“Bitch all you want. The data doesn’t lie.”
He rubs his forehead. “Oh my God, how do you manage to be a nerd even now? For the last time, Daniel, I’m not going to relapse.”
“You will.”
“I won’t.”
“You so will.”
“I so won’t.”
“I’ll tell Mom,” I say, regressing by the second.
He laughs out loud. “Oh, you fuckin’ baby.”
“You started it,” I say, taking out my phone. “I mean it. I’ll do it. I’ll tell her you left rehab early.”
“Okay, don’t do that,” he says, and I can tell by his conciliatory tone that I’ve won. I’ve won in the dumbest, most childish way imaginable, but I’ve won. At least this round. “You’ll only upset her.”
“No. You will. After everything she said to you, you couldn’t even try to stay the course? She’s going to be pissed, Matt. At you.”
He sighs and gives me a look of absolute disgust. “You little fucking snitch.”
“Please,” I say.
Matt shakes his head. “You always were a Momma’s boy. You know that, don’t you?”
“Are you going back to rehab?”
He nods and I have a hard time concealing my grin. The doorbell jangles and Rocco comes back in, looking beaten but still beautiful.
“He’s going,” I announce, putting the phone away.
Rocco exhales. “Are you serious?” he asks Matt, who nods again. Rocco holds out his arms. “Come here, dumbass.”
Matt stands and accepts the embrace. “I’m so proud of you right now,” says Rocco. “You’re doing the right thing. You have to know that.”
Matt sighs, embarrassed by all this emotion. “Yeah, yeah.”
“No, I’m serious. I love you, man. I want to see you get through this.”
“Sure. Like you’d ever let me hear the end of it if I bailed.”
Rocco slaps him on the upper arm. “You got that right. Now, let’s get your ass back on that boat.”
We take the last ferry and drop Matt off at the rehab, a nighttime rerun of the last time we stood in the white, well-scrubbed lobby and dropped him off with kisses, encouragement and packets of smokes.
It’s only when we get back into the car that I realize how hard we’ve been smiling since Matt said yes. My face aches the moment I stop, and Rocco sinks down in the passenger seat with a sigh. “Well,” he says. “That sure was a thing.”
“Yep.”
He closes his eyes. The lids look as delicate as flower petals in the dashboard light, and for the first time I can see the beginnings of the fine lines that hard drugs and hard living have left on his face. He’s been lucky so far, as though his prematurely gray hair was taking the knocks for his face in some kind of Dorian Gray deal, but right now he looks exhausted.
“I don’t know how you did it,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose with a forefinger and thumb. “But thank God you did.”
“I threatened to tell Mom.”
He lets out a small laugh. “Oof.”
“I know. I was desperate.”
“It worked. That’s the main thing.”
It’s starting to rain. We’re alone again and that room with the lilacs feels as though it’s light years away. The taste of his tongue is already slipping from my memory, as it must. I know that now. It was a moment of beautiful madness, and it has to stay that way, for his sake.
“Do you think he’ll stay this time?” says Rocco.
“I don’t know. Maybe not, but I can’t think about that right now. I need to get some sleep.”
“We missed the last boat.”
“I know. I booked us a motel.” He darts me a sidelong look, a beam of his old flirtatiousness breaking through the fog of exhaustion. I try to smile, to play it off as no big deal. “Separate rooms.”
“Why?” His voice is low and thrilling. He deserves an answer, but my gaze keeps being drawn back to his mouth, and my brain lights up when I remember the soft, wet sounds his tongue made when it was swirling around mine.
“You know why,” I say, before I say something really stupid. “Matt was right. You’re damaged, Rocco. I’m so afraid of hurting you. Of how you’d cope with that. Or not. It’s like you said – we’d be playing with fire.”
He stares at the rain now sluicing down the windshield. It would be so easy to give in right now. Just drive over to the motel, check in and tumble between the sheets with him.
“Goddamn it,” he says, and the sigh in his voice makes me hate myself for making my point so well. “Why’d you have to be so fucking smart?”
I hold out my hand, and he takes it. I want the touch to assuage the ache inside of me, but I think it only inflames it. “It’s not that I don’t want you,” I say, not trusting myself to look at him. “Because I want you so much that it scares me.”
“I know.” His fingers lace with mine. Like me, he looks straight ahead. “I’m afraid, too. I never expected this. Growing up you were this super smart little kid, and now you’re…I don’t know. You’re different. I’m different.” He looks over at me and the yearning in his eyes is almost painful, because it’s so much like a fantasy. “In a weird kind of way I feel like this was always meant to happen.”
Sure I’m about to crack and kiss him, I quickly raise his hand to my mouth. I press a long, hard kiss to the inside of his wrist. His fingers brush my earlobe and trace the line of my jaw and I hang there. I think I could die from the desire to keep on touching him.
“We can be friends,” I say, reluctantly pushing his hand away. “Let’s be friends. You’ve done seven months sober. Do another five and then maybe we’ll talk–”
“–no, another five and we’ll fuck, Daniel.” He says it with a juicy, shameless emphasis that makes me even hungrier. “I hardly even know what to do, but once you show me…” His fingertips brush the back of my hand. “I’m a good lover. At least, I was, sometime back in the Cretaceous Period…”
That makes me laugh, and I’m grateful for the break in the tension, even if his sweetness hurts my heart.
“…it’s been so long,” he says. “And I’ve felt like a dead person. I want to feel alive again, the way I felt today when all I could smell was lilacs and all I could taste was you.”
This is torture. “Rocco,” I say, and it’s one of the hardest things in the world. “Don’t you see? Right there. I can’t be your new drug.”
He squeezes my hand and sighs long and hard. Once again I get the sense that I’ve made my point a little too well.
*
It’s at times like these that an overactive imagination is a blessing.
I’ve pictured myself in Antarctica, in the foothills of the Himalayas and the bath-warm waters around Papua New Guinea. Now I’m back in the bedroom of my new house, in a new bed – a romantic brass affair with white linen sheets. The thick, heady perfume of lilacs only adds to my delirium as I work my way – inch by inch, kiss by kiss – down the length of Rocco’s spine.
He’s sprawled naked on his stomach, his legs apart and his skin still salty with the sweat from round one.
“You’re going to love this,” I promise, as my tongue teases the top of the crease.
And that’s as far as I get, because my phone bloops, returning me back to the confines of a motel room about ten miles from Olalla. Twenty miles from where my brother is probably once again saying no, no, no to rehab with apparently no awareness of just how well that decision worked out for poor Amy Winehouse.
It’s half past one in the morning. I brace myself, expecting more bullshit from Matt. But it’s not. It’s a text from Rocco, nextdoor. One word.
please
I sigh, half mad, half despairing. Does he even know what he’s asking for? I’ve got a good mind to just send him a dick pic and show him. We’ve all heard the stories of those bicurious boys who want to kiss and snuggle and hold hands with another man, but as soon as an actual penis enters the equation they realize they weren’t so curious after all and scurry on back to their girlfriends.
This isn’t fair. I’ve been lying here for over an hour, spinning elaborate sexual fantasies to keep my mind from the other thing it wants to do, which is making long mental checklists of reasons why I should just go nextdoor and fuck Rocco. We’ve talked about this. Why won’t he let it go?
Deep down I know why. And it’s the same reason I can’t. I switch on the bedside light, casting an ugly dim glow over the bed, and toss back the covers. It’s like there’s a devil squatting on my shoulder whispering do it, do it, do it. Maybe I should film myself masturbating for him. Whatever happens – whether he’s here or not – I need to come: my cock is so hard that there’s a bead of fluid at the tip. As soon as I touch myself my hips surge up from the bed. My other hand shakes as I raise the camera phone. Shit, the angle’s all wrong. I quickly bunch the pillows behind my back and sit up. My t-shirt is in the way and I tear it off, so that the next time I see myself in the viewfinder I’m fully naked, cock in hand, my cheeks already pink and my eyes dark and slutty. Am I really going to do this? It’s completely insane and I’ve never been so fucking horny in my life.
Somehow my thumb finds the button. Click.
This is where I should stop, but I don’t. That devil is chanting send, send, send now, and I know if I don’t do it now I never will. I shut off the camera and sit there, trembling, astonished at what I’ve just done.
I hear him moving in the room nextdoor. The door opens. I get up, still naked, and open my own door just a crack. Rocco surges through it before I even have time to breathe. His tongue is in my mouth and his hands are all over me and it’s okay, because it’s not real. It can’t possibly be real because nothing this good happens in real life.
He closes the door with his foot and I land on the bed, my legs open and my cock standing up between them. Rocco’s shirtless, all ribs and tattoos, breathing hard as he tears open the fly of his jeans. “Oh, you sweet fucking…” he says, and there it is. Rocco’s dick. My promised land. It’s sleek and veiny and I want it more than air right now.
“Please,” I moan, reaching for him, but he’s still shaking his jeans from his bare feet.
“Wait,” he says. “I wanna lick it.” Or at least that’s what I think he says. And then he does. So much for trying to spook his bicurious side. He just bends right down and licks me from root to tip.
“Oh my God, what are you doing?” I say, as if I’m the clueless one. He scrambles up over me.
“I have no idea,” he says, with a small, sexy smile that’s so totally him that I’m once again all saucer eyes and thrusting hips. His mouth is on mine and he does know what he’s doing. He must know what he’s doing, because he’s fucking me. He’s pounding against me and I’m rising to meet him, my cock somehow finding the perfect friction, the brush of his pubes rough against me.
“We have to stop,” I say, between gasping kisses. Oh God, his tongue tastes incredible. “We have to stop or I’m gonna…”
Too late. I come in a sudden rush, spurting between us so that everything is slippery and messy and oh so good. Rocco pulls back a little to look down, like he can’t believe he made me come so fast, and I quickly take the opportunity to grab his dick. I’ve wanted him in my hand forever and the way he cries out at my touch sends an aftershock of lust through my still twitching body.
“That’s it,” I say, pulling him towards the edge. “Come on. Come all over me.”“That’s it,” I say, pulling him towards the edge. “Come on. Come all over me.”
“Oh Jesus, Daniel,” he whispers, like a wet dream. And then he comes, hot and sticky and shuddery. He falls into my arms, open mouthed, and I wrap my thighs around him, stunned, shocked and thrilled to the bone.