Work Text:
Reese’s neck’s got a crick from holding the phone between his ear and shoulder too long. With his hands, he’s lighting matches. Strike, hiss. He lets them all burn down to his fingertips. Every light in the house is on and his thumb and finger thrum with dull pain. He left the TV going nearby. His ankle pangs from jumping off the roof of the minimart the other day. One of the matches bends like a snapped neck instead of catching and he grits his teeth and kicks the nearest chair. Its leg splinters straight in half.
“—and look, I’m not saying I’ve done more than the normal amount of research into this but homoerotic boudoir photography is a very lucrative industry! But here’s Jared, as usual, talking about how he’s going to be a combat photographer. I said, ‘Really, Jared? Are we calling it combat now?’ He’s going to have to do some major editing to his portfolio if he doesn’t want—“
Reese shuts one eye and squints the other. A Burger King ad is playing on the TV. Krazy Glue? Do they own Krazy Glue? Elmer’s Glue. Malcolm’s stupid model airplane glue. “There are combat photographers? Like you get to take pictures of explosions and dead bodies with the limbs hanging off?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess. Jared’s very interested in dying for his art lately. I try not to ask about it.” He’s getting that limp space between his words that means he’s bored. It used to be when he got bored with Reese like that, Reese would suggest something to break. It’s hard to break stuff together states apart.
He goes with, “Do you think I could be a combat photographer?”
“I don’t know. It sounds pretty stupid. Where did you say the rest of the family went?”
Reese shrugs the shoulder holding the phone in place and it slips free. There’s a tense struggle for him to catch it out of the air but he gets there. He drops all his matches. When he’s got the phone against his ear again, Francis is shouting something to someone in Alabama and he doesn’t sound bored anymore. He sounds. It’s like nice but different. Nicer. Reese doesn’t know the word. Cloudy?
“Oh, they had to take Dewey to the emergency room because he swallowed an action figure. I think it might have punctured something.”
Francis is talking not in a bored way at all now but Reese was in the middle of lighting a match when he dropped them all and the toe of his sneaker is on fire. Probably because of the gasoline from earlier. He watches. It’s the least fire he’s ever been on not counting the times he hasn’t been on fire at all.
The next time Francis comes home, he leaves his backpack on the couch when he goes out to meet Richie and Animal for, “Oh, you know, the usual. Boggle. Ice cream sodas. A rousing time with the little old church ladies.” Reese doesn’t want to go through Francis’ stuff. He doesn’t want to at all. But then he’s in the bathroom with the door locked and the contents of Francis’ backpack all over the floor.
There are some shirts and underwear, crumpled papers, three cigarettes rattling around in an empty Junior Mints box, two Polaroids, a pair of pliers, and a wad of grayish gum that left a little of its residue on everything else. Reese pops the gum into his mouth.
One of the Polaroids is of two guys wrestling somewhere dark and dingy. Their form isn’t great but it’s not bad either. The bald black guy is clearly winning. The muscles on his arms are intense and so are his eyebrows, angled sharply down and in. He’s gazing into the camera, smirking, but not in the way Reese wishes his own mouth didn’t look when he’s winning a fight, too big and happy. Instead, he looks like he thinks he’s better than everyone but because he actually is and not faking it. The guy underneath him has his hand up like he’s trying to block the camera.
In the other photo, the winner has his arm around Francis’ shoulders. He’s shorter than Reese guessed. He and Francis would be the same size if Francis weren’t slouching, leaning back against him and rolling his eyes. His uniform shirt is wrinkled and untucked, sleeves rolled up, but the other guy looks sharp and neat. It says, “Stanley and Francis” in permanent marker at the bottom of the photo.
Francis has mentioned Stanley. Stanley’s his roommate, who Francis says takes the whole macho military man thing a little too seriously, if you want his opinion.
Reese would maim a person—or maybe he wouldn’t but the art teacher said he would one day—to have a roommate as cool as Stanley instead of Malcolm. Even if he still has to share a bed. Francis and Stanley probably don’t share a bed. Unless it’s cold in Alabama. Reese has never been and so can’t say with total certainty that it’s not.
Malcolm knocks on the door. “Come on, Reese. What are you doing in there?”
“Nothing! I’m doing normal, private stuff so why don’t you just shut up! Shut up and leave me alone!”
Malcolm rattles the knob and says, “Reese!”
Reese spits the gum back into the backpack and starts stuffing the other things back in too. But somehow, the photo of the two guys wrestling doesn’t end up in the backpack. It ends up down the front of his jeans, and it’s still there when he bursts out of the bathroom sudden enough to slam Malcolm into his desk.
It’s weird to him later that the need to get away with the bag before Malcolm knew what he was doing was stronger than the need to stay and point and laugh at Malcolm’s fall.
Sitting on the spot on the curb he likes most, he wonders if he should go inside and laugh like it just happened. It’s been hours. The sun is setting and it’s prettier than usual tonight. The way the orange and the blue come together should be violent, but it makes something feel tight inside his heart. It’s a sunset that could be in a movie. He leans forward to see it—not better, but differently. He remembers the stolen photo when it jabs him in the thigh.
Getting his whole hand down his jeans without undoing them is only kind of hard, but getting his hand back out once it’s clawed up around the photo is harder. He manages, though, his eyes on the sunset the whole time.
The photo has one new crease, across Stanley’s flexed bicep. Reese tries to worry it flat with his thumbnail. His skin prickles and he winces when the jagged edge catches. He folds his knees closer to his chest and puts the photo safely in the small space his body’s curled around. He lets it wait for him. There might never be another sunset this amazing. Far off to one side, the sky is turning pink as a girl’s gel pen.
He should have put it back. He shouldn’t have let it get ruined. If he keeps it, Mom will find it and want to know why he has it. Or she’ll throw it out. His shoulders tense on their own.
When the sky is flat blue-black, he stands up and goes into the garage. He takes some big garden shears and cuts the photo into four pieces.
One by one, he eats them.
Dinner was ketchup casserole. Even though it was ketchup from a bottle, not from fast food packets, the photo is so much better.
Somewhere far behind them, Malcolm’s lying on his back with his hands over his eyes, groaning like they didn’t just see the most badass fireworks display of the century (This doesn’t matter. It’s just stupid).
Dude ranches get chilly at night. Reese can feel it in his teeth, under his fingernails, on the backs of his arms. He tries to make himself warmer by thinking about bright bursting red and orange. He thinks light and sizzle. His vision came back faster than he thought it would. All that’s left is a sharp hurt in his skull.
He and Francis are both leaning back, propped up on their elbows, still watching the sky like there’s anything there. There is. There are stars. They’re everywhere. Malcolm said something once when they were little about how most of them are dead by now. They look fine. They look small. Reese feels enormous.
Next to him, Francis chews on a blade of grass he didn’t have a minute ago. His smile is wide and his eyes are quiet. His face is different when he’s here. Before, Reese thought it was just meanness, but it’s something else. It’s something Reese never sees in the mirror: the possibility that he isn’t about to explode.
“You’re actually happy here, aren’t you?” Reese says.
Francis laughs. “Yeah, I think you’re right.” Some kind of bug somewhere makes some kind of noise. “For the first time, I think I feel. Free. And it’s not just the fresh air or the majestic horses or not living in a dystopian fascist indoctrination hell world.” Reese squints at him, but Francis is still smiling at the stars. “Piama gets it, you know?”
None of Reese’s girlfriends so far have gotten it. Gotten what? He picks up a dirt clod. He crushes it in his fist and it crumble-oozes through his fingers.
“Look, Reese. You can never let Mom know that you know this, but more than one of us is allowed to be happy.”
“I know that.” He wants to lick the dirt off his palm but doesn’t want Francis to see.
Without looking, Francis reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. His hand drops. “It’s not a bad thing to want things for yourself.”
It is. It is. It is. He wipes the dirt off on his knee.
Reese is twenty-two and still hasn’t learned how to dress for winter. To be fair to him, in his memory, the dude ranch was like a movie of a man trapped in the desert without water; it glittered like a mirage. He packed almost nothing, imagining his skin against baked earth. Now, his skin against the earth is about to freeze through the thin cotton of his muscle tee. Any sweat would turn into icicles.
There are still traces of Francis all over the place, like the ten photos of his face on the Employee of the Month wall. Actually, that’s it. Otherwise, it’s like him working here was only ever a fairy tale. It was only ever something Reese told himself when he felt trapped at night.
In the fairy tale, this is the spot where they set off the fireworks. It could really be. It could really not be. It’s all just dirt and stars.
It’s February. Francis and Piama run a bed and breakfast in California. Reese has never been. He hugs his own aching body. The bugs are quiet in the cold.
Far off, someone laughs. It’s a rough sound, thick and hot as five alarm chili. Rolling onto his side and curling up like a pill bug, Reese looks for where it came from. In the distance, there are two cowboy hats. Two men are wearing them. He makes finger guns and whispers, “Pow pow,” through his chattering teeth.
All his clothes are dark and theirs are bright, a red shirt and a sky-blue shirt, sandy hats, sun-bleached jeans. Some kind of sweaters. They’re still very small from where he is.
One of the cowboys kisses the other.
Reese digs his nails into his calves.
In the morning, he calls Francis on his flip phone. Francis says, “I’m sorry, Reese, but we’re kind of swamped right now.”
Reese says, “There are gay cowboys on the dude ranch now.”
Francis doesn’t reply and Reese checks to make sure he still has a signal. One bar.
“Reese, come on,” Francis says. He doesn’t not sound like he’s going to cry.
Reese says, “What? I thought you should know.”
Francis says, “Reese, how many years has it been?”
A loose thread hangs off the side of his inn bed quilt. He wraps it around his finger and tugs. The air is stuffy. “Your photo’s all over the place.”
Francis sighs. “Look, I know I said we’re swamped, but you can call me any time. Or you can come visit. I’ll buy you a ticket to San Francisco.”
“Yeah. Yeah. I’m not stupid.” He yanks on the thread as hard as he can. It snaps off. He holds his finger up to his face, the string still wrapped tight around the flesh. It’s cutting off his circulation. “I’m sorry for bothering you at work.” He knows his voice is faint. He’s never been able to control that. He flips the phone closed before Francis can say anything. His whole finger throbs with blood.