He felt the flash in my hand and squeezed it. "We never stopped being friends, we just stopped talking." Ok, maybe not. "We're friends now, Brennan."

"I want to be friends for longer than 'now'."

"I don't think anybody will let us get married."

He dismissed my witticism and stared hard at me. "Will you promise me something?"

My eyes wavered. "I'm not good at keeping promises. You know."

"Make me one anyway." I nodded with hesitation. I think I knew what was coming. "I think strength is all about gentleness, in being able to cry or to forgive someone, forgiving your own self especially."

"And I don't?"

"No. You see strength like it's some kind of war you'd rather die fighting in than lose. To you, strength is any kind of sc.r.a.p you can lay your hands on and win. Maybe that's why we love each other so much." He made himself blush. "At least, that's why I love you so much. You're what I'm not, and what I can't be. The same is true for you."

"What do you want me to promise, Brennan, to love you?"

"No. You've done...you do that." We looked into each other's eyes as if the rest our lives might be there. The rest of the world didnt matter. Time didnt matter. All seventeen years each had wound down to that place that night, that room and that bed. "I don't want you to be a peacenik. Its not you. But if anyone offers you peace, then I want you to promise me, please, that you'll accept it. Okay? Do you promise?"

Take peace instead of making it, huh? I wasn't sure why peace between me and Felix was so important to Brennan, not having read The McGuffin Letter and all. But I made the promise anyway. Maybe it would give Brennan some kind of moral victory to help him heal faster. "OK, OK, I promise."

It was an easy promise to make. Felix has indefatigably sent me a birthday card that had arrived a few days before. He invited the two of us to visit him and his family down in New Mexico. Id decided to make the trip Brennan's Christmas present.

Brennan didn't make me promise to forgive anyone else, however.

Evidently, a number of local school board members received reports about grades being adjusted and test keys being sold and distributed. Much pressure was brought to bear on the teachers alleged to be involved. A bitter internal inquiry followed, and a senior, little Eric Brazier, it so happens, was implicated, and expelled. Daddy Doctor Brazier even lost the school's insurance account! Why, the mess was so bad, it scotched Eric's chances of getting into his dream school, the University of Illinois!

As if that weren't enough to keep the old burg buzzing, a big downtown modernization project being advanced by a local real estate investor just up and collapsed. The plan was sc.r.a.pped and the properties rezoned, as were a number of other holdings owned by this same investor. The foreclosures by a suddenly unfriendly local bank and the bankruptcy filing put a bit of a crimp in the Sreckov's rickety family finances, not to mention putting quite the torpedo in Mickey's college tuition fund, too. The last I heard, the Sreckov's even had to sell their house and "trade down" a few suburbs. Pity, that.

I never thought I'd reopen the guest register from Mom and Dad's wake, but I'm glad I did. They had many excellent friends that werent blood relatives, and it was good to talk to them again.

X X I I I.

The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

The Merchant of Venice The Land of Enchantment was exactly that.

On the day after Christmas, at around four o'clock in the afternoon, we crossed into what Brennan referred to as sovereign New Mexico territory. You couldn't buy a cloud in the deepest blue sky either of us had ever seen. The sun, which was beginning to set as we arrived, painted a small collection of brilliant pictures athwart the vast and spectacular horizon. The air was crisp and clean, even when we stood beside the Welcome to New Mexico sign on exhaust-filled Interstate 40, where we took pictures of each other.

I looked up and down the highway before stepping closer to Brennan, who smiled and wrapped his arms around me as I placed my lips on his for the fourth time since we left Chicago late Christmas night. We decided to commemorate each new state by doing the perfect hug thing every time we crossed a border, or 'frontier, as Brennan called them. That meant no hugs or kisses until we reached our next destination, which, to be frank, was difficult.

Originally, we were going to do a lot more than hug and kiss at the "Welcome to..." state signs, but neither of us wanted to be arrested by a Deliveranceville sheriff or get run over; and the Bug, wonderfully eccentric car though it was, simply wasn't much good for misbehavin.

Besides, I had told Brennan, if we were going to nakedly consummate our togetherness upon each frontier crossing, the first place we'd head to was New England, not the Southwest.

Even though we talked endlessly, sang along to Brennan's glam rock and hair band ca.s.settes, and simply enjoyed a few of mine - nothing like a couple of crashing overtures to keep you going through the night - it had been a long, exhausting overnight drive, and we were content to spend the night in Tuc.u.mcari, the first town we'd hit after crossing into New Mexico.

There didn't seem to be much a town, per se, beyond the four or five mile strip of motels, gas stations, fast-food outlets, and antique stores that were once part of the fabled Route 66. It was the town that time forgot, in a state, we would soon discover, that was filled to the brim with such towns.

I pulled into the last motel before the strip (and town) ended, a friendly enough looking place that had its own restaurant and bar. If you liked earth tones, died, and went to heaven, your resting place would look a lot like our hotel room did. The grizzled old man in the black cowboy hat and handlebar mustache grumbled an apology that all his rooms with double beds were being redone. After some shameless hemming and hawing, we took a room with a king-size bed big enough for an orgy.

We soaked the long drive out of our bodies in a bubble bath. I had packed a bottle of Mr. Bubble without Uncle Alex or Zora noticing. I fell asleep in Brennan's arms twice.

The bar menu featured an item called Bucket of Beer. Was this a literal description, Brennan wondered? A sweet old waitress named Sandy managed to forget asking us for any i.d. before serving us both a wine bucket filled with six bottles of Pacifico, a fine Mexican beer. Maybe we looked like good tippers (as opposed to under-age punks acting smart by ordering beer in the first place). The huge, stomach-busting delight of our dinner, which took over two hours to consume, consisted of a taco salad, bar-b-que filet quesadillas, chili rellenos, fried taco rolls, and the freshest, sweetest tortilla chips we had ever tasted. Then we sat and finished our beer buckets for the next hour.

Even though it was warm enough when we arrived in Tuc.u.mcari, the air was now almost frosty as we walked through a ma.s.sive empty field beside the motel, which separated that end of town from the eerily deserted Interstate. The only thing we could hear was the whisper of the night breeze in our ears and the sound of our feet on the dry, wild gra.s.s. Above us, the moon was bright and brilliant across in the still-cloudless sky, giving us both a shadow as we walked beneath what looked to me like every star in the solar system.

Brennan stopped and looked straight up. "Could you imagine every night being like this one?"

"Very easily," I answered quietly.

"Do you think it would get boring, like seeing the Eiffel Tower on the way to work every day?"

"I'd be willing to live in Paris for a year to find that out."

"This is so beautiful." Brennan pulled one of my hands out of my jeans pocket and held it in his. "But I won't thank you for bringing me here." He stuck his tongue out at me.

I laughed. "Why not? You thank me for everything else."

"Because I'd rather thank you for being here with me, here or any place else. I'm not sure how to thank you for giving me a Christmas gift like this trip, though."

"Be my love slave until the sun comes up," I replied with a grin.

Brennan ignored my defensive humor. "As long as you're with me, I'll be happy. It's the only gift I really wanted this year, anyway."

"I never know how to respond when you say things like that."

"That's why I say them."

We concluded the night with Brennan giving me the ma.s.sage of my life. I did most of the driving, so I got the rub-down, he said. We took a quick shower and started to fall asleep in a tangle of freshly-scrubbed flesh on that helicopter pad of a bed. Before he could say his usual 20 minutes worth of good nights, I held his face in my fingertips and said, "Im with you all the time. Im with you even when Im not. Im with you wherever you go, no matter who else is there."

Brennan peeped through the dark like a Cupie Doll. "How do you figure?"

"Because youre with me all the time, so its only right."

Getting an early start, we swept south and west through the middle of the state. After successfully avoiding the state police near Ruidoso, we took a short detour through a tiny town called Cloudcroft. A friend of Uncle Alex's had sworn that the place looked like it belonged in the middle of Switzerland, rather than New Mexico, so I thought we'd have a look. He was right. The single, needle-thin road bisecting Cloudcroft wound like a rubber band through hills that were blanketed with coniferous, snow-covered trees and dotted with a few log cabins and A-frame houses. The outside temperature dropped to well below freezing for the few minutes it took to pa.s.s through. It was my kind of town.

We stopped at the White Sands National Monument to enjoy a pot luck picnic provided to us by a local 7-Eleven. I long ago bought into Dad's aversion to state and national 'points of interest, agreeing with his logic that, if the place in question had a crowd of ill-dressed tourists anywhere near it, it must not be all that special anymore. But I honored Brennan's request to at least have a look, and was glad I did.

I drove to the end of the Monument's curling path, into the spectral landscape of bleached sand dunes that the afternoon sun made dizzying to the eye. We wolfed down our sandwiches inside the car, took off our shoes and socks, and trudged even further into the rolling labyrinth of white silicon hills. Once we were surrounded by these geological anomalies and unable to see or hear anything else, we sat down on the sloping half of a sand formation. It looked like a huge, cresting wave about to envelop us.

"You should have brought your notebook. This is beyond cool, isn't it?" I nodded my head as I watched a pair of F-15s leave a vapor trail behind them as they raced upward to alt.i.tude. "It's a h.e.l.l of a beach!"

"Superb beach," I agreed dryly, "but kind of bare coastline." The cool, powder-like sand felt like silk on my feet. I opened my dull white shirt, letting the sun keep my body warm.

Brennan ran the flat of his hand over my chest before pulling off his sweatshirt and moving closer to me. "We haven't been in New Mexico for twenty four hours, and I'm ready to stay here for the rest of my life."

I took off Dad's old Navy-issue sungla.s.ses and looked at Brennan. "The rest of your life is a long time."

"That's not what I meant." He bit his lip. "I mean, for us."

"The rest of our life together?"

"You're already rewriting my sentences. Some deal this is!" He laughed. I didn't. "Okay. I'll shut up."

Something was on Brennan's mind. He didn't talk us to sleep the night before, like he always did, and said very little during the day's journey. It wasn't a hostile or selfish quiet, but, rather, a thoughtful one that just hadn't produced some epic exchange between us. Yet.

"Take off your clothes."

"What?"

"You heard me. Strip, right now."

Brennan stood up, wide-eyed. He complied wordlessly. The wind threw his hair in every direction while he met my gaze head-on. The setting sun cast a warm orange glow across his pastel body. The moment stretched out until it sounded as if we were inside of a sea sh.e.l.l.

"Dont I get to look at you, too?"

Neither of us were hard (not fully, anyway) nor took a step closer, where either of our hands might reach for the others body. We didnt speak; it didnt feel like we had to. We just looked and kept looking until we were shadows in the desert.

Morning done broke. For the first time in my life, jazz sounded good while the sun was still up.

Uncle Alex scored another box of 8-tracks for our road trip: John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker; Art Blakey, Benny Goodman, Thelonious Monk, and Stan Getz, who I was especially excited to hear again; Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Miles Davis, and a generous serving of Duke Ellington, the master.

And boy, did the first tape we listened to sound great as we drove the Bug the way its engineers likely didnt intend, breaking a land-speed Beetle record on our way through the splendid Black Range, in the southeastern corner of the Gila National Wilderness.

It was a good thing there wasn't much traffic on the Range's mountainous roads that day.

We came to a fork in the road. If we turned right, we would head further into the forbidding Gila. If we turned left, we would straddle the southern edge of the Wilderness until reaching Pinos Altos, an almost ancient dot on the map that served as the "gateway" to the Gila, and home to the Cromwell's humble ranch.

Brennan's eyes had a funny look in them when he asked if we could see more of the Gila, on our own. I shrugged and drove in. Felix had waited this long, I mused. Another hour or two would hardly change our lives, right?

Ho ho ho.

We stumbled upon a large shoulder off of a wide curve in the road that also functioned as a scenic overlook. We sat on the rounded hood of the Bug, with our backs resting on the windshield. A seemingly endless and snow-covered valley lay below us. Once again, good fortune smiled on us; we were left without the interference of pa.s.sing traffic, quite alone together on the cliff.

Every place we had gone in New Mexico had some nearly chilling sense of silence about it, and not just because the place was gigantic and didn't have very many people in it, either. No, there was something more to it than that. If the smart one wasn't well into sensory overload, he would have tried to figure it out. It took his greatest friend's tears to unlock the secret.

"Why are you crying," I asked?

"I don't know," he said, between sobs.

"Yes, you do." I put my arm around him and moved his body next to mine, keeping my hand on the side of his hip. Brennan tried to smile through the tears that sounded like they had been building up for a while. "Tell me. After all, you're the honest one, right?"

He put an arm around my neck and pressed the side of our faces together. "I love you," he whispered. The tears began to peter out.

I kissed the top of his soft blond hair. "I hope that's not why you're crying."

"No." Brennan wiped the tear stains from his face with the sleeve of my old pea coat. "Now I understand what you used to say about crying. I feel like a d.i.c.k." He let out a long breath as he cuddled his face against mine. "You were right about something else."

"I'm almost always right. Can you be more specific?"

From behind my back, Brennan snapped the elastic of my underwear. "One time, you said you wanted to leave, because you were in pain." I remembered. It seemed like a long time ago. "I said you'd take your pain with. Well, I was wrong." His voice sounded like he was going to cry again. "I've been in pain. But now that I'm away from home, I don't feel it, so much."

"Is it getting bad at school again?"

"No. I still get funny looks and smart-a.s.s comments, people talking to me like I was from Ura.n.u.s or something, ha, but nothing unusual. Ozzie almost tries to talk to me when no one else is around."

I was lucky. I had Zane and Farrah to stick by my side, in case I fell out of the closet or something. "Well, what is it, then? We're all alone, Brennan, right here, in the middle of New Mexico. We could get buck naked again, for all anyone would know. If you can't tell me a secret here, you can't tell me one anywhere."

Brennan pressed our lips together and held us still while our eyes opened and relented to the other. I felt his trust and love flood into me. He answered at once. It had to be the truth. "This is the most beautiful place on earth. I feel so free here, and I don't want to leave. I want to stay here forever, with you."

Flash.

My voice was quelled with fearful excitement. "Do you want to get married, or something?"

"I don't think we can," he joked quietly, "at least, not in the old-fashioned way."

"Brennan," I said, sitting us both up on the trunk, "do you know what you're saying?"