"You don't believe me?"

"You're the worst liar I know. Yes, I believe you, but what you're saying is - "

"Till death do us part, OK? That's what I'm saying."

I closed my eyes. I had no reference point to this. Who would, in our shoes? There wasn't anyone nearby I could ask for advice. Maybe the trees or the sky had some views.

"I didn't think I could say that, before now. That's the hurt I was moaning about."

"We still have a lot of life...left to live." My alliteration made Brennan smile. "Forever is a long time."

"Forever and a day."

I laughed out loud. "Le jour le plus long!" Brennan scowled, not knowing why I had lapsed into French or laughed. He didn't read Graham Greene like I did.

"Well?"

I got off of the hood and took Brennan by his hands with me. We stood at the edge of the overlook, encompa.s.sed by the majesty of the Gila and the hushed wonderment we felt being there together. Uncle Alex and Zora, the clever swine, they saw this coming. I heard his subtle little hints about a bunch of colleges out west. And her, starting mile-long conversations over dinner about happiness, companionship, being married, and love, real love.

"Before I give you an answer, will you hear me out?"

"I always listen to whatever you have to say. You know that."

"Fine." I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts as best I could. "I'm a.s.suming you've thought about what you're asking."

"Since we left home. No, that's not true. When you came to the hospital to see me. Yes. I've thought about it since then."

"Brennan, we've never gone steady with anyone else. You're only the second person I've met out of three that are like me. Like us. Who knows how many others we'll both meet or where we'll meet them? College, travel, or whatever, there must be a million others out there."

His eyes didn't waver. "I don't think I care."

"For G.o.d's sake, Brennan, listen to yourself!" My voice raised, but so did the breeze of the early dusk. "Think about it! Out of everything in the world you like in people, out of all the things you want in someone, whether they're a friend or a lover, and what you know you need, deep down, can you tell me with a straight face that I'm that person?"

"Yes." He closed his eyes for a moment. Hah! He looked away first! "I'd call the person you just described perfect, but I don't think love is perfect, any more so than me or you are. Happiness and friendship aren't perfect, either."

"We're talking about the rest of our lives, Brennan."

"Which may end tomorrow, for all we know. Look what happened to your mom and dad!" I looked away. Brennan held my shoulders in place, in case the rest of me tried to make off. "Look what we let happen between us. h.e.l.l, look what happened to me, because of my big mouth! Before those kids found me, I thought I was going to die. It felt like I was going to." I saw tears begin to fill up in his eyes, but they didn't fall. "I thought I was going to die alone, sprawled out in my own blood in that alley."

Alone. My G.o.d, I dreaded to myself, alone.

Brennan touched my face with his lips for a moment. "But I didn't, and we're here, now, together."

"There'll be a lot more tomorrows before either of us die, Brennan."

"You don't know that, any more than you know how to ice skate."

"Nope," I admitted, "I sure don't."

Brennan's soft hands touched my face again. The tips of his fingers followed the lines of my cheeks, my nose, my chin, and my lips. It made me tremble. Everything was making me tremble, either from fear or excitement, I couldn't tell which. "I'll tell you what I do know."

"What's that?"

"I know I like you. I like you as a friend, and I like you as a lover." He smiled shyly. "I desire you, too. But most of all, I need you." Brennan nodded his head with confidence. "I know I need you. It took being apart to realize how badly." We stared at each other the same way we did on my porch almost a year ago, seeing and feeling the other through our eyes, as if for the first time. "I need you to love me."

"I do, bro."

Snap!

He broke the spell. Brennan broke the f.u.c.king spell by pointing at me with a s.h.i.t-eating grin on his face. "Ah ha, you said 'I do'!"

My eyes narrowed with slight stage anger. He folded his hands together and put on a good look of contrition. I let him continue.

"I need you to let me love you."

"I will."

"Then marry me."

My head shook involuntarily. "Marry you...here and now," I mumbled. "You have a priest in your duffel bag?" OK, dont laugh. "We're not even eighteen."

"Hey, it's a tradition, south of the Mason-Dixon Line."

"Forever," I said, continuing to mumble.

"Right here. Together. Till death do us part."

I scarcely believed we had come to this point. I struggled to understand what I was hearing and feeling. There wasn't much consolation in knowing I couldn't be alone, drunk from head to soul in some incarnate daze. I looked out across the valley and pictured the entire world turning upside down. What would we grab on to? One of the pinon? Or would we be swept into the stratosphere, clinging to the Bugs dented b.u.mper? Maybe this was what heroin is like, I thought. I kept shaking my head, but finally smiled. Our epic exchange was every bit the ringing equal of even the mightiest Shostakovich symphony.

"I, Brennan Andrew DeVere, in good health, clear mind, and pure heart, do solemnly swear, in plain sight of G.o.d, to take you, my most treasured friend and lover, into my hands forever, as one...married, married as the rest of all the jerks out there who dont have half the love we do."

Out of the blue, a pick-up clattered down from the deeper interior of the Gila. Brennan glanced at it anxiously as he waited for me to say my bit, which was hard, because my half-opened lips were frozen, just like my heartbeat.

"If I can say it, so can you," Brennan stated quietly.

I privately appealed for sweet baby Jesus to give me the words.

"I, Miles Frederick Stra.s.se...call the G.o.ds to witness...one feast, one house, one mutual happiness...with Brennan, my friend and lover, my heart and soul, who I will love, cherish, and hold, le jour le plus long, forever and a day, till death do us part."

A single tear rolled down Brennan's cheek. Hah! Game, set, and match. I may have said 'I do first, but he not only blinked but cried first! "Yours sounds better."

"I'm the smart one."

"Good. Then you can think of what to tell Felix when he asks what we did up here."

Our arms brought our bodies together, for the first time, again, forever.

Epic, indeed.

X X I V.

In dreaming, the clouds methought would open and show riches, ready to drop upon me,

that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.

The Tempest.

The naked olive-skinned teenager sighed. "Epic..."

Shant Nakhararian folded the portfolio against his chest with arms that were crossed as much in despair as controlled anger. He had heard Miles soft voice reading his own handwritten ma.n.u.script in the tiny attic room, every page, every word, while the streets of Hollywood rattled away without being seen outside the church-shaped window. Shant could still hear the voice, whispering in his ear, close enough to feel the moist on Miles lips, still cruelly determined not to touch him.

It was Shants first home-cooked meal at the decrepit old manor when Brennan had told him what happened after he and Miles married each other. Theyd come down from the Gila and went back to Felix's, who burst into tears seeing the newlyweds on his doorstep. Miles didn't tell him they were coming. It was Felix's Christmas present. Shant stopped wolfing down his bratwursts to laugh at that.

"The Cromwells treated us like we were long-lost family members, as if nothing had happened," Brennan had said. "You should see their house. It looks like a ski-lodge. Jason built it right in the middle of a pine tree thicket, next to a little stream where they let their horses roam freely. What a place, so full of love."

Shant remembered not thinking he knew what any such place could be like, before Miles had wheedled him off the boulevard street corner, away from the adjacent alley where Shant usually plied his meager trade, and often slept, and sometimes ate. Hed taken the walk off the over-lit big street into the strange leafy neighborhood sullenly, suspiciously, expecting the young guy in the Chicago White Sox jersey to turn on him with a blade or needle. But all he got was a big wing-backed chair that looked antique pulled up to a battered dinner table, some spicy hot goulash, and some discreet fussing from another young guy with crazy long hair. Shant had figured some three-way action was coming but didnt care. He just kept eating, inaudibly separating himself from his surroundings, his company, and his own body to get ready, as hed learnt to do the hard way.

"And we lived happily ever after," the White Sox guy teased.

Brennan gave Shant a large slice of strudel, which he had never had before. "We found a real nice house in Silver City, further down the road from Pinos Altos and the Gila. It was built up on a hill. You could see the whole town and all the surrounding mountains from the living room window."

"It sounds nice," Shant mumbled.

Weeks later, after Shant had grudgingly decided he wasnt going to wake up tied to his bed, or re-hooked on some smack, or be starved into making videos until his body gave out, he let Miles give him his first bubble bath. It was the first time anyone had undressed Shant as if there were a human being under his baggy jeans and used t-shirts. It was also the first time his skin didnt crawl when someone else touched him, Shant was certain of that.

"Brennan, Felix, and I all went to college together," Miles told him, scrubbing away as if the gesture might erase the various now exposed signs of abuse strewn across Shants body. "There was a small state university there in Silver. It wasn't a very good school, but at least we were together. Felix and Brennan became close friends on their own. Brennan always thought Felix secretly wanted to have a menage-a-t.w.a.t with us. I couldnt tell." Shant had stared at the bubbles wafting under him, the bright morning sun reflecting off the foam like diamonds. He felt as if Miles had been telling him a science fiction story.

That was before he couldnt catch his breath. Or something was caught in his throat. Had Miles sucker-punched him? Was he slipping below the bubbles, into the steaming bath water? Shants body shook like a wet leaf, despite Miles strong grip on his forearms. Then he screamed out, once, terribly, against his will, making the awfulness trying to claw its way out of his gullet that much more wicked.

A sirocco of tears and tiny shrieks followed, until Shant was all but unconscious. He woke up later that day, neatly tucked into the small but comfortable day bed that had been his since arriving, in what was once the attic of the house and now was fashioned into four tiny bedrooms, private places, with doors that locked from the inside, not out, and shelves of books and records and the kind of hand-me-down gym shoes, t-shirts, loafers, shorts, jeans, sandals, sweatshirts, and sweaters a teenager might wear even if they werent penniless or plucked fresh off the street.

He found Brennan and one of the other guys planting a small palm tree next to the front porch. His doting smile all but made Shant tremble. "Hey, Salt.w.a.ter, how about a hand or two here?"

The shabby manor became the first home Shant Nakhararian had ever known, what with being dumped on his violent immigrant peasant father by his vagabond birth mother, then fobbed off on an disinclined uncle, then cast off altogether almost the day his voice broke. At first it was just a terrifying adventure, and then it quickly became simply terrifying and downhill from there. How he made it to what he thought was possibly his seventeenth birthday, Shant didnt know. He only began to care after Miles and Brennan made him believe they cared, too.

Shant was dumbfounded at the skill and complexity of both his guardian angels ability to keep secrets and lies from one another that even more bizarrely all seemed to be confided into him. Most Shant found silly, stuff not worth lying about, except for all the out of the ordinary technical cla.s.ses Miles was taking instead of the literature stuff everyone thought he was studying, and Brennans tremors. More and more, Brennan had motor and memory problems, but somehow hid these whenever Miles was around, which, because of the university, his job there, and the long commute to and from, wasnt very often, to everyones relief at the time.

It got to the point Shant had to help Brennan dress, and eat. Only after theyd visited the nearby clinic for the umpteenth time did the male nurse take Shant aside and explain Brennans dire condition: the multiple concussions he had gotten in the attack many years prior were lingering with a vengeance. The specialist Brennan finally got in to see confirmed there were severe internal bleeding issues in his brain that only a chancy surgery could fix, as if they had the money for it in the first place.

Shant hadnt been to church, any church, in his life, but went to a beautiful tiny Catholic place not too far from the house, steeled only by one of Miles modest secrets only recently divulged: though not religious in the sense Shant understood that to be, Miles admitted he believed in the intercession of saints. Something else Miles talked about that Shant had trouble figuring out. But, in that church, Shant tried to talk to a saint, any of them, maybe all of them, not knowing exactly how many of them there were or were not, or which one he should try and call on. He did light a candle and felt good about being able to put a few dollars in the collection box. He was weirded out by the holy water, but crossed his wet fingertips nevertheless, just in case, just to make sure.

He found he couldnt wait to tell Miles about what hed done, but suddenly felt trapped by the inevitable 'Why? that would follow. He would keep Brennans secret. That was more important than anything he felt.

Worse than living with his birth father, worse than being forsaken by him, even worse than the final heave-ho, Shant watched the ambulance take Brennan away from behind the unlit shrubs of a neighboring home. The other guys watched helplessly from the porch. Miles wasnt home yet.

The cerebral hemorrhaging killed Brennan before Shant had got to the hospital. But he was there to greet Miles, who just seemed to turn into a waxwork figure while Shant wept uncontrollably.

They took part of his remains to an obscure beach hours north of Los Angeles. The smell of the ocean, the feel of its spray, the warmth of the sun and its brightness on the water, the sound and power of the waves became deafening as they deposited the heavy grained ashes into the surf. Shant pictured Miles and Brennan swimming naked on this very seash.o.r.e (which they had, once, with their friend Felix, until they all realized how cold the Pacific usually was and ran right back out, Brennan said laughingly, satisfied in being able to say theyd skinny-dipped in the ocean together). Barefoot and shivering, shoulder to shoulder, Miles and Shant began the long walk back toward the small cl.u.s.ter of buildings that made up the remote but alluringly picturesque State Beach's meager facilities, then drove back to the city in worn-out silence.

When Shant woke up in Miles & Brennans outsized bed the next morning, Miles had gone. His Dear Shant note read like a cold set of instructions, what to do, who to call, who to trust, where to send one last part of Brennan, when Felix would pick up the rest. Shant did as he was told, and then ran the house for the other few guys all the while, as if hed been doing it all along.

Shant found the ma.n.u.script, along with Miles dog-earned and nearly unbound Complete Shakespeare after all the stomach-churning rigmarole was at last behind him. Inside was the personal note from Miles that Shant had longed for.

On pure animal instinct Shant had learnt out on the street how to hide and safeguard the little boy cowering deep inside him. And, if not cleverly but at least instinctively, Shant had quickly recognized Miles had been doing the same thing. Playing hide-and-seek, even recoiling, not from an unkind world or rotten people but from something deep inside, something Miles himself didnt know from any of the saints, but something he undeniably felt, germinating within.

Shant slid on one of Brennans jock straps - hed stopped wearing underwear after a trick had once tried to strangle him with his - his first new pair of jeans Miles had bought him for no good reason, and one of Miles red White Sox jerseys before heading downstairs to deal with whatever was causing a lot of racket. It was nothing, just squabbling over one of Miles many thousand books.

He sat down on the large wrap-around front porch, right where he had slept the first few days at the house, unwilling and downright afraid to go in, huddled in a thick woolen blanket Brennan treated like a magic carpet. The immediate block was always quiet, but the nearby rest of the city was remarkably still. He could even make out a few far-flung stars beyond the orange streetlight vapors.

Shant was certain Miles wasnt going off to kill himself, even to be with Brennan in the next place. Shant smiled, still a slightly unnatural reflex for him. Miles might go off and kill somebody else, him and that little Beretta of his (which, to Shants delight, Miles had once ground into the cheekbone of a rat-like Korean pimp who tried to stop him from taking a boy Shant knew out of his grips).

No. Shant let out a long, audible breath. Miles may have disappeared, but he wasnt gone. Like hed read (and re-read almost every night thereafter) in the ma.n.u.script, Shant didnt know if what he felt, could still feel, was love, but he knew he wanted it to be. Not just to prove he actually could love someone or something other than simple survival, but to try and catch up to where Brennan and Miles had been, so inexplicably early, so breathtakingly much, so wonderfully shared with the most desperate and truly alone.

Shant knew the Alone Miles had written about, he knew it agonizingly well. But for the first time in as far as he could remember, perhaps most queerly - or least so - in light of Miles vanishing, Shant Nakhararian did not feel alone. That wall had fallen. His love for both Brennan and Miles filled him that hushed night. It stayed with him at the slightly less scruffy manor long after, like a lowered rifle that turned out to be empty in the first place.

"Please, Saint Christopher, watch over Miles. Saint Joseph, help me show his love to the guys here now, to anyone else that might come..."

A small dog scurried out of the darkness right up to the porch, his wide black eyes boring into Shants. For weeks, Shant has seen the dog darting in and out of the yards all along the block, but had no idea who if anyone it belonged to. It was a he, and had no collar or tags and looked hungry, coat akimbo, and smelt a bit. Wow, Shant thought, just like Im sure I had.

"Come on, you." The dog followed Shant into the house. "Thanks, Saint Francis," Shant murmured. The dogs dark eyes floated around him, not quite sure if the warm house was a trap or Heaven. Shant laughed to himself and said aloud, "I know how you feel, little guy."

* * * F i n * * *

Author Bio.

Adam Henry Carriere is an online habitue specializing in letters, publishing design, and instruction. A former NPR broadcaster, he holds a BA in Film & Video from Columbia College and an MA in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California. He has taught writing at both his alma mater and for the United States Navy across the Pacific. Born on the South Side of Chicago, Adam now resides in Las Vegas, where he has won the Nevada Arts Council Fellowship in Poetry. He styles as Verleger / Herausgeber of Nevadas first online literary magazine, Danse Macabre. He is widely published across the web as well as the author of novels Miles (2012) and Hi's Cool (2013) and the poetry collection Zigeunertnze (2009, 2012). A second poetry collection, The Symphony Shostakovitch Never Wrote, is forthcoming from Bench Press (NZ).

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