Chapter 14

Chapter 14

David drove home in a daze after picking up his car at Joseph’s house. He’d had one of the most incredible experiences of his life, and it ended so suddenly he didn’t know how to feel. It was as if he’d been scuba diving, seeing another world of gloriously colorful coral formations and sea creatures, and then instantly ascended back to the surface world. He had the emotional equivalent of the bends.

In his apartment, he wandered aimlessly from the kitchen to the bedroom to the living room and back. He wasn’t hungry or tired. He didn’t want to watch TV. He wanted to know what was happening to Joseph. What had frightened him so badly that he had to run off without any warning?

David considered calling Dana, but what could he say? He had no idea how to frame the problem, let alone discuss it without spilling Joseph’s secrets. He was in a moral cage.

Finally, he opted to take a shower. The long flight home had been sweaty with sex, and they hadn’t showered on the eleven-hour flight back from Paris. He used the tub in the guest bath because the small standing shower off the main bedroom reminded him of Joseph. As he stood under the hot water, letting it scald his back slightly, David tried to think through the events of the last seventy-two hours, but his mind kept yanking him back to the last moment he saw Joseph’s face, and the panic he had seen on it. After ten or fifteen minutes in the shower he realized that he was crying, and his legs turned to jelly. He sank to the bottom of the tub, and the best idea he could come up with was to put the stopper in, so his shower turned into a bath. A bath was the best cure for most problems, his mother had said.

Thinking felt like walking through a swamp in the fog. It was slow and lugubrious. An image of a movie from his childhood drifted to the forefront, of a character trying to pull his horse through the swamp but eventually the swamp swallowed the horse. David spent a few minutes trying to come up with the name of the movie. Ah, right, The NeverEnding Story. Just remembering that felt like some kind of achievement.

David then tried to work out what day it was. For some reason it seemed important to know. He could have looked on his phone, but the device was way over in his pants pocket on the bedroom floor, and he didn’t particularly feel like moving. Even lifting his wrist to look at his Timex felt like too much effort.

He was pretty sure it was early Thursday. Very early, as the sun was only starting to lighten the alleyway outside the bathroom window. This revelation led to another. He was severely jet-lagged. Or was he? Was jet lag a thing that happened whenever you flew, or was it just in certain directions? And if so, did flying one direction and then turning around and flying the other counteract the effect like spinning in a circle and then spinning the other way?

David woke up in the bathtub after the water cooled enough it was uncomfortable. His first thought was to add more hot water, but almost immediately, he realized he really ought to get out of the tub. He dried himself, and wearing only a towel, plodded to the kitchen and prepared a mug of cold brew coffee to put in the microwave. While it heated, he thought again of Joseph.

He rushed to the bedroom to check his phone. No messages from Joseph. He realized that his reply to Dana’s check-in had never been sent. It was just before 6:00 AM, too early to call back, so he just texted.

<I’m back, can’t work today but I need to talk when you’re up>

David hung the towel in the bathroom and wandered aimlessly into the bedroom, realizing that his body was unconsciously encouraging him to get more sleep. He slid naked under the covers and pulled one of the pillows down from the top of the bed, hugging it as he curled over on his side. It felt like no time had passed when his phone began buzzing and woke him up, but looking at it, he saw that it was almost an hour later. He answered and heard Dana’s voice on the line.

“You’re back, like you went somewhere? Or you’re back, like you’re back in civilization after disconnecting for a while?”

David realized he hadn’t told her he was leaving for France with Joseph; it had all happened so fast. “Actually, Joseph did take me somewhere. But that’s not what I needed to talk to you about.”

Dana interrupted him, “Did you hear about the explosion?”

“What explosion?” David asked.

“Jesus, turn on a TV,” Dana scolded. “It’s all over the news! Some laboratory by the beach exploded last night. The police think it was a terrorist attack.”

“Holy fuck,” David said. His sleep-addled mind was having a hard time parsing this new information along with everything else it was dealing with. “Slow down, I just woke up and I’m a little bit jet-lagged.”

“Jet-lagged?” Dana asked. “Where did you go?”

“We kind of went to France,” David replied sleepily.

“Holy fuck,” Dana echoed. “Now I need the whole story. Are you sure you can’t come in today?”

David turned onto his back and looked at the cottage cheese–style stucco ceiling of his apartment. “Okay, I’ll do a half day. I still need a little bit more sleep to get my brain working.”

“Okay, let me know when you’re on your way in. I’ll wait to take lunch until you get here. We can chat before we go to the office and then chat some more.”

“Copy that, see you in a few hours.” David ended the call and clumsily placed the phone back on the bedside table. Pulling the hugging pillow to his other side, he curled up again and instantly fell asleep.

“So, did you hear the news?” Dana was eating her panini and sipping an iced tea in the studio commissary.

“Oh, no, I forgot you told me about that. I needed some music on the drive here, so I was listening to that,” David replied as he sipped a coffee and nibbled unenthusiastically on a blueberry scone.

“Dude, the city is under attack! But in like the dumbest, least important way possible,” Dana said behind mouthfuls of panini.

“What do you mean?” David asked

“Apparently the building that was destroyed was some sort of blood bank. Like a Red Cross center but a private company. Hang on.” Dana pulled out her phone and started googling information. “It was called Tetractys. But, like, if you’re going to attack the city, why attack something that has so much redundancy and seems so unimportant? There’s plenty of blood banks, authorities say it doesn’t affect our supply all that much—” Dana stopped talking when she saw David’s mouth was agape. “What?”

“Give me your phone,” David demanded.

Dana handed him her iPhone, and he looked at the website she had pulled up detailing the explosion.

“Oh, shit,” he breathed. It was Joseph’s company. That’s why he had been so panicked on the plane. “I’m sorry, I have to call someone.” David stood up without taking his tray and walked to the outside door, pulling out his own phone.

He called Joseph’s number three times, each time going to voicemail, before he finally left a message. “Please call me. I just saw the news and I know why you were freaked out last night. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” He paused before adding, “I love you.”

David stood out in the sun, feeling impotent for a moment, before remembering that Dana was still inside. He reentered the commissary and rejoined her at the table. She looked at him with eyebrows raised. “You’re being weird,” she said simply. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

David sat and looked at his partially eaten scone. “I do. I really do,” he told his friend, “but there are things I can’t tell you. I don’t know if it’s safe for you, or…” He trailed off, not knowing how to finish the sentence. “Or other people.”

Dana reached out and grabbed one of his hands with hers. “Sweetie, as far as I know, I am your best friend. I am here for you no matter what is going on, okay? You can tell me anything, and it wouldn’t change things between us.”

I’m dating a vampire, David wanted to say. Vampires are real, and my new boyfriend is one of them. But of course, he couldn’t. “I know, I really do,” he said instead.

Back in the office, David tried calling Joseph on the phone nearly every hour, but only got his voicemail. He tried to give Joseph the benefit of the doubt, saying to himself that it was daytime, and he must be sleeping. But he also knew that Joseph didn’t need to sleep in the daytime, and with such an emergency going on, probably wasn’t. In one of his messages, he said exactly that.

Finally, around 5:00 PM, David’s phone rang, and Joseph’s name showed up on the caller ID. “Are you okay?” David answered instead of a greeting.

Joseph’s voice came from the other end of the line, sounding ragged and tired. “David, I need to take some time away for a bit. I…” He trailed off. It was a long pause, David dreading the rest of the sentence, and Joseph apparently dreading having to say it. “I think it’s best if we don’t see each other,” he finished finally.

David’s stomach felt as if he was on a roller coaster, and his throat tightened. “No…” It was all he could get out. The room started spinning, so he closed his eyes and focused on trying to breathe.

Dana heard him and looked at David’s desk. She recognized right away that something was very wrong. “Guys, go get some coffee and give us the room, okay?” she said authoritatively to the room.

“You’re not our boss, Dana. You go get some coffee and give us the room,” one of the writer assistants said, laughing.

“Yeah, that makes more sense,” Dana admitted as she hurried over to David. “Carry on.” She got to his side in time to hear the rest of the phone call.

“Joseph, please don’t do this. You don’t have to. Whatever it is, I can help!” David was grasping at straws. When Dana put her hand on his shoulder, he looked at her desperately. But there was nothing she could do, she didn’t even know what was going on.

Joseph was very quiet on the other end of the line. “David… You can’t help me,” he said.

“Please!”David felt the pressure behind his sinuses building. His nose got that feeling before a sneeze, and his eyes welled up with tears. He was suddenly being loud enough to draw the attention of the whole room. Dana pulled him up and out into the hallway as the rest of the writing room staff looked on.

“Do you love me?” David asked forlornly.

There was another pause. “I do, but—”

“Well, I love you! That should be the most important thing. Love is more powerful than anything!” Tears were streaming down David’s overheated cheeks. Dana recognized this side of this kind of conversation and grabbed David’s non-phone hand, which was busily yanking at his shirt hem, and held it tight.

“David, you know I know things most people don’t,” Joseph explained, his voice laden with remorse. “You have to trust me that this is for the best.”

“It’s not, though! It can’t be. Please…” David slid down the wall in the hallway to the floor. Dana knelt beside him.

“I need to deal with this, David, and I can’t put you in danger. For now, at least, just stay away.”

David latched onto the potential of the way Joseph phrased the words. “For now?”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’m really sorry I can’t say more,” Joseph replied carefully. “I do love you.”

“I love you, t—” but the call had ended. David stared at the phone, willing the timer on the call to keep going, but it was done. His arm fell to his side and he slumped down, his chest against his knees. Dana wrapped her arms around him.

“I’m so sorry, D,” she whispered. After a moment, as David was able to catch his breath and compose himself from the worst parts of his emotional outburst, she asked, “What happened?”

David just looked at his knees. “Joseph owned the building that was blown up.”

“Oh, fuck,” Dana said.

“Yeah.”

After a moment of thought, she apparently tried to see the situation analytically. “Well, shit, David, that’s a huge thing he’s got to deal with. But, like, he said he loves you, right?”

“Yeah.”

She hugged him tight. “Okay, so that’s not your problem to worry about. But Jesus Christ, dude. You own a building that gets firebombed, you have to deal with the FBI and the police… fire department, the city, insurance, lawyers… Fuck, there were people inside, I heard. No offense, babe, but you’re not the biggest thing on his plate right now.”

David turned his head to look at his friend. He took a deep breath and wiped his face with his hands. “Yeah, I guess. I’m just really worried about him. I want to help.”

“Nothing you can do, sweetie,” Dana said gently. “It’s just sucky timing, but you gotta give him some space.”

David groaned as he thumped his head against the wall. “It all just happened so fast. I didn’t even tell you about the last few days.”

“You told me you went to Paris, you lucky sonofabitch,” she said, still hugging him but smiling, trying to lighten the mood.

“Yeah, that’s just it. It was like something out of a fantasy, but it actually happened. But now this is exactly that feeling when you wake up from something you wish was real but isn’t.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “Gaaagh, I don’t know how to describe it.”

“I get it, D, I really do,” Dana commiserated. “Hey, we’re out of here in a bit, let’s get takeout and go back to my place. You can catch me up, we can watch junky TV, and I can support you and be jealous at you for going to fucking Paris.”

David couldn’t help but laugh. Dana always was able to reach inside him and touch the thing in his brain that helped. “Okay, sounds good.”

They helped each other up, and he took a quick detour to the restroom to freshen up before going back to work. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Joseph. About what he could do to help, if anything.