Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas Page B

talking—like we always did.”
    Suddenly, I’m angry. And I’m angrier still that she’s made me angry—made me anything. And then I want to talk more, but I stop. I can’t tell if she’s even interested in the story, let alone anything more.She smiles again, this time wide and close-mouthed. Then her lips part slightly. She must have had braces and caps and regular cleanings. She takes the olive out of her glass, pulls it off the stick, and pops it into her mouth.
    Still chewing, she says, “You stopped.”
    I remember times in my life when I stopped talking. A camp counselor had found me in a stall in the boy’s room, fetal and battered. I’d managed to pull my briefs up, and I remember the look on his face when he realized they were soaked with my blood—a bug-eyed gasping fish—
“What happened? What happened?”
he’d finally gagged out, knowing on some level full well what had. I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t answer the guidance counselors in junior and senior high who were convinced (but asked anyway) that my drinking and my silence could be traced to the fact that I was a troubled adolescent—
but why?
They never asked, “
What happened?”
Claire had wanted to know, too, the first time she was naked in front of me and I couldn’t touch her. I wanted to. I remember that. I wanted to tell her what had happened, but I didn’t know what to say, where to start. I opened my mouth and only a dry rasp, a death rattle, came. She wrapped me in a blanket and whispered over and over, “It’s okay. I’m here.”
    And then I finally did speak.
“You must have something to say.”
She coaxed my voice out into the light of her and hers, and then the people beyond. And I sat in classrooms and workshops and when I wanted to stop talking again, I couldn’t. It was like the inverse of what I had done as a boy—I spat out hoping to glue everything back together that seemed to have fallen apart.
    â€œYou’re funny,” she says. “You just get lost. I like that.” She reaches for my hand, stops, and rubs the Formica. “I’ll stop butting in. I really like it.”
    â€œSo Gavin points eastward, to Boston and an imagined finish line.
‘He set the American record
—
twice.’
He finishes his smoke, throws it hard at the ground, and cocks his head to one side.
‘Look it up.’
    â€œThey look up to me to get confirmation, but I look out to Commonwealth Avenue—Heartbreak Hill—following its meanderingtwist downtown. It has a grass-lined median running down the center. The houses are enormous.
‘What are you guys doing next year?’
Gavin thumbs my shoulder.
‘He’s going Crimson.’
They both crane their necks as though it will help them process the information. Gavin shakes his head and mumbles to me,
‘Gotta walk around armed with documents these days—fucking junior cynics.’
Then he points at them,
‘This is the last American hero, ladies, the only true noble left. He’s good to his ma
—
good to my ma, too.’
They act like he hadn’t said anything. They just ask,
‘What about you?’
He doesn’t answer. He pulls out another stolen beer.
‘Where’d you get that?’
they ask, and he snaps,
‘What are you, pigs?’
They turn to each other. Some unspoken code sends them away.
‘Fuck,’
whispers Gavin. He hands me two beers. He guzzles his and breaks out a pint of rum, which he begins drinking like a beer.
‘I should make a map of where I hid the stash before I get too wasted.’
He looks around the yard. Then back out to the avenue, like he’s already forgotten that idea.
‘Maybe we should take a few and git?’
I say.
    â€œHe considers this for a second.
‘Nah.’
He traces his swollen cheek with a fingertip.
‘Fuck ’em.’
He passes me