The Lava in My Bones by Barry Webster Page A

rock? Somewhere in the relationship between rock, water, ice, and airis the secret of that robust energy that moves our Earth and fights its destruction.” In the front row one man snored, his head bobbing. Two women in the back were reading magazines. “Do you know what I’m talking about? Do you have any idea what I’m saying at all, you bunch of brain-dead morons?”
    The sleeper belched.
    Meanwhile, Franz went to Excelsior’s to seduce the salesman with the haircut. Later, on the man’s pitching waterbed, Franz felt seasick and threw up in the night-table drawer. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” He clutched himself, rocking on the rug. “Normally you’re my type. I don’t know what’s happening to me.” He went home and couldn’t stop painting trees and beams of light.
    The next day Franz told Sam, “I’m going to change the locks on the door. You won’t be able to come in unless I’m here, but it’s no big deal.” But Franz didn’t change the locks. Then he prepared a Spanish quiche but ate it all himself, saying, “Didn’t think you’d be hungry.” He washed his clothes but not Sam’s. The grease-stained pillow lay beside Franz’s clean one.
    They went to a fancy party, and Franz “accidentally” spilled red wine on Sam’s lapel, then later “inadvertently” pushed Sam’s face into a bowl of trifle. Franz apologized profusely, and on the way home started crying.
    â€œWhat’s the matter with you?” said Sam. He’d never been in a same-sex relationship and wondered if this was standard.
    â€œI thought you were here for a short time. And now I can’t end it. I’m afraid. Ich habe Angst.”
    â€œBut I’m not going to do anything bad to you.”
    At home Franz took the latest painting off the easel. “Take this as a present. I don’t want to look at it.”
    All the next day, Franz’s face continued to twist into myriad patterns until he finally said, “We’ve got to get out of this room. Let’s go to the city.” He grabbed Sam’s hand. “Tour! I’ll give you a tour!”
    Sam became more confused than ever. Together they visited the Zunfthaus zur Waag, “where hatmakers met regularly during the Renaissance,” explained Franz. On the Quai Bridge, Sam saw Lake Zurich on one side and the medieval city centre on the other. At Zurich’s original Roman customhouse, Franz pointed at the plaque commemorating the women who’d saved the city from disaster. “The Hapsburg armies were near; all the men had died, so the women put on soldier’s uniforms and marched. When the Austrians saw the soldiers coming, they didn’t wait to see what bodies were under the uniforms and fled.”
    Yet Sam felt he was not in Franz’s home country but in his own. Was it the occasional flash of metal and steel amidst all the wood and cement? Or the still air, the lack of odour, the discreet way people walked down streets, speaking only when necessary? Or was it simply rock, the same rock beneath his feet and before his eyes? Sam wondered if narcissism was the cause of the world. After the Big Bang happened, did a billion gases come racing together because everything was in love with itself?
    Franz asked again, “So, next Wednesday you fly off?” His repetition of this question was starting to really bother Sam.
    â€œNo, I don’t have to leave yet. I still have to do my Matterhorn studies.” This was true. Since meeting Franz, he’d abandoned hisresearch, giving himself up to eating rocks rather than studying them.
    Franz’s head swung up and he stared into the distance. Sam studied the furrowed brow, twitching cheeks and lips. Sam had never before witnessed intense inner struggle on his account. His mother and father had simple, unimpeded desires, but inside Franz great