Continued, Take Me with You #2
Norman groaned, then pushed his husband off him. He paused in the doorway and knocked twice on the frame, which, unlike them, was solid. Jesse took that to mean I’m annoyed, but I love you, too.
Jesse took one last look in the mirror and frowned. Maybe it wasn’t the mirrors he disliked so much as what they reflected back at him; it seemed like only yesterday their faces were young. He turned on the shower and whipped off his shirt.
I’m outta here.
It was the last thing he thought he heard Norman say as he stepped into the shower, the words muffled under the spray.
Jesse assumed he meant he was going to check the generator, or that it was the latest in a long string of threats to go live off the grid, as if they weren’t already doing pretty much that; he never got the chance to ask.
Before Norman could return, Jesse had dried off and was asleep in their bed.
Sometime around two, maybe three, in the morning, Jesse sprang bolt upright, jarred by the rattle and hum.
Another earthquake, this time with a blinding flash of light.
He shielded his eyes with one arm and reached for Norman with the other; his husband, usually out cold with a book tented on his chest, was not there.
The plantation shutters covering the sliding glass door to their backyard (which Norman called louvered so as not to sound regressive) clattered like a rickety roller-coaster car on an old wooden track, and one by one they fell open.
Squinting, Jesse peeked over the crook of his elbow.
Night eerily resembled day, the feathery leaves of the tamarisk trees blowing violently in gales of hurricane-force wind.
That was not right. The digital clock was impossible to read, its red numbers lifeless, drowned in mysterious white light, but he knew in his bones the sun was still several hours from rising.
Cautiously he gathered courage, swung his legs out from under the covers, and placed his bare feet on the ground.
What in god’s name? An earthquake would have ended by now, giving way to an eerie still, but their mattress—advertised as having the magic ability to keep a glass of wine upright on one side while a restless partner tossed and turned on the other—belched Jesse onto the floor, where the polished concrete purred, tickling the soles of his feet.
He tripped over the Williams Sonoma rolling pin he kept by the bed to work his plantar fasciitis.
Norman had given him hell for this (you use it for your feet?)—the utensil had been a wedding gift—but honestly, when was the last time either of them had baked a pie?
As a small crack appeared by the doorframe and plaster fell from a wall, he grabbed the rolling pin by one of its easy-grip handles and brandished it like a weapon.
An earthquake would not emit blinding light (unless the generator blew), nor would it whip up winds that shook the roof—this was clearly something more menacing.
Jesse was immediately aware of his nakedness, the strange luminescence highlighting his nightly tumescence.
All six and a half feet of him cast an imposing shadow on the wall behind him.
“Norman?” he called, tentatively at first and then again with increased urgency. No reply came. Or not one he could hear over the deafening, mysterious roar.
Jesse fumbled his way down the glass hallway, rolling pin extended in front of him.
The floor-to-ceiling windows, original to the house, seamlessly connected indoors with out and beautifully framed the extensive landscaping—those windows had sold them on the property, which was already near the top end of their budget.
Now Jesse felt like an ant under a magnifying glass in the hands of cruel, outsized children.
He raced down the hall, afraid the glass windows, which were radiating heat, might shatter.
Thrown off balance, he hit the doorframe hard, even though they had enlarged it in the remodel to accommodate his height, then squinted as he made his way to the main living area rubbing his shoulder.
In the dining room, he cast around for his sunglasses, which he’d that afternoon abandoned on the long Danish table that anchored the space (it sat eight even though they were but two).
Norman had assigned the lacquered box that sat on the sideboard by the front door as a place for their wallets, glasses, and keys, and they argued frequently about Jesse’s inability to adhere to the organizational systems Norman carefully put in place.
Clumsily, Jesse put on the sunglasses, poking one eye with a temple.
Despite their premium polarized lenses, the glasses barely made a difference; about all he could make out was Norman’s phone on the table and he picked it up to dial 911, forgetting momentarily how to access the keypad on a phone that wasn’t his.
When he pressed the emergency button, an angry screech yelled back at him, and he threw the phone in frustration.
The movable wall off the living room was partitioned all the way open—far wider than they ever opened it for themselves—as if someone had broken in (or rushed out) in a hurry, flinging it open with the same abandon one would use to spin that damn wheel on The Price Is Right.
Jesse stumbled into the backyard. The pavers that led to the grass felt cool on the soles of his feet, but the rest of his skin felt warm from the mysterious light like he was the bubbling cheese on a sad rectangle of school cafeteria pizza.
Wind whipped up a cloud of sand and debris and even with his sunglasses it took both of his arms to shield his face.
The locals here called sandstorms haboobs; they would occur on occasion when the temperature dropped, in what felt like the flip of a switch.
But it was too early in the season and the temperature was too warm and it was obvious this was no haboob.
When he felt a small patch of grass under his toes, the winds stopped and everything fell silent and still; he’d stepped into the eye of whatever this was—suddenly all he could hear and feel was the beating of his own heart.
He knew it wouldn’t last, but he was grateful for the respite.
Once the thick cloud cleared, Jesse spotted his husband, also naked, as if he, too, had been roused from sleep, just outside a perplexing beam of light.
Norman was tickling the light with his fingertips, like he had once dipped them into a waterfall on a trip to Kauai to see if it was dry on the other side.
“NORMAN!” Jesse scolded, his husband a toddler standing too close to a hot stove. Norman responded by taking a step closer to the beam instead of back. They stood there, eyes locked, thirty years of highs and lows, laughter and grievances, passion and apathy—three decades of life in between them.
I’m sorry, Norman mouthed, and he walked backward until he was bathed in it, spreading his arms like Christ. By the time Jesse reached him, Norman was rising, floating above him just out of reach.
It was a strange thing to be standing underneath one’s spouse.
It didn’t rain in the desert, the house had no gutters to clean; Jesse couldn’t even recall them owning a ladder, as he was tall enough to access most things.
What registered through Jesse’s shock were the bottoms of Norman’s feet, soft and pink, perhaps the result of a pumice stone that had mysteriously appeared in their shower several weeks prior.
Alas, the light they were bathed in, blinding as it was, didn’t allow Jesse to make out much else.
New words would have to be invented to describe his expression; Randall Moss, the conspiracy theorist who lived in the Airstream on the property across from theirs, complaining nonstop about even the mildest inconveniences their renovation had caused him, was sure to be having a field day.
But what Jesse could see plain as day was Norman’s aura, as he was swallowed by luminescence that had once radiated from within.
Norman’s light used to shine so brightly it would suck everyone into his orbit, and now, about to lose him, Jesse was drawn to his husband all over again.
He swung at him wildly with the rolling pin like one might at a pinata but failed to land a blow.
“Don’t you dare!” It was all Jesse could think to yell, and it might have worked if Norman had indeed been a toddler testing his patience or a dog disobeying a command.
But Norman was an adult, and even when they’d first met, Jesse had never been able to control him.
And so Jesse dropped the rolling pin and with one ambitious jump (fueled by a lifetime of people asking, “Do you play basketball?”) leaped up and threw his arms around his husband’s calves, holding on for dear life and finding that he, too, was now floating several feet above ground.
But Jesse was no match for the light, which seemed determined to take Norman from him.
He took another deep breath and held the air in his lungs, uncertain if that would make him heavier like a rock or lighter like a balloon, and attempted to climb Norman’s hairy legs as if they were the wretched ropes in junior high gym class, the bane of every closeted kid’s existence.
He reached Norman’s knees before he started to slip, the ground a good five feet below his dangling toes.
Six feet even, then maybe seven. Norman looked down, his face finally in view, his expression serene if surprised, a happy calm Jesse hadn’t seen in many years.
Which only enraged Jesse more. “I’ll call your mother!
” Norman’s mother was eighty-four, had retired to Italy, and used a chairlift to get up the stairs, so Jesse wasn’t sure exactly what he expected Rosemary Alfano to do, unless offering dry butter cookies from one of those circular tins could convince her son to stay.
Norman smiled as if amused by the very idea, then raised his arms above his head and they began rising faster.
Jesse’s grip became tenuous, and he slipped farther down Norman’s bare legs.
They met when Jesse was twenty-three; his entire adult life Norman had always been there.
Norman—a man who said orangutang instead of orangutan, a man who maddeningly left his whiskers cemented to the side of the sink when he shaved, a man who didn’t know how to reinstall Hulu on their TV when the app froze.
“Do not leave me!” He clung to Norman’s ankles, and then his feet, muttering, “Please, please, please,” until he had no choice but to let go.
Jesse hit the ground with a thud, landing on his tailbone, the air forced out of his lungs.
Pain radiated through his body in all directions.
There was no part of him that wanted to go with Norman into the light, but the man was his whole life, and he had just about exhausted his other options.
So he took one last deep breath, held out his right arm, and screamed, “FINE! LET’S CHECK THE GENERATOR!
” Then he waited to see what his pleas might do.
Nothing, as it turned out. Norman disappeared into the sky, an Olympic diver knifing the water without so much as a ripple.
And then the light disappeared, too.
And the darkness that blotted the sky whisked away at impossible speeds as the winds both whipped up and died down, this time for good, and the tamarisk trees gave one last wave before falling still.
Coyotes howled in the far distance, awakened in the night by something they couldn’t explain to their pups.
Jesse howled back, dazed and brokenhearted.
For a time, Jesse lay naked in the grass as if nothing had happened at all.
This had to be a dream. Surely he would come to his senses.
He took stock of what he knew for sure. The ground was cold.
His back hurt. The sky was empty of clouds.
Slowly, a smattering of stars reappeared.
He sensed a faint tinge of smoke, as if there were distant wildfires.
The yard was littered with leaves and palm fronds and bark and husks and the air was thick with dirt, the only real proof that something out of the ordinary had just happened.
Except for the owl that sat in the tallest palm tree who gave a plaintive hoo, Jesse was alone.
Hoo, indeed. Who was he without Norman?