A Phantom Marriage
“…Because we can do this however the fuck we want, and if we say in Heaven, we’re still a family, then that’s how it is. Full stop. You and me are still us in that context. Fuck anyone who says otherwise.”
A hand poised to push open the screen door, Dane stopped in his tracks and froze.
“We’re not married anymore and Kyle is gone, but we can still be a family,” Liko said.
Oh shit, it’s Janelle.
Dane slowly and carefully backtracked, making no sound.
“…Still be us,” Liko was saying. “It’s the only us that matters and we can be good to each other. All right?”
Dane crept back to the kitchen, feeling weird. Just one side of the conversation sounded so painfully intimate and vulnerable, even accidentally overhearing seemed a violation of privacy.
And I’m suspicious because you sometimes sleep with your ex-wife.
He’d made pasta with caramelized onions and peas. He put some on a plate, sprinkled parmesan cheese and ground fresh pepper on top. Then he sat and picked at it.
The pile of today’s mail was rubber-banded on the table.
Dane broke it apart and flipped through, not at all surprised to find another postcard from Ethan.
The man was moving at a brisk clip through Devon.
Today’s sketch was from St. Michael’s in Spreyton.
Perhaps a half-dozen left in the UK before he’d go back to the continent, looping through France, Switzerland and Germany. Heading for Paderborn.
When are you going to show these to Liko? Diane asked.
“Soon,” he said.
The front door opened and closed. Dane was sure Liko wasn’t coming in to eat, rather to collect his car keys and drive to Norwalk. But he did come into the kitchen, looking perfectly fine.
“Smells amazing,” he said, getting a plate.
Dane stopped playing with his food and took a bite. “There’s white wine in the fridge. Or open a red if you want.” He slid the postcard to the bottom of the mail pile and perused the L.L. Bean catalog.
“Janelle called me,” Liko said, pouring wine.
“Everything okay?”
“Bad day. She was missing Kyle. Called to connect.”
Dane smiled. “I was actually coming to call you in for dinner and heard a bit of it.”
Liko sat. “Which bit?”
“Still being a family in Heaven and fuck anyone who says otherwise. You’re still an us. You can be good to each other.”
Liko nodded. “Think I handled it okay?”
Dane blinked. “Dude, more than okay. It was a beautiful thing to say to her.”
“Right,” Liko said gruffly.
“Do you believe it? In your heart?”
“Yes.”
His own heart fretted, knowing it lived within a Great Dane, on a farm that had long been a haven for lost souls and grieving spirits. He gathered together every scrap of compassion and empathy, every last dreg of courage, and asked, “Do you want to go see her?”
Liko was quiet a long moment, staring straight ahead. “I just want him back.”
“Yeah.”
“This is nothing I expect anyone to understand, but I don’t think of sex with Janelle as sex. It’s…”
“Time travel?” Dane said.
Now Liko looked at him hard. “Exactly.”
They ate in tired silence a while, each going back to get another helping.
“I was thinking,” Dane said, “about widowhood versus divorce. Not in a competitive, one-upmanship way about who suffers worse. Just the different ways a marriage can end. When it ends by death, a sudden, unexpected death, the survivor is kind of like an amputee. The spouse is gone but they still feel the marriage. A phantom marriage.”
Liko chewed and swallowed. “As opposed to divorce, which is a slower uncoupling?”
“I guess.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “You separate and live apart, preparing yourself for surgery.”
“You know what, never mind,” Dane said. “It all sucks. Can I show you something?”
Liko blinked, bewildered. “Sure.”
Dane retrieved today’s postcard and slid it down the table. “Start with that. Don’t drip anything on it. Be right back.”
He got the others and dealt them out on the kitchen table. Thirty-six cards in all.
“I don’t understand,” Liko said, now walking along the rows. “Are these from a fan?”
“They’re from Ethan. He’s been walking the route of the game, sprinkling Nomi’s ashes in all the locations.”
“You’re kidding me. Really?”
“Yeah.”
Liko gave a low whistle. “He’s sending these cards to let you know where he is?”
“I guess.” Dane drummed fingers on the back of a chair. “Not sure why I didn’t show them to you sooner.”
Liko sat down again and picked up his fork. “It’s none of my business.”
Which wasn’t quite what Dane wanted to hear. But what did he want—a jealous rage? He rounded the table again, pushing edges square, lost in a game where he didn’t know the rules.
“Dude, sit down,” Liko said gently. “Your food’s going cold.”
Like a sullen teenager, Dane slid into his seat and took an unenthusiastic bite.
“He’s in Devon and the game ends in Paderborn,” Liko said. “Then what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think he’ll come back?”
Dane shrugged.
Liko corralled his last two peas onto the tines of his fork.
“I’m an observant fellow. I like to think I’m a good listener.
And a little while ago, I heard you say that whenever Ethan came looking for you, it meant something.
” He ate the peas and twirled the fork to point at Dane.
“You also just said something interesting about the sudden end of a marriage, leaving the survivor to feel a phantom pain.”
“Kind of like still being a family in Heaven.”
Liko chewed his last bite reflectively, then took a sip of wine. “Two questions,” he said. “When you were together, did Ethan tell you, and I mean say the words, I’m in love with you?”
“Yes.”
“And at any point while uncoupling, did he say, I’m not in love with you anymore?”
“No.”
Liko nodded. “Me and Janelle didn’t either.
Not to each other. Maybe she said it to someone else but I can’t remember telling anyone.
She broke my heart, she stabbed me in the back, she betrayed me, she blew up our life and our home.
But I honestly can’t remember telling anyone, not even my therapist, I’m not in love with her anymore.
” He smiled and gestured between them. “I don’t know what the point is.
I’m just throwing it on the already crowded table. ”
“Maybe I’m flattering myself that there’s a deeper meaning to these postcards,” Dane said.
“They all say the same thing on the back. Ethan never had issues telling me how he felt. More the opposite. If he had something to say to me, he’d say it.
But he hasn’t, so I need to just take the cards at face value.
They’re status updates along his journey, end of story.
He’s moving on. I need to get going, too. ”
He polished off the wine in his glass and thumped it on the table. “Sorry for the speech. Part of the moving on will be fine-tuning my sparkling conversation.”
Liko shrugged. “I’m not here to be entertained.”
“Why are you here?” Dane mumbled, shaking his head.
“Because I wanted to bed you the first time I saw you. So I forged Jonathan Henshe stationery to write myself a letter that would give me an excuse to ring your doorbell.”
Dane knew he was joking, still he felt his eyebrows draw down. “Really?”
Liko sucked his teeth and pretended to throw what was in his glass at Dane’s face.
“I told you I flirt like a moron.”
“You also told me you were just going to focus on doing the next thing.”
“That’s right.”
Liko’s hand reached and dropped onto Dane’s forearm. “Well, I’m a thing. And I’d like to be next.”
His hand slid up Dane’s arm, across his jaw and around the back of his head. It wasn’t much of a kiss at first. Just two laughing mouths colliding.
“I also kiss like a moron,” Dane said.
Liko’s other hand slid on Dane’s face. “Stop talking,” he whispered, and now the kiss calmed down.
Slowed down. Opened up and got interested.
Dane’s hands slid along Liko’s chest, feeling muscles contract hard against his palms, then soften around a little moan.
Dane curled fingers around Liko’s shirt, pulling him closer.
He turned into the kiss, curling his tongue so the stud dragged along Liko’s tongue.
Liko sighed deep in his throat, fingers tightening in Dane’s hair.
“You would kiss me after I just ate fried onions,” he murmured.
“Um, you kissed me,” Dane said. Behind his blue eye, Diane was smoothing her hair and catching her caramelized breath.
Liko kissed him a few more times, then ran his thumb across Dane’s mouth. They sat still a while, foreheads pressed together, quiet and smiling.
“I told you once,” Liko said, “I was used to sex with men being an immediate thing. Fast and service-oriented. Get in, get off and get out. If you were any other man, I’d have shagged you yesterday.
But you’re not like any man I’ve ever met.
You’re not like any person I’ve ever met. So… Where was I going with this?”
“Hopefully you mean the slow pace is frustrating as fuck but you’re kind of enjoying it?”
“I really am. I know the pace is slow because you have more to tell me about your life and your childhood and what your father did to you. More about your body, which you wisely keep guarded.” Liko sat back and reached for his glass.
“Anyway, thanks for the snog.” He swirled the wine around, expression thoughtful.
“Man, I miss making out. Whenever Janelle and I hook up, we’re too busy crying to kiss.
I don’t want it from her anyway, it’s too… ”
“It’s what people in love do,” Dane said.
“Yeah. But for real, if you want someone to flirt with like a moron and occasionally snog, I’m your man.”
The color was up high along his cheekbones, still he looked unfazed, easy and trustworthy. Nothing about him pushed or pressed on Dane.
It’s time, Diane said, and Dane didn’t question her. He reached in his back pocket for his phone and opened his maps app.
“So, when you drive to Long Island,” he said, “do you take the Throggs Neck or the Whitestone?”
“Depends on traffic but usually the Whitestone.”
“Ever look under it?”
“What do you mean?”
“As you’re crossing the span, ever look down at the gorgeous houses fronting the East River and wonder to yourself, Who lives there?”
“I’m sure I have.”
“I lived there.”
Dane turned the map layers to satellite, pinched and moved around until he was zeroed in. “This was my house,” he said, turning the screen toward Liko.
The house, mansion rather, was indeed in prime real estate position. Fronting the river on one side, abutting a small city park on the other. With what had to be speechlessly beautiful views of Manhattan, Bronx, and Little Neck Bay, and an eye-watering price tag.
“Damn,” Liko said admiringly.
Dane moved west a little and pointed. “On a clear day, you could see Riker’s Island.” He moved back east and touched a pin down in the mansion. “This place was a different kind of prison.”
“You look so good right now,” Liko said quietly. Again his hand reached and his fingers moved through Dane’s hair. “Give me a second to fill up on this. Then I’ll listen to whatever you want to tell me.”
“None of it is good.”
“I’m in, but thanks for the heads up.”