Chapter 8 Stag Nights
Stag Nights
Max
"Welcome to The Silent Birch," Preston announces, cutting the engine. "It is a digital detox facility for the hyper-successful and the mentally frayed. We are checking in for forty-eight hours of mindfulness."
"I hate it," I say immediately. "It smells like damp wool and pretension."
"It smells like serenity, Maxwell," Preston corrects, stepping out of the car in loafers that are absolutely not designed for gravel. "Now, hand over the phone. And the pager. And the backup pager I know you taped to your ankle."
I hand them over. It feels like amputating a limb.
We check into our accommodation. It is not a hotel room. It is a "yurt."
"It’s a tent," I observe, staring at the canvas walls. "Preston. You have brought me to a tent. There is no HVAC system. The humidity is unregulated."
"It is an artisanal dwelling," Preston sniffs, inspecting the bed which appears to be filled with buckwheat hulls. "We are grounding ourselves. Now, change into the provided linen robes. We have a 'Silent Tea Ceremony' at 17:00."
By 19:00, I am vibrating.
Dinner was a bowl of broth that tasted like tepid pond water and a side of "foraged greens" that I am fairly certain were just lawn clippings. We were not allowed to speak. We sat on cushions on the floor, staring at a wall while a woman played a singing bowl that was slightly out of tune.
By 22:00, the silence is no longer peaceful. It is deafening.
My brain, deprived of surgical schedules, wedding logistics, and Jax’s constant noise, begins to cannibalize itself.
I start calculating the structural load of the yurt’s centre pole.
I analyze the thread count of the linen robe (suboptimal).
I diagnose the woman playing the singing bowl with a likely Vitamin D deficiency based on her pallor.
Preston's phone buzzes.
I say nothing. I stare at the buckwheat hull ceiling and say absolutely nothing, because if I say something, I will have to acknowledge that I knew Preston still had his phone, and if I acknowledge that, Preston will point out that I could have asked to borrow it at any point in the last eight hours, and then I will have to explain why I didn't, and the honest answer is that I was trying to prove something to myself about solitude and I have now proven it and the conclusion is that I do not enjoy solitude and the yurt smells like a damp labrador.
"I don't have my phone," Preston says, not looking away from the ceiling.
"I know," I say.
A pause.
"You knew," Preston says.
"You checked it in the bathroom at 18:00," I say.
"The light was visible under the door for four minutes.
You were either reading or you had brought contraband technology into a mandated digital detox facility.
Given that you haven't read a physical book since medical school, I drew the obvious conclusion. "
Another pause.
"I was doing research," Preston says.
"Into what."
"Mother's seating chart. Someone had to."
"Preston."
"Fine." He sits up. He retrieves the phone from wherever he has been concealing it, which appears to be inside the pillowcase, which is either very clever or very uncomfortable or both.
He looks at the screen. Something shifts in his expression — not alarm, but the specific quality of attention he reserves for things that are genuinely interesting.
"It's Father," Preston says.
He reads it aloud.
"Greetings from Atlantic City. I am celebrating your brother's last nights of freedom in the appropriate fashion, accompanied by a friend who prefers not to be named in written communications for reasons that are entirely legal but moderately complicated.
We have won four thousand dollars at blackjack.
We have lost six thousand at roulette. I consider this a spiritual wash.
A man named Rocco bought us oysters. I don't know Rocco. I trust Rocco completely."
Preston pauses before continuing.
"The friend sends his regards, though not his name, as previously established.
He is wearing a sequined jacket that has caused three separate altercations and one marriage proposal from a woman in the slots section named Debbie.
He handled all four situations with extraordinary grace. I am very proud of him."
I stare at the buckwheat hull ceiling. I process this information in the order it was received, which is the only rational approach, though rationality feels increasingly theoretical out here in the dark among the crickets.
Preston reads on.
"Tell Max I love him. Tell him the yurt is worse than the army and I know because I asked.
Also tell him that whatever Catherine has planned for the boat, the answer is no.
I don't know what the question is. The answer is still no.
Do not tell your mother about Rocco. Or the friend.
Or Debbie. Love, Father. P.S. We have named the goldfish we won at the fairground stall Maxwell and Preston.
Maxwell keeps trying to organise the bowl.
Preston bit Maxwell. I find this very accurate. "
Silence.
I run the data.
Father is in Atlantic City. He is with someone. Someone who wears sequins and does not wish to be identified in writing. Someone who navigated three altercations and a marriage proposal in a single evening and did so, by Father's account, with grace.
"He's with someone," I say.
"He's with someone," Preston confirms.
"Who prefers not to be named in written communications."
"For reasons that are entirely legal."
"But moderately complicated."
I turn this over. The variables are insufficient. I do not have enough data to form a conclusion, which is a condition I find deeply uncomfortable, like a splinter in a place I cannot reach.
"I need to know who that is," Preston says, quietly, in the voice he uses when a case has hooked him against his better judgment.
"You are on a digital detox," I remind him.
"This supersedes the detox," Preston says. "Father is in New Jersey with a sequined enigma who has the social dexterity of a trained diplomat and the wardrobe of a Las Vegas headline act. This is not recreational curiosity, Maxwell. This is a clinical concern."
"We find out when we find out," I say.
Preston is quiet. Outside, the crickets continue their unnecessarily high volume. Inside the yurt, the buckwheat hulls shift.
"I hate that you're right," Preston says.
"I usually am," I say.
The silence settles. I should sleep. Jax is at his own stag, which is a word I find logistically imprecise but emotionally significant, and tomorrow is a day closer to the wedding, and I should be resting my prefrontal cortex rather than constructing profiles of unnamed sequined strangers in Atlantic City.
"Preston," I say.
"Yes."
"What do you think happened to Debbie?"
A long pause.
"Go to sleep, Maxwell," Preston says.
I close my eyes. The crickets persist. Somewhere in New Jersey, Father is eating Rocco's oysters with a person who may or may not be wearing sequins, and I have absolutely no further data, and the buckwheat hulls are, objectively, worse than the army cot Jax keeps in the on-call room.
I think about Jax.
I sleep.
Max
I wake up an hour later and cannot go back to sleep. The buckwheat mattress is a sensory nightmare.
I am in the garden. I have established a pattern to keep the logic loops from crashing my system: Twelve steps north to the weeping willow. Pivot ninety degrees. Eight steps east to the koi pond. Pivot. Twelve steps south to the rock formation.
North. Pivot. East. Pivot.
If I stop moving, the silence rushes in. I need a focal point. I need a list. I need Jax.
"You’re wearing a trench in the gravel," a voice says from the shadows. "The landscaping bill is going to be astronomical."
Preston steps into the moonlight. He is wearing a silk kimono and holding a battery-operated fan. He looks like a bored emperor in exile.
"I’m spiraling," I admit, not stopping. North. Pivot. "My brain is a logic loop. I don't have a schedule, Preston. I don't know what happens next. The uncertainty of the wedding... the audit... the variables are overwhelming."
Preston sighs. He falls into step beside me. He matches my stride perfectly. Twelve steps. Pivot.
"I know," Preston says softly. "I thought silence would help. I thought if I removed the noise, you’d relax. I was projecting."
"Projecting what?"
"My own need for quiet," Preston says. "I assumed you needed what I need. It was a diagnostic error."
We reach the koi pond. The fish are sleeping. Or dead. It’s unclear.
"Mother taught us to be competitors," Preston says, his voice losing its usual sharp edge. "The Heir and the Spare. She pitted us against each other like horses on a track. I didn't know how to be your brother, Max. I only knew how to be your rival."
We pivot south.
"I thought if I analyzed you," Preston continues, "if I figured out how your brain worked, I could 'fix' us. I could bridge the gap. But I was using the wrong tools. I was jealous of the 'Standard'. I didn't realize the Standard was a cage."
He stops. I stop, my rhythm broken.
Preston reaches into his kimono pocket. He pulls out a napkin stolen from the dinner service and a Montblanc pen.
"Here," he says.
I take the napkin. In Preston’s elegant, spiky script, he has written a list.
The Bachelor Protocol:
23:00 - 00:00: Pacing and Existential Dread (Scheduled).
00:00 - 01:00: Critique of Landscape Architecture.
01:00 - 02:00: Brotherly Bonding (Minimal Eye Contact).
02:00: Attempt REM Sleep.
06:00: Emergency Extraction. We are getting bacon.
I stare at the napkin. My chest loosens. The static in my head clears. It is a schedule. It is a plan.
"You made an itinerary," I whisper.
"I gave you parameters," Preston corrects me. "I’m sorry, Max. I’m sorry I didn't know how to do this sooner."
I look at him. "You are learning. This is... adequate data."
"High praise from the Ice King," Preston smiles.