fourteen
Baron Dolce
It’s after five in the morning when the door finally opens and Duke comes stumbling in. He kicks the door shut behind him and doesn’t bother resetting the alarm before heading for the stairs. When I see that he’s going to ignore me entirely, I speak.
“Where have you been?”
He wheels on me, and I realize he wasn’t ignoring me. He didn’t notice me at all.
“What are you doing in the dark?” he demands.
“Waiting for you.”
“I’m not Mabel,” he says. “You don’t have to keep tabs on me.”
“Where were you?” I ask again.
“Driving around,” he says, avoiding my gaze.
I know where he’s been because I have his location too, but I want him to say it.
“No secrets,” I remind him. “No lies.”
“No lies,” he mutters, still looking at the floor.
“So, one more time,” I say slowly. “Where were you?”
“I told you,” he says, scowling at me.
I just stare at him, waiting, still not quite believing it.
He’s lying to me.
And if he lies now, about this, what else will he lie about? What else has he already lied about?
I’ve never felt betrayed before, but I think that must be the feeling that slides through me, clean as a scalpel.
My brother has never been sneaky, so I don’t think he went to Mabel’s old house for nefarious reasons like trying to win points with her, take her for himself.
I know he’s been having a harder time sharing than I am, but I thought he’d get used to our dynamic.
Maybe I should have worked harder on it, done more than simply tell him that he is important, vital, to what we have.
But I’ve never been good at knowing when to stop. My boundaries are different from other people.
So are my handicaps.
It would have been enough to tell Mabel. She would understand and accept my words. Probably, Duke even accepts them. But he needs more, needs to feel them, and I’m not sure how to make someone else feel something I never have and never needed to.
Frustration slides along the seam cut by the scalpel, filling the cut, chasing the sting out and replacing it with the more familiar sensation.
After a long, long silence where he has every chance to come clean, I finally accept that he isn’t going to.
“You’re too drunk to be driving around,” I say, but there’s no harshness in my words.
“How do you know I’m drunk?”
“Alice is just as bad,” I say. “Maybe worse. You’re taking too much.”
“I ran out,” he says. “I haven’t had any in days.”
“Don’t lie to me, Duke. We promised we’d never lie.”
“I’m not lying!”
I want to believe him, but I’m not sure. That kills me a little. I could always, always trust my twin. There shouldn’t even be a question. “Good,” I say at last. “If you don’t want to tell me, then don’t. But promise you won’t lie.”
“I won’t lie,” he says, glowering at me.
“Is that where you went?” I ask. “To get more?”
“So what if I did? You made it for me,” he reminds me.
“We made it together,” I remind him.
I may have mixed the compounds, but he tested it, helped me know what he needed to get it just right.
I’m beginning to think that was a mistake, but I don’t tell him that.
At least I know why he went over. I knew it must have been to see Colt, since Mabel’s here, and there’s nothing of hers that we’d want over there anymore.
That must have been why he asked if Colt was home earlier.
He makes fun of Colt’s addiction, but he shares it.
They must have used together while I was gone.
That’s the only explanation for their inexplicable tolerance of each other now.
“I’m sorry,” I say at last. “I didn’t know it would hook you like that.”
“I’m not hooked,” he says, his tone defensive. “I told you, I haven’t had any in days, and I’m fine.”
“When we get back home, you won’t be on production. Not being around it so much should help.”
“I told you, I’m fine,” he snaps. “Let it go.”
“You’re not fine,” I say quietly.
We stare at each other a long moment.
I don’t understand why he doesn’t understand, and that’s the most frustrating part of all of it.
Duke is the most important person in my world.
There’s never been any question in anyone’s mind—not mine, not his, and not anyone else’s.
It’s a fact as true as the earth turning and the sun rising.
I never thought anyone would question it, that I’d have to find ways to prove something so unquestionably factual, not to mention obvious.
But now there’s a question, and it’s the one person who should never have to question it.
I need to fix it, but I don’t know how. That’s the part that fucks with me.
I could always fix anything, but I don’t know how to fix this.
I never felt the need to prove anything to anyone before, have never cared enough to try.
But Duke should always, always know he’s the best part of me, the best humanity has to offer, the best person in any room, no matter who else is there.
It seems impossible to show someone that, if they won’t simply take the words as the truth that they are. The earth can’t see the sunrise that shows that it’s turning.
“Then give me some,” Duke says at last. “If you think I’m not fine without it, I’ll take some more. Is that what you want?”
“No,” I say, scowling at him.
“Come on,” he says. “You must have some with you. You made it.”
“ We made it,” I correct. “And I don’t have any.”
I’ve taken it of course. I want to know how my creation affects people. But I don’t enjoy it the way most people do, and I wouldn’t carry it across state lines without a good reason.
“I’m sure you can get some,” he says. “Anyone in town would give it to you.”
“I’m not getting you Alice.”
“Why?” he demands. “Don’t you want me to be happy?”
“Of course I want you to be happy,” I say. “But I don’t think that’s how you get there.”
“Why not?” he asks, coming to sit down at last. “Who gets to say what makes other people happy, or what way is the right and wrong way to be happy?”
I shrug. “Maybe you’re right. I’m not sure what that word means, what it entails, and why it’s so important to people. Why do you need to be happy?”
“Because it feels good,” he says, like I’m missing the obvious. “And if I’m happy when I’m high, isn’t that better than never being happy at all? Why should I be miserable all the time just because society says that’s not an acceptable way to be happy?”
“I don’t want you to be miserable,” I say. “But I also don’t want you to OD and kill yourself.”
“What do you want me to say?” he asks at last. “You want me to go to rehab like Colt?”
“No.”
“Good. Because I can handle myself. I’m not a fucking pussy.”
“I know that.”
“Dad would never want me to do something like that,” he says. “He’d say that all it takes is discipline and self-control.”
“You can’t know what he’d say,” I point out. “He’s not here. He didn’t see you like this.”
“He saw me fucked up plenty,” he argues. “You know how he was. Real men don’t go to therapy, real men tough it out, real men take care of their own business.”
“Therapy is bullshit,” I say.
“I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
“Then you’ll slow down on your own?”
“Not like I have much choice,” he mutters.
“Is that what you did with Dad on your outings?” I ask. “He taught you how to be a real man?”
“Something like that,” Duke says with a little scoff. “I told you, I fucked a nun.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But how is that father-son time? Did he fuck her with you?”
“No,” he says, scowling. “Mostly he watched and gave me pointers. Or he’d take me to see a priest so he could lecture me and toughen me up.”
“Yeah, that sounds like dad.”
Duke slouches in his chair and glares at me, a belligerent tilt to his chin. “Are you ever going to ask why I stood there and let him die?”
“Why did you?”
“I don’t know,” he says, bending forward and dropping his head into his hands. “Everyone else was going along with it, and I wanted to do the right thing, and if everyone said it was right, I figured it must be. I don’t know what’s right and wrong, Baron. How do people know that?”
“They don’t,” I say. “They learn by studying what other people say it is. Then you follow that.”
“But you know,” he insists. “You would have pulled Dad out, even if fifty people were there, ready to let him die. You would have stood up for him anyway.”
“Maybe.”
“You would have,” he insists, raising his head.
“I would have done what was best for me in that moment,” I say.
“The same as you did. You can predict what other people will do afterwards, but not with any real accuracy. There are too many variables with humans, especially when they’re free to interact with other humans in the world.
In a lab, it would be easier to predict. ”
“Like Jane,” he says glumly.
“Yes, like Jane,” I say, disgust rising at her memory. “She was predictable. That’s why I got rid of her. There was nothing more I could learn from her.”
“I thought you got rid of her for Mabel.”
I shrug. “I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I weren’t already bored of her.”
“And you’re happy with your decision?”
I pause, thinking over how to answer that.
At last, I nod. “I’m glad we got rid of her, and that we have Mabel.
I’m not happy that I couldn’t find her, and that therefore, I can’t be certain she’s dead.
I’m annoyed with myself for being sloppy that night and not trusting that you had Mabel under control. I knew you were capable of it.”
“No, I wasn’t,” he says. “I made a mess of things. I burned down Mabel’s house. I think that’s partly why I let Dad die. If they’d chosen something besides fire… You know I can’t think around it. The flames hypnotize me.”
“I know.”
He rubs the heel of his hand against his forehead.
“But even if they hadn’t burned him… Maybe I would have let them.
I don’t know when to do what will make me happy later.
It’s like nothing will. And I don’t see it’s going to make it worse until it’s too late, and I’ve already done it.
I don’t know what will let me have a clear conscience. I don’t think I’ve ever had one.”
I’ve never had anything else, but I don’t say that. It’s not the time to brag.
He goes on anyway. “Everything I do to try and make it better just makes me feel worse. I want to make everyone happy, but the happier it makes them, the shittier it makes me feel. That’s fucked up, right?”
“So, stop trying to make other people happy,” I say. “Make yourself happy.”
“I try,” he says, throwing up his hands.
“That’s what’s so fucked. I think if I make them happy, that’ll make me happy.
But it doesn’t. It’s like… There’s only so much to go around.
If I give them happiness, then I have less.
If I do what I think people want, then they’re all happy, and I’m fucking miserable. ”
“So next time, do what you want. Who cares if they’re happy? You’re the important one.”
“That doesn’t work either,” he says. “I always did that, whatever’s fun, whatever feels good in the moment.
It just hurt more people, and I still feel like shit afterwards.
So I do another thing to feel good, fuck another girl, take another pearl, and I feel good again.
But when it’s over, I feel even worse. I just keep getting lower and lower. It’s like I don’t have a rock bottom.”
“Okay,” I say. “What if you don’t? If you know that, will you stop trying to reach it?”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
“Aren’t you?”
“I don’t know,” he says, his voice a tortured groan. “Why can’t I get over this, Baron? Everyone else moved on and is living their lives. They probably don’t even think about it, and when they do, they just think they did the right thing, so it’s okay. I’m the only one fucked up over it.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because look at them,” he says, gesturing around with one arm.
“Royal and Harper are happy in New York. Devlin and Crystal are still fucking, making babies, living in his fucking house like they don’t even remember they’re the reason he’s not in it.
It’s just another day in the line of work for King and Eliza. They kill people all the time.”
“Has this been bothering you?” I ask. “Is that why you’re acting different?”
“I don’t know,” he says morosely. “Probably.”
“Let me see if I can make you something,” I say. “When we go home in the fall, I’ll get back in the lab for you. If I could make you a drug to cure your whiskey dick, surely I can make one to cure you of a conscience.”