When Charlie was in high school he loved to walk the deserted streets at two in the morning. The void of silence. The undertow of darkness around every corner. The noble power of being the last man standing. He used to intensely enjoy those moments. He now he hates it.
When we rush back to our apartment, he doesn't come down the sidewalks, disappears under the rows of palm trees, every few steps, looking anxiously over his shoulder.
-Who are you looking for? I ask him.
"How about you lower your voice a bit?" He," he says in a barely audible whisper. I don't mean to offend you, but I want to see if she follows us.
"Who, Gillian?" She already knows where we're staying.
"Okay, then I guess there's nothing we need to worry about..."
"You're being paranoid."
"Listen, Ollie, just because you've found a new reason to be happy doesn't mean you can switch off your brain.
"Is that what I'm doing?" Disconnect my brain?
I cross the street, fed up with these arguments. And of jealousy.
"Come back here, Ollie," he chides me, waving to the sidewalk.
"Who named you mom?" - I ask. He makes a face; he loves to annoy him. The moon is nearly full in the sky, but Charlie doesn't bother to look up. Why are you acting like that with Gillian?
"Why do you think I do it?" Charlie asks, glancing back over his shoulder. Didn't he see that layer of dust in his bedroom?
"And that's what got you wasps up your ass?" Gillian not touching her nightstand?
"It's not just the nightstand, it's the bathroom and the closets and drawers and everything else we went through... If you moved into your dead father's house, would you keep his things everywhere?"
"Didn't you hear what Gillian said about sleeping on the couch?" Plus, it took mom a year...
"Don't talk to me about mom. Gillian has been living in that house for over a month and it looks like she moved in last week.
"Oh, so now she's working against us?" -I ask. "All I'm telling you is that Gillian only has a few clothes and a dozen works of modern art, paintings of torn neoplastic. Where the hell is she the rest of her life? Her furniture, her record collection; after all this time, are you telling me she doesn't have her own TV?
"I'm not saying she doesn't have her quirks, but that's what happens when you deal with an artist… At that moment, Charlie is about to explode.
"Do me a favor, don't call her an artist. Placing tracing paper over an old Mondrian painting doesn't make anyone an artist. Also, have you looked at her nails? That girl has not painted in her entire life.
—Now it turns out that you are an authority on everything that refers to art? That's called washing your hands, Charlie... that's an amazing concept. And you are furious simply because she is beating you at your own game.
-What the hell are you talking about?
"You've already seen how she lives herself... the fact that she's happy with the basics... that she doesn't need to participate in the race... Is she beginning to sound familiar?" Even when she came looking for us; Gillian doesn't get mad, it's like she's just looking right through you, like she's not afraid of anything.
"Ax murderers fear nothing, either.
"Will you stop now, please?" I plead as we turn toward our block. You're the one who's always saying that I don't have any sense of adventure. Would you rather I go out with someone like Beth?
-Go out? You're not dating Gillian…you're not even courting her.
You are nothing more than two people in an extreme situation and who, by chance, are next to each other. It's like falling in love on a teenage trip, only without the James Taylor songs.
"You can make all the jokes you can think of, but we both know you hate it when anyone challenges you when you assume your role as Mr. Nonconformity." It's the same reason you never joined a gang... you feel threatened whenever you sense the slightest possibility of competition.
"Oh, now I get it, do you think that's what it's about?" Some kind of competition? You can have her, Ollie. It's all yours. But you better know, it's not about any competition, it's about: divide and conquer. And that is precisely what Gillian is doing.
-How can you say that?
After checking the block one last time, Charlie crosses the street, opens the metal gate, and runs across the lawn to our apartment. We are both silent until I turn the key and we go inside. The smell of the insecticide product is the first thing that hits us.
"Still better than Gillian's," Charlie says, sniffing the air.
"You don't even know her," I say, challenging him.
"That doesn't mean she doesn't have vibes," Charlie replies, kicking off her shoes and clothes to get into bed.
—Wow, forgive me, I had not realized that you were in full search of your inner Buddha. When it comes to the vibrations of people you are like one of those rods that are used to discover the presence of underground water.
"You mean I'm not?"
"All I'm saying is that I wasn't the one who lent her favorite amp to a complete stranger and then watched her trade it in at a seedy pawn shop on Staten Island.
"First of all, that amp was old and I needed a new one anyway. Second, I have a proper name the size of the Grand Canyon for you: Ernie. Della. Coast.
"Ernie Dellacosta?" -I ask-. Mom's old boyfriend?
"For an endless seven and a half months," Charlie adds.
Do you remember what happened the first time her mom brought him home for us to meet him? He was a respectful and kind guy and even managed to buy my love by bringing Chicken Delights for dinner. But I hated him the moment I snatched that cardboard bucket of chicken wings out of his hands. I hated his wavy hairstyle... I hated his fake designer shoes... and the whole time he was dating mom I hated that man like he was poison. And you know what? I was right.
I walk past him, lean into the sink, and wash my face. A small argument ensues, but Charlie deftly dodges me and rushes back to the futon. I go after him, determined not to take the issue for granted.
—Very well, do you want to remember the rest of reality? While you were scratching your guitar...
- It's a bass.
"Whatever…while you were scratching your guitar and living in Fantasyland, Ernie Dellacosta was also the guy who got me that job with Moe Guinsburg my freshman year in college. If it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have had the money to continue studying at New York University.
"You know, I've forgotten all about those clerk jobs. You're right, Ernie Dellacosta was truly an inspiration to all of us," he says with an extra dollop of sarcasm.
-What is that supposed to mean? -I ask.
-Nothing. Forget this.
—No, don't play those passive-aggressive games with me. Tell me what you're thinking.
Charlie remains silent, which clearly means that he is hiding something.
"Stop it," he finally says.
"Leave him?" But if you were very close to saying one of your fundamental truths. Come on, Charlie, we're all intrigued. Clearly you brought up the Dellacosta subject for some reason, what's your problem then? What did I do to him to help me get a job? That he made me laugh out loud at his jerk jokes? Was I behaving like everyone else in working-class America and that I worked my ass off someday to stop worrying about creditors calling home and harassing me for the last forty dollars I had in my checking account? Tell me what was bothering you so much.
-You! You and your continuous complaints about your poor lifestyle! Charlie snaps. This has nothing to do with you, Oliver, and if you ever stopped to think about it, you might realize the things that go on under your fucking roof!
-What are you talking about?
"That guy was an asshole, Ollie. A complete asshole. Doesn't that make you wonder why Mom was dating him all this time?
-What are you talking about?
"Did you know that he was terrified of you losing your job?" Or that he had hated Ernie since the second month, but was worried that without that salary you wouldn't be able to make it to the end of the semester? You can bury your past under all the resume you want, but at home it was Mom who took the abuse.
I open my mouth, completely lost.
"What do you mean by 'abuses'?" -I ask.
"Wow, here's someone using their old Brooklyn accent...
"What abuses, Charlie?" Ernie hit him?
—Mom never said it, but I heard her arguments, you know how thin the walls are at home.
"That's not the point," I insist. Did you ever see Ernie hit Mom?
For once, Charlie doesn't fight back.
"I went into the house and they were both in the kitchen," he begins to say. Mom was crying; he used a much more violent tone of voice than any you would want them to use with your mother. She turned around to see if I would back off. So I told him that if he didn't get out of the house I was going to use his larynx as a jump rope. Mom's crying became more heartbroken, but she didn't stop him from leaving the house. We never saw her hair again. And that was your partner, Mr. Deilacosta.
Staggering on the tile where I'm standing, I feel like my chest is about to burst. My chin quivers and I look at Charlie as if he's never seen him before. All this time he thought that I had had to take the brunt of it. All this time I was wrong.
Charlie, I didn't know...
"Don't say it," he warns me, not wanting to listen to me. He climbs into bed, turns over, and pulls the dirty, fluffy blanket we found in one of the closets over his head. The cigarette smell coming off the blanket must be a lot worse than the stink of bug spray, but it's clearly a lot better for Charlie than talking to me. He just remembers what I told you about Gillian," he says before disappearing under the covers. Divide and conquer, that's how it always works.