Free Lord Fear by Lucas Mann Page A

at the white ceiling, the fan moving in slow, shaking rotations. He remembers drumsticks and lockers and dim sum and women, each of them the most beautiful woman ever to live. He says nothing. She coaxes him, not in an accusing way, but gently. She wants to understand. He loves her. She says, “I don’t get people like that. Who have everything and then screw it up. It doesn’t make any sense.” She’s right, but Dan has never stopped to judge Josh and doesn’t want to now. He wants to say something about Josh’s humor and how he could lock his eyes on you, how that felt. He wants to say something about desire, too, about the intoxication of being around somebody who feels like he
deserves
all that he can think to desire. How easy it is to believe that. But everything Dan remembers feels small and shallow as he remembers it, and he thinks the memories might shrink even more if he says them out loud. He stays silent until they fall asleep.
    —
    Josh never returns to the apartment, but his voice does. He leaves so many messages on the answering machine in his last years. Dan comes home from work, hits the button, hears the beep, and then Josh’s voice is in his living room. Dan’s now fiancée stands behind him with her arms folded as he listens.
Danny Boy
, Josh begins like old times.
You there? Danny Boy, pick up. Dan? Buddy, where are you?
    First it’s exciting. Then it’s irritating. Then Dan feels himself beginning to dread his friend’s voice because to hear it is to pity him, and he doesn’t know how to pity Josh, doesn’t want to learn.He agrees to meet up just to make the phone calls stop. Josh gives him an address in Astoria, a few blocks from the 7-train, on a street full of closed auto repair shops. It’s a basement apartment. A woman Dan has never met lets him in and says nothing to him. She isn’t beautiful. Skin hangs off her as though she was born with extra. She folds in on herself as she walks.
    She sits next to Josh. Dan sits on the edge of a kitchen chair and rubs his hands together for no reason. Josh doesn’t move, but his eyes fix on Dan. He says that he’s happy to see him. Then says it again.
    “Danny Boy,” he says. “I want to know about you. Tell me about you.”
    This might be the first time in their relationship that Josh has asked outright like that. Dan begins to talk, but stops as Josh grabs a rubber tube off the couch next to him and ties it tight around his biceps.
    “I’m listening,” he says, “Talk.”
    Dan speaks in quick syllables, only continues when Josh urges him on. He tells him that life is good. It’s just life. Job, drinks on the weekends. Other stuff. It’s all fine.
    As he speaks, he watches Josh and the woman take turns injecting each other. At first, he wonders if this is for his benefit, Josh looking to surprise one last time. But it’s not that; he’s not looking for a reaction at all. He’s just doing what needs doing. Dan watches Josh’s fingers, still strong and graceful, as he feels for her vein like it’s a note and then slips the needle in, presses down gently with his thumb until the brown stuff is all gone. Dan watches their heads loll back together. He watches their quick eye contact over the shared bliss and then watches their eyes dull into something painted.
    Josh offers once; Dan declines. Josh shrugs. Then silence.
    The silence extends for the better part of an hour. Dan keeps his eyes on his friend as he moves through strange pulses oflife—sits up, snorts, giggles a little, then sinks back down. Dan looks at Josh’s body melting into the scabbed skin of this woman who never told him her name. They breathe together until Dan can’t figure out whose breath is whose. He tries to hold his own breath; he’s not sure why. Two pigeons fight outside the window and their racket startles him. He listens to that for a while. He stands and debates whether to touch his friend’s shoulder, but he doesn’t want to feel how that must