I begged him to tell me the truth, boy. I have never considered getting down on knees to ask for anything, let alone just the truth. The act felt either vacant—as if prostrating oneself conveyed a seriousness or a depth of needfulness that could not be expressed through words or gestures alone—or else inappropriate. For what does one fall upon one’s knees to request? My immediate answers are perhaps overly cinematic. My life. Someone else’s life. Anticipated physical pain? That’s all I had, and it’s all I have still. But my knees were indeed quavering, and they seemed to suggest that my body could not remain upright under the weight of the first question, which would swiftly expand into others, fleshing out the uncertainty of the matter as I saw it. He would not look at me directly. It was not for the reason I initially expected.
“Is it all broken?”
He smiled, an upturned grimace, really. He couldn’t even lay his eyes on me, the spectacular bastard for whom my knees prepared to be driven to the filthy concrete basement floor beneath us. He had not even this simple grace within him. He quickly fluttered his four fingers towards himself, a tiny beckoning fan, he wanted more.
“Should it be, though? Are we to fold up the tent, the tent you stitched together, the one I repainted those years ago, as I saw fit? Because you let me! Or did you make me? Is this all part of the design? What you expected all along?”
He chuckled, or at least released a low, throaty cough. It didn’t matter which; I had more.
“Or was there no design at all? Just throw it all at the wall and see what stuck, anyone in the way be damned? That’s absurd! Man, there’s no more surrealism, not in this day and age, and situationism? That’s art school garbage, destined for textbooks and the dustbin of history, and you know it. Besides, that’s not like you, there’s always some grand…design.”
I was frustrated I could not locate another word besides “design.” It was repetitive, something we both hated in general. He raised an eyebrow, but not at “design,” it was at “grand.” This was going to be a guessing game, I’d get no easy answers, which did not mean there weren’t any. My sparring partner would rather complicate, obfuscate, duck-and-parry, and the simplest way to do that was precisely the one he was choosing. The ceiling above trembled in time with my joints, a dull groan rippled through the floorboards, sufficient to make one question structural integrity and the wisdom of being at the lowest point. A figure bowed outside the storm window and peered in, then moved on. Fine, then, I had more.
“So there was a plan, or at least a loose assemblage of steps. I’m not going to guess what it is, but if it has to do with simply running off the rails, then you know I’ll stoke the engines and help you get it up to peak velocity.” I was sweating a bit, I hadn’t notice the cresting heat down here. The trembling continued, ancient dust drifting downwards around us. He looked at the ceiling, though showed no signs of lacking attention at my words. We were, we are, old friends, after all. Recalling this as if an ancient memory of my own, I changed tact.
“I’m not that young anymore, it’s true, and I would never make claims about your age, as it is obviously unknown even to you. We’ve grown up in parallel, and now in tandem. Together.” I put my hand on his left shoulder, gripping the muscle and bone as much to steady myself as drive home any more tactile, gestural point. He took his right hand from his side and placed it over mine, across his body. It was a lovely geometry, warm and knowing, it occurred to me immediately and it persists in my memory now. I dropped my head and spoke softly to our shoes, though the noise from above grew more pronounced at intervals, punctuating my words with tonal blasts amidst the general rumble. It must have been beautiful.
“I just want to know it’s right.” I surprised myself at my sentiment. “I want to know that the abyss into which we walk will hold us fast, suspend time as we know it can. I know we can detach, unmoor ourselves from the decrepit City and be set adrift, but it’s never just about the detaching, is it? It’s not the dock on the other side, either,” I looked up at him, he had been staring at the top of my head and thus now looked into my eyes, “you know that as well as anyone.” He was right. He was right to look at me and to give me something to look back at, and he was right to soften his eyes in order to sturdy my legs, to give me gentle ballast for this voyage I described.
“It’s about the arms that hold you while you are at sea.” He seemed to understand me, and in retrospect, he most assuredly did. He would not condescend to me, we were beyond that. I needed to finish, and as the stones of the foundation loosened and the joists wheezed under the sonic pressure, the time for statements had dawned. Reciprocal gaze having been granted, we were now locked in the rapport de face a face, right where we belonged.
“So no fond farewells, no ceremonies, no encomia, no epitaphs at all.” A lower boom cut through from above, this one more physical, as a weight being dropped which was meant to test the capacity of the floor below, or, for us, the ceiling above.
“And, ultimately, it will not matter.” An impossible deep hum, a double bass mic-ed up to the volume of a jet engine, projecting a resonant frequency even through the ground beneath us.
“Because it has never mattered before, not really.” A gasping silence, at which we both looked skyward, wincing slightly. He took my cheek tenderly in his hand, and, at last, spoke:
“Move or die, pally.”
