Still, I have no deep thoughts to keep me awake and so sleep pulls at me. I am halfway dreaming, halfway to Mullen’s pub again in my head, when Sullivan says, “I asked a girl for her number.”
I open my eyes and watch the lights from a passing car stripe across my bedroom ceiling; it’s still hot and the windows are open and I can hear the engine become louder and then softer. “Come again?” I say, because I am not sure if he’s really spoken or if it was a Sullivan in my dream.
“When we were standing on the sidewalk, after, I asked a girl for her number.”
I say, “I didn’t see you talking to anyone.”
“You were talking to Gerald.”
I don’t remember anyone’s names. I talked to a lot of people. I hadn’t really considered the idea that Sullivan was having equal but separate conversations at the same time. I have a brief thought that he means the girl I saw standing in the doorway, and the concept fills me with horror. “Did she give it to you?”
“No,” Sullivan says.
“Good,” I say.
“Good?”
“No,” I reply. “Not good. Why did you ask her?”
Sullivan doesn’t answer. I wait for him to clarify, but there is nothing but heavy, heavy silence. I realize that this is the reason that he called. It was not Mullen’s that was weighing on him, but this girl. I am preoccupied by this, actually, Sullivan giving some girl more importance than our long-awaited Mullen’s siege. Sullivan has had strings of meaningless girlfriends.
There are bugs humming outside, and normally I would sleep through them, but they keep me awake now.
Sullivan says, suddenly, plaintively, “Bryant? Are you still there?”
I have never heard him ask me that before.
“I’m here.”
His breaths are audible. I can feel the quiet stretching out long and thin again, so I interrupt it. “What is it, Sullivan?”
I think that he might not answer, but in the end, he says, “You wouldn’t have let us go to Mullen’s if it wasn’t a good idea, right? I mean, even if I’d said I wanted to, you would’ve stopped me if it was a really ridiculous concept.”
“Of course.” I think this is true. “Of course, Sullivan, I got your back.”
“Good.”
I am aware that the hairs on my arms are standing up. I have a sudden, creeping sensation that I should shut my bedroom window, because although I have not heard anyone approach, the insects outside have gone quiet, and I feel watched.
I say, “We’re going to Mullen’s next week, right?”
“Yes,” Sullivan replies. He pauses. “Don’t hang up.”
I don’t, and the morning is a long time coming.
Cú Chulainn has a lot of stories told about him—when you’re a guy who changes shape and flies into rages that make you kill both friend and foe, people tend to remember you. One of the stories is that there was a prophecy about him (really, in the old stories, you’re nobody unless you have a prophecy attached to you) that said he’d be a great warrior but that his life would be short. There’s always a trade-off in the old stories. You’re wicked hot, but you have to turn into a swan overnight. You can have all the land in the country, but you have seven toes on your left foot. Or you are an awesome warrior, but you’re going to die young.
Everyone remembers Cú Chulainn for the guy he was when he was whacking off people’s heads or pulling dragon’s hearts out through their nostrils or strangling random terrible hounds.
No one remembers the Cú Chulainn between the warp spasms. He could’ve been the nicest guy in the world.
If you are into that mother – son bond thing, the one between Sullivan and Dolores would make your black heart bleed happy. I mean, I’m not saying that I don’t get along with my mother—I love her, I do—but Sullivan and his mom are the sort of thing that Hallmark commercials love. He tells her that her new sweater looks really good on her and she dabs tears away from her eyes as she tells him that she’s really proud of him. It’s all very sappy and supportive and I’ll admit it, it’s a fine thing to behold.
Anyway, because Sullivan loves his mother so much, I love her too, and because I spend so much time over at her house, I like to think it’s mutual. So when I come over one afternoon and Sullivan’s not there, Dolores makes me a cup of tea and sits me at the kitchen table. I have to push aside piles of bills and magazines and Dolores’ laptop to find a space for the saucer. Because it is after four p.m., Dolores makes herself a gin and tonic and sits across from me. It is several weeks after our conquest of Mullen’s and though we’ve returned every week, we’ve discovered that it is more fun to conquer a kingdom than to hold it. I’m ready for the next battle.
“Bryant,” she says, “Have you ever thought about, you know, doing something with your hair?”
In the Middle Ages, when foot soldiers needed to defend themselves against mounted soldiers, they would draw down into a ball and point their spears outward. It was called the hedgehog. My hair looks like that. I consider it my finest feature.
“Not really.”
Dolores expertly tips back her gin and tonic. It’s rewarding to watch a someone who’s really good at it drinking. She says, “Sullivan got into Julliard.”
I don’t say anything. I mean, I knew he would, because he’s Sullivan. But I hadn’t really prepared for the actual event. The thing is, I know I am invisible when I play with Sullivan, because I am a minor star to his brilliant sun. But the thing I am not sure about is whether or not I will stay invisible without him. I don’t think I can handle that.
“I guess I’m hoping my New York college aps go well,” I say.
Dolores gets herself another drink. “Do you know about this girl Sullivan is seeing?”
It is like this: I have no lungs.
“That’s what I thought,” she says. “She’s different from the others, then.”
He has always told me about his girlfriends. This feels like betrayal. I wonder if he is out with her right now. I wonder how many times when I’ve called over the last four weeks he has been with her. Mostly, I wonder if it is that girl from Mullen’s.
Dolores opens her laptop, which powers up instantly, and turns it around to face me. It’s an eBay page, and she’s buying a horseshoe. There’s another window open to a search engine, and she clicks over so I can see what she’s been looking at.
Protection against faeries says the text in the search engine. She can type it, even if she can’t say it. I’d like to say I’m incredibly shocked, but I have an Ouroborous around my arm and a guitar named Cú Chulainn. I could be convinced of a lot of things. And to see that girl at Mullen’s was to be a believer.
She asks, “Do you think Sullivan is too good?”
I don’t reply. We both know the answer to that.
That night, I dream I see them together. They are in a midnight garden covered with long, delicate purple flowers that look like candy. She sings a song into his ear and he listens, half a smile on his face. I hear strains of the song and it is wild and beautiful and other, and even from far away, on the other side of the dream, it makes me crazy with wanting. I can only imagine what it is doing to him. He says to her, “I want to know more.” She says, “ More is not a safe place for you.” He replies, “Safe has never been important.”
I know this is true, but the fact that he’s saying it to her instead of to me hurts. Not hurts like in a dream, but hurts like it’s real life and I’m awake. I dream that he kisses her and it’s the way he kisses her that makes me wake up.
Lying in dark, I reach for the phone and I call him, but he doesn’t pick up. I know it’s because the dream was real. He’s not in his room but in some dangerous garden far away from a world that includes my guitar, Mullen’s, and gin and tonics at his mother’s kitchen table.
I get out of bed and go into the bathroom and in the ordinary silence of night. I shave my head. I feel invisible.