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I am drowning
There is no sign of land
— — —
They are thirty three years old, and Samuel is in a three piece Armani suit and tie, and Harold is in his button up white slacks, one of those standard issues from the police force. They are in one of those fancy restaurants off the fifth avenue of Manhattan, the type that requires reservations months in advance, but their food is untouched, and they are screaming at each other across the white table cloth the waiters had cleared of crumbs after their appetizers.
The glass flower piece dies a dramatic and shattering death upon the carpeted floors. The soft woolen carpet doing nothing to dampen or soften the sound. Sameul is stood up, his height far towering over Harold’s stopped and hunched form over the table. Between them the silent hangs, the ringing snap of Smauel’s backhand across the table echoes. It was aimed for Harold but missed a good distance away. Harold does not cow, his jaw tight, the butter knife is sharp in his hand.
The rest of the restaurant stares at them. The waitress is polite through teeth, in her offers to pack the rest of their courses – it’s not an offer they extend commonly, but for you sirs, we would make every exception. And every exception comes in the form of the rest of their course thrown into plastic take out boxes hastily scraggled together from the convenience store a block away. It’s yet another restaurant that they’ll be blacklisted from, and by the time the glass shards are cleared and the water vacuumed dry off the carpeted floor, they are escorted to the front entrance where the Valet has brought Samuel's car for them. Samuel slides into the passenger seat, and dumps the paper bag filled with plastic take out boxes into the backseat.
Careful, that's more than three hundred dollars worth. Harold wants to bite out, but Sameul neither cares about the food nor the leathered upholstery. Harold thanks the Valet with a bundle of notes and a fragile smile, before sliding into the driver's seat. As they pull into the main road, Samuel drops his mask. Shrugging violently out of his coat and tie, crinkling his dry-cleaned suit as he pulls up his legs onto the seat with his arms crossed above his knees, the heels of his leather shoes juts into the creases of the leather upholstery. Samuel stares out onto the dark streets rolling past them, he looks gaunt and hollowed.
“Well this is a first,” starts Harold, the restaurant-hotel becoming smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror. It was a lie that made the both of them feel better, because this was not the first time that they’ve ended the night screaming each other’s heads off, nor the first time that Samuel had attempted to hit Harold (sometimes the hits even landed).
“I'm not going to apologise for comforting you.” Harold says, ripping off the band aid. The anger he had in the restaurant's been extinguished. Only exhaustion remains. He hopes his voice doesn't shake. “That's not something I have to apologise for.”
For a moment he thinks that Sameul’s ignoring him. He glances at Samuel from the far left field of his vision. Sameul's hands are cupped around his ears, as if to block out sound, but the traffic light flickers to red and Harold slows to a stop. Turning to face Samuel, he sees that Samuel's nails are buried in his scalp. Harold reaches over and buckles Sameul's seatbelt.
It takes time for the words to come.
“...I'm not asking you to apologise for it. I'm asking you to stop. That is two very different things Harold.” Samuel says, tugging at his roots, Harold knows he'd rip it out, follicles and all if he could, but he doesn't because he needs to look presentable for his work, to make clients trust him with their money; and Samuel needs that money because he uses it to bribe and tease out any all info he could source from the black markets about Nobu.
“I won't.’
“I know. But fuck Harold, I need you to stop. It was my fault. I just–” Sameul throws his head back into the seat hard to make it hurt. The car rattles with him. Self-flagellating.
“I just wish it was me you know? That was taken away. That it was me instead of him.”
A heartbeat. The car is silent. The redlight holds them paused as if in an eternity. It is night and there are no cars on this old road. It is just them, alone in this world. Alone in their grief. For all the money and time they have spent, there is no one else who remembers Nobu.
“Do you not think I wish the same too?”
— — —
Samuel is quiet after that. He almost always is, after his outburst. He is meak, quiet, and he holds out his hand when Harold asks. Samuel places his hand on Harold’s outstretched hand; Harold thumbs over the knuckles at the broken skin. There is nothing in Sameul’s Bentley Arnage like bandages and ointments; Harold has parked them by the side of the gas station. The neon white lights of the station cut them in harsh shadows and lights. Harold dots iodine soak cotton balls on the broken skin, Samuel does nothing but track the movement listlessly, still lost in thought. Harold layers a bandage over.
“Need a painkiller?” he asks. He tries to be soft. Wonders when he started being soft, if it was a choice or if the world had battered him bruised to the centre. Samuel just shakes his head, but he doesn’t withdraw his hand.
They used to be so sweet on each other. Harold used to pick flowers for him, pressing the flowers dry between stacks of elementary books that he never quite liked to study from. Used to slip those immortalized flowers into the pages between Samuel’s books ; skirting around always just for the moment when Samuel, lost in the words, would flip a page and startle at the flowers bursting from his page. He and Nobu used to giggle over Sameul’s startled look, the boy would always freeze just for a moment like a deer in headlights; before giving an eye roll and a small chuckle, stopping down to pick up the flowers off the ground; thanking Harold, sticking a dandelion into Nobu’s hair. Nobu had given Sameul a diary to keep those flowers in. He wonders if Sameul’s thrown it. It was like him to throw what he loved away in anger.
In present time, Samuel says nothing, so Harold just puts the car into gear and drives on. They used to be sweet to each other. He remembers. They used to be sweet on each other, sweet on Nobu, and Nobu had been so sweet on them.
— — —
Harold clears away the empty bottles of wine off the nightstand, picks up the used condoms on the bedding. The bed sheets are stained and reeking of sex.
“It helps me sleep.” Samuel says. On the nights that you can't be here. Is not added. His hair is still wet, the towel is dry around his hips, water droplets stain the carpet floors. He barely smells of soap, as if he’d just walked into the shower spray as Harold had instructed, and walked back out. There is no jealousy, no feelings, in Harold as he clears the condoms away, changes the bedsheets. Maybe he should feel hurt, feel some sort of pain, but he’d gotten so used to the feeling that he doesn’t have a breath without it.
They tried once, when they were in their mid twenties, to be Harold and Sameul. They had almost gotten to something that resembled happiness, fought against how every smile and kiss they had lingered with the after taste of nausea and guilt. But Harold had turned to Sameul one day and said, “I can’t remember what Nobu sounded like. I can’t remember his voice.”. And there had been a mad scramble for their memories – what had he sounded like, what had he smelled like – his laughter, his smile – Samuel, I forgot what Nobu looked like, how can we find Nobu if we cant –
Then Samuel decided alcohol and sex could make up the difference, and Harold met Kathy and tried to pretend that he could become normal if he tried hard enough. But he’d never struck gold in his life, and even what he has with Kathy is barely anything close to what normal should look like. Kathy is working overnight, and Harold himself feels no guilt that he is here with Sameul, because Kathy doesn’t love him. And he doesn’t love her either.
Kathy and him, they share affection. They are two people in a circumstance. And some nights when Sameul’s hits land and Harold's words cut too deep; it was nice to run and hide in her arms and imagine that it’s either Nobu or Samuel holding him. That it’s Sameul’s or Nobu’s or both of their lips beneath him. When Kathy closes her eyes, it’s someone else under her lips too. There was a woman in her life, that woman had blonde curling hair like he does. Kathy thinks of her always. He doesn't ask which orphanage she'd grown up in. She is nice enough to do the same. Kathy had met Samuel once, on their first date, Samuel had gotten too drunk and called him (some nights Harold wishes Samuel had gotten drunk over the thought of him on a date with someone else, but he knows that Samuel got drunk all the time back then; couldn’t stand himself sober) And Kathy and him, the both of them had went to whatever bar that Sameul had messaged, it took what felt like eternity what with the spelling errors and haphazard directions, Harold on the phone, Kathy at the wheel. They found him in the alley way, throwing up on his Ferragamo shoes. Kathy dropped them at Samuel's apartment, she turned to him and said that he’d been lucky, that at least he had Samuel. She had no one to stand with her in her search for her Nobu. He'd dropped a kiss to her forehead. It’s been three years since.
It's better this way, to keep their apartment whole instead of split down the middle, to tell the neighbours, the restaurant down the street, their colleagues, that they were two halves stitched. It’s better to live with someone who doesn’t know that he likes his coffee tongue-wrenchly sweet. To live with someone who keeps the other half of his bed warm, who holds him close at night. (But it’s not really him, because when Samuel holds him, he thinks of Nobu. When Kathy holds him, she thinks of her. When would someone hold him, and think only of him.) It's better to leave in this facade, then for Harold to hold Samuel in his arms and feel the empty space where Nobu should be. It's better to play house with Kathy — than to live with a single toothbrush by the sink, a single set of cutlery. It's better to have a hand to hold by her side, than letting the empty silence of who they love kill them both. Kathy and him, they hold space for each other. A hanger to drape their love, to for a moment, have a body to hold close, to close their eyes and imagine that the people they love, loved them.
— — —
“ – Harold. I can’t reach–” Nobu dangles, leg still inches above ice ground. “I can’t.”
“Shush!” It is Harold's voice. Waving a hand hurriedly behind his back to shush Nobu silent. Harold presses closer to the bushes, next to Samuel, the snowflaked leaves chilling his cheek as he watches through the pinhole made of leaves. At the black car, at the black suited man and the small boy he leads by the hand to the backseat of the car. Their footsteps, one big and one small, trail behind them ; soon the winter storm of snow will cover them. The engine of the car hums.
“But–”
“Shh. Nobu!” Samuel whispers hurriedly. The small boy is tugging at the man's hand, shaking his head at the open door. The man pulls out a damp handkerchief.
“Ah!”
Samuel turns shocked, and Harold turns back too. And Nobu is on the ground, there are tears in his eyes, and he is holding his elbow like it hurts. Samuel rushes to nobu. Harold stays, staring up at the window sill open behind Nobu, the glass glinting off the streetlights, the howling winds. When he turns back to the pinhole of leaves, the man is crouched and stares back at him.
— — —
“It's both our faults.” Samuel says, falling asleep in Harold's arms. “It would have been better for him, if he hadn't met us.”
Harold’s heart is too heavy, the grief has eaten him whole. Harold holds Samuel in his arms, stays silent so that he can drift to sleep. They would search for the rest of their lives, if needed. Their regrets would be carved onto their gravestones, and even in the afterlife, and in lifetime after lifetime, they’ll chase after the ghost of him. Harold wonders when it'll stop hurting; he wonders if it ever wants it to stop hurting.
Where are you Nobu? We miss you. So much. It's horrible to live with only two thirds of a heart. We’re looking for you. I pray you're looking for us too.
He drifts off to sleep somewhere in the early morning, when the sky is still dark but the clouds are beginning to lighten, come sunrise.
— — —
He always dreams. He is in the past, and in the moment where he last saw Nobu. Nobu trembles between them. The three of them are all trembling beneath the blankets. Samuel and Harold are trembling, because it's always the black haired kid that gets spirited away. Nobu is trembling because he knows that he is next. In this dream-like memory, Harold steels himself, grits his teeth; and says with all the strength of a naive child that he wasn’t worried, because Nobu would always be safe with them. (He is lying. The man had smiled with that handkerchief in hand. Another man had pulled the unconscious boy into the car. Smiled and walked away like he knew Nobu would be next. Then Sister Mary had handed them their adoption papers, and Nobu’s paper had a Mr and Ms Smith – and Sameul had torn up their papers and Sister Mary had slapped Sameul to the ground, split his skin.)
We could run away, all three of us. Right now. Harold thinks, in insanity. But he bites back the thought. Sees Sameuls’ dull eyes, the soft tremble of his shoulder, pain in his eyes as he presses the ice pack to his cheek. Sees Nobu’s shaking tears. The winter wind howls, battering their windows. You can’t run away in a winter storm, and they are warm here, so tomorrow, Harold decides. Tomorrow, he’ll take them and run. He just has to wait for the morning light. But tomorrow never comes. They took Nobu in the night, spirited him away so far away that neither he nor Samuel could reach. One day when Sameul and Harold were eleven years old, they woke up, and Nobu was nowhere to be found.
— — —
They wake up now, twenty-two years later, in bed with their arms wrapped around each other. Nobu is still nowhere to be found.
— — —
Samuel is in the kitchen, stirring sugar cubes into Harold’s coffee, tapping the teaspoon off on the cup rim. Harold is right next to him, sliding pieces of bread into the toaster. Samuel’s hair is gelled perfectly, suit and tie crisp, not a wrinkle in place. Samuel looks exhausted. Harold is too. He hadn’t brought a spare of clothes, yesterdays’ shirt clings to him, gritty in the way that dirty laundry is.
“I’m sorry.” Samuel starts, “for yesterday. I was out of line.”
The ‘again’ need not be said.
Samuel doesn’t look at him, setting the teaspoon on the counter top, “I can’t meet your eye until I’ve found him.”
“Until we find him.” Harold says, wishing he could kiss the sadness away from Sameul’s eyes.
But he can’t, so he settles for a hug, pressing himself close to Samuel’s back, uncaring for the way his fingers crinkles Samuel’s suit. Harold settles for pressing his face into the space between Sameul’s shoulder blades, holding him close. They don’t say the words ‘I love you’. They can’t bring themselves to say it. They are too broken for such tender words. But Samuel takes Harold’s fingers and pulls them to his lips, brushing his chapped lips on the knuckle ridge. Harold closes his eyes, presses his lips to Sameul’s shoulder. He breathes in the scent of Sameul’s shampoo, and feels Samuel's heart beat beneath the palms of his hand. For a smallest of moments, it is just them. Samuel and Harold. The sunlight is coming in now, drowning them in the morning light.
You are coming down with me
Hand in unlovable hand
And I hope you die
I hope we both die
~ No children (The Mountain Goats)
— — —
Epilogue :
Harold wakes up, age forty-four, in bed with his arms wrapped around a warm body. He opens his eyes. Across the bed, Samuel is propped up and leaning against the headboard, Sameul looks sleep-soft, calmer, a small smile on his face, his arm is reached out, his fingers interlocked with Harold's over the blankets, together their hands rise and fall gently to the steady breaths of the man between them. Nobu is fast asleep between their arms, safe and sound and whole.