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BOOK FIVE

"Hey, Ashleigh. I know you don't want to hear from me right now. And... I understand that. You don't have to keep listening if you don't want to. But I don't have a choice. I have to keep talking. This has been weighing on me for sometime now. I don't want to have a conversation, so I guess it's best you didn't pick up. But I do need to speak. To get my words out. To tell someone. You may not be that someone, but I'll speak my piece and hope you'll listen.

"I don't know if you found out much about what happened after the accident. I know you weren't at the funeral, and I wish you could've been. I barely remember it. I just remember that it was beautiful.

"The sky was a lovely grey and a fine blanket of snow carpeted the ground. You could feel the wind nipping at you, reminding you that you were still alive. He would've liked it, I think. And if he could have seen me getting along with his family -- well, Ashleigh, I'm willing to bet he would have shed as many tears as we did.

"Quite frankly I was surprised that his family asked me to come. But, whether or not he realized it, his family really did love him. They loved him, Ashleigh, and they knew it would mean to world to him for me to have been there. So they asked me to come. How could I say no?

"I don't know what will become of him now. I remember his family... His family said that God knows everyone makes mistakes. That God is mercy and would not condemn Rian because he loved. And oh, how he loved--! I don't know, Ashleigh, if I believe in God, and in Heaven and Hell; but if ever there was a reason to believe in Heaven, Rian showed it to me. I don't know if he's there, but... I can't imagine he's gone anywhere else.

"He helped me, once. He told me that there were common men, who lived common lives, never thinking, never stopping, never changing, and never understanding that they could live life as they wanted -- to the fullest. He told me that there were gods -- men who didn't take life in their stride, but who challenged it, rose against it, tamed it and lived as they could -- as best as they could -- never once relenting, never once letting life pass idly.

"I've met many common men in my life, and I don't know if I believe in God; but I believe in Rian. He was one of the few who lived as the gods do, and he taught me to do the same. When we were together -- it was incredible, Ashleigh. When we were together, we could do anything. When we loved, we became gods. It wasn't something I could comprehend before. Now, I don't know how I'll live without it.

"We were gods, Ashleigh -- and we were thrust back into reality. To the world of men we were hurled. We had become fools. Men cannot be gods. Not forever, at least. Even as I speak, I'm sitting by his grave, and I'm reminded of his arms around me. Do gods cry, Ashleigh? Do they weep for the lost? I hope he's gone somewhere peaceful; he deserves that much. Maybe I can't be with him now, but I hope I will someday. I think I'll sit by his grave a while longer. I can't bear to part with him again. I need to know, Ashleigh -- do gods cry?

"I don't expect you to understand."

I didn't see Ashleigh anymore. I had called her to explain what had happened but I'd had a hard time of it. We met once in person so I could explain it better, and she just broke down crying. She's not a particularly emotional person, but she cried -- a lot -- and I wouldn't want to lie to you about it. She barely knew him but she had enjoyed his company before she knew what I'd done with him, and, what's more, she felt responsible for what had happened. Not that she should have -- she really wasn't to blame -- but it's how she felt.

When she left I didn't see her again. I tried contacting her a few times and, on two separate occasions, I even got responses. But in the second of those responses she asked me not to talk to her anymore. I can't blame her in the slightest.

"Are you gonna be okay?" Renee asked me. She was driving me home from the airport, which was probably for the best. I did my best to keep composed but every once in a while the grief hit me anew and when that happened I lost control. I probably wasn't the safest person to be on the road.

"I don't know," I answered honestly.

"Yeah," she choked out. She was trying to console me but it was difficult when she couldn't even tell herself things would be okay. When something terrible happens you do everything you can to tell yourself that you'll live, that it will be okay, that life goes on. Rian must have been telling himself all those same things before it got to be too much for him. So as much as I wanted to say that I would be okay, I just didn't know. He sure wasn't.

I clutched it in my hands. I hadn't let anyone see it. I didn't want them to take it. It was all I'd ever have left of him. It was the last gift he left me. All it said was "Life's not a paragraph."

He left out the next line, which reads, "And death I think is no parenthesis." I'm not sure what to make of that. I don't know if he wanted me to substitute it myself or if he meant something in the omission. Or maybe it meant nothing and I'm overthinking it. Which is likely. Given the circumstances.

It seemed like no time had passed before we reached home but it was an eternity. That's one of the things about grief, I'm realizing. It distorts silence and slow time and everything becomes this awful, terrible mess. I stood on the doorstep and couldn't even bring myself to open it. Can you blame me? Inside was where so much of our hope had rested. Back when he and I weren't just a pipe dream. But we never were more than that as much as we pretended. We were smarter in those college days -- those days when he drank and I longed and the most we ever did was make out. That's not to say we didn't get pretty damn close to sex but it was a different time and things wouldn't have been the same. I'm sort of glad we waited. Renee gave me the opportunity to expend my college lusts and save the heartfelt love-making for someone more important.

And now she stood behind me, the only thing I had left. Both Rian and Ashleigh were gone and what could I still say I had? Jeff barely knew how to deal with me right now and he was going back to live with his parents anyways.

I turned around to her -- the last relic of a mythology ended. She had walked up the stairs with me but was ready to leave once I'd headed indoors.

"Renee?" I said, chest rattling, "Can you... Stay?"

She must have been hoping I would ask her to. She nodded and bit her lip and was crying all over again.

We tried for a while to console each other. I'll make no attempt to hide how I acted. This is meant to be honest, isn't it? I was a fucking emotional wreck. She held me and I cried until I couldn't breathe, choking on tears and mucus. I remembered that day vividly. Every moment clear in my head. But I repeated those moments so often that my mind got confused. That's another thing about grief; the more you try to remember something the more it gets fogged up. On the morning after it's almost worse than the day it happened. Waking up to that awful memory and realizing with the first impossible breath that this is real. The second day is a little easier. The memories are just as crystal clear but you've survived a whole day; no matter how much it hurts, you know you'll survive another -- probably. But every time you've finished crying, and managed to calm down a little, you get a fresh picture of the thing you witnessed and are contorted with the pain again. It's a vicious cycle that makes those initial days unbearable.

For full on a year or more it seems like those pictures will never fade. They remain so perfect and untouched and that's what makes them terrible. But eventually, you've recalled those pictures so many times that you mess up a detail -- then another, and another here. After a few years you've got nothing but a blur. It won't hurt so much anymore. Not in the daytime. At nights you can (and will) occasionally feel it; the tug of him at your shirt sleeve -- the scent of him on your sheets; his gentle kiss; days spent in parks and at beaches, nights in tents and the backs of cars; movies watched together and stories shared; the first time he read you that poem, and how happy he was when you memorized and quoted it. It's all there and waiting to pounce. But during the course of a life, they become dim memories. The retina fading after a bright flashbang. You remember snippets but not the whole thing. And, gradually, it slips from your grasp, leaving you with nothing but a yawning hole. So you cover that hole and smile and laugh but it's always there, isn't it?

I was in the process of cutting that hole into myself. But the first steps were to repeat those memories. She held me while the waves of emptiness crashed endlessly on my shore. She held me and never once complained and I was reminded of a different time but couldn't hold on to that memory while this more recent and terrible photograph threatened to drown me and all the other memories. After another forever I stopped crying and I realized that she'd wept too. But of course, and why not? She loved him as I did, only in a different manner.

But I was spent with the weight of my grief. It had exhausted the greater part of my facultative judgment and hers as well. Or maybe she was just trying to help. I don't know how it happened. But there was something different and (though I hate to say it) incredible about that last time together. For the life of me I don't remember undressing or even moving to the bedroom but I won't forget the way her hips felt against me.

It was, perhaps, the most astonishing sexual experience of my lifetime, and I'm almost positive she felt the same. Both of us were at some of the lowest we'd ever been -- our bellies scraping the very bottom of desperation. We were, as I said, exhausted and spent. I'm not sure how we mustered up the strength to screw. But it took two weary souls and pushed them to the very limits of that exhaustion. The climax was a mighty outpouring of our deepest and most painful emotions and I remember we lay in that bed with her on top of me and both naked and weeping and clutching each other. I was terrifically upset that even the best of times with Rian had never left me feeling as alive as that, but I only felt because I missed him. She hadn't done anything but amplified my grief over him. She'd only made me love him more.

I consider it perhaps the worst that I remember the memory of our night together more clearly than I can anything just before it. But if there's one thing I remember just as well as that night, it's how terrible I felt in the morning. I had violated a holy temple -- the same bed Rian and I had so often used to make love. It was a sort of consecrated ground. And somehow I'd let her in and let my judgment down.

Well, grief makes you do things you would never have expected. But to this day I'm mortified and I hope he doesn't hold it against me. She got out of bed quietly and dressed herself and was about to excuse herself.

"Wait," I said.

"Oliver, please," her voice was small and shaking. I could barely hear her. "That wasn't meant to happen. Last night. Let me forget it."

I walked over to her and I hugged her. Put my arms around her and squeezed. The embrace was perhaps the most genuine expression of love I'd ever shown. But look how things turn out when you aren't genuine.

I wanted to say "Thank you." I wanted to tell her how much I had needed her comfort. I wanted to ignore what we'd done with each other and I wanted to do it again. I wanted anything that would make me forget about him. I wanted her to help me forget , I guess. I didn't even like her like that. She said she didn't even like men. But at that moment she didn't say anything and neither did I. So she walked out the door and got in her car and drove away but not before stopping in the doorway and reminding me to call her if things got really bad.

"How bad?" I asked.

"I don't know," she responded. "Rian bad."

That's how I came to rate my pain from then on. Rian bad being the worst, when things were too dark to see the light at the end. How he must have felt towards the end of it all. How he must have secretly felt a lot of the time. He did a good job of hiding it, but I wasn't as talented as him. When I started feeling Rian bad, people could tell. And that's when they always showed up to help. That's probably why I'm still around today.

For the life of me I couldn't tell you why they only seem to care when you're at your worst.

Rian was gone and Oliver was left and on that night they didn't make love. Oliver turned on the speakers playing the Justin Vernon record, the subdued musical crescendos washing over him like some draught of sleep. He kissed once the undisturbed pillow beside his head and fell asleep alone in the open bed, sheets over his legs, cool air over his chest. It was a quiet night. A night for dreaming. A night for solitude in the thoughts of a man, whether they bring peace or trembling. But with each passing minute the stillness grew unbearable. Oliver felt himself cave in, his body collapsing into the blackest depths of his soul. Tears filled his eyes and he cried out to God but God would not give him back. And his voice grew raw and his body weary and he passed out trembling and his heart weak for pounding. The night was quiet.

The night was finished.

The lights were bright in the expanse of room. Crowded tables adorned with food and silverware glimmered under the fiery glow. Teeth and jewelry caught and reflected the light. A soft song on piano surfaced just above the tinkle of laughter and glass. Everyone present was dressed in their finest, faces as bright as the room. It cut a sharp contrast to the black night outside, the bay a faint shimmer, moonlight skimming the surface. Outside, someone smoked, the fumes puffing above a chattering group. The smoking man told a joke and the group laughed. Inside, groups organized 'round tables and in corners, each lost in their own conversation. Merriment seemed the prime directive. Wherever he was noticed he received a smile and polite nod. Several faces he barely recognized congratulated him. He accepted all warmly, and with trembling. "Do you like it?" When he turned around, Oliver stood behind him, and looked handsomer than ever he had before. His hair was combed and fur brushed; he wore a distinct cologne, lilting musky and secure around him. His tuxedo was trim and black-as-can-be, giving off an air of slick confidence and assuredness Rian had never seen in the fox. "Do I like it?" Rian was acutely aware for the thousandth time since meeting him that he was crying. "Do I like it. Of course. I love it." He choked down a sob. Oliver swept forward in a graceful motion and snatched his lover up against his chest. "Don't cry now, Rian," he grinned, "You'll ruin my tux." The skunk sniffed and tried to wipe tears away. Oliver's arm made its way around Rian, hand resting on the small of his back. He took the skunk's other hand in his own. Their noses bumped, gentle 'gainst each other's. It was magical, how quickly he took up the dancing. Rian never knew Oliver could dance. The fox displayed an almost dazzling level of skill; had he been practicing, privately? The piano swelled behind them, the crowds parting and encircling them. No one interfered. The lovers danced to their hearts' content. When finally Oliver stopped, his other arm met around Rian's waist. "I always loved you," he said, "I'm sorry. I treated you... So badly. I never want to make that mistake again." "Shut up you big adorable lug," Rian said, blinking through red, teary eyes. Oliver nudged the skunk's spectacles back into position with his muzzle; he'd barely finished before the skunk's lips were pressed to his own. They let it linger an eternity, the kiss carrying them down a river with no end. Uproarious applause around them was drowned in the sound of their own silence. A camera panned away; a light focused its tight beam on them. The piano soared, and with it they lifted. Love carried them off on its white wings, the boat and the bay beneath them, with no one for company but the light of the moon and stars.

THE END