i am not happy that i am still awake right now
the rest of your life
for alex (naturally)
Chavez didn’t really have to talk Alex into letting him go out to the desert for New Year’s with Munson. He told her, “We’ve been doing it since we were kids, babe, just me and him,” and she understood that, because she understands everything.
They drive out with a stash of Otter Pops in the cooler in the backseat, Chavez’s mouth smeared purple and Munson’s green. Munson makes Chavez change the CD before they even get past the park. Chavez watches the skinny shadows of the streetlights roll over Munson’s hands and face, Munson lit from behind with his knee up on the dash.
Temperatures drop in the desert and Chavez’s hands are totally numb by the time they’re done putting up the tent. Munson wanders off to look at the cactuses and stuff, and Chavez tries to call Alex or his parents, pacing around with clean brown dust on his shoes, but he can’t get a signal.
They play catch over the hammered sand until the sun goes down, and they’re alone for five miles in every direction. They talk about next season.
Munson’s shoulder is nestled against his own as they eat take-out deli sandwiches for dinner, and Chavez feels him jump when the first coyote howl rips out of the canyon like an air raid siren. Chavez presses back a bit, thinking about equal and opposite reactions, and murmurs, “Got your back, dude,” and Munce relaxes, the coyotes looking for blood and not finding it.
They’re sitting Indian-style on the ground as the year turns, a small guttering fire before them. Munson feeds it pieces of the phonebook, until all that’s left is just the flapping posterboard cover, every page finally gone after two decades of being cold and happy in Death Valley, and he tries the snapped-off knuckles of Joshua tree branches instead, and the flames cough and gnash, angry little flags of orange and yellow.
Chavez watches the gleam of Munson’s wedding ring, caught like a firefly against the dull shine of the bottle glass, and he looks down to see his own ring, silver and frozen, the slight, never-thought-twice weight of it on his hand.
“It’s crazy, Munce, huh,” he says, tracing across the carved-smoke landscape.
Munson doesn’t ask what he’s talking about, just nods and takes a drink. “Yep.”
Chavez’s mouth crooks, and he sneezes, pulls his legs up against his chest, rubbing his hand briskly up and down his shins, friction, warmth. He rolls his head back, the salt stars and every year more than he remembers.
He sneaks a look out of the corner of his eye, and Munson’s got his head back too, UFO-searching, his neck exposed and pale in the night, sandpaper shaded by stubble under his jaw.
And Eric Munson turns, his gaze falling down out of the sky and finding Eric Chavez’s, and Munson smiles at him, smiles at him like he’s been doing for twenty years, like he’ll do forever, Eric Munson smiles at his best friend, all white teeth and calm eyes, and it’s seven minutes past midnight in the desert, and they’re all grown up.
*
ha! no, i kid. here is the actual tag.
Eric Chavez woke up sharply with the certainty that he was running late for something. He was in high school and his car was dying. First bell was at 7:50 and that was the color of the light on the ceiling, dim enough to show that it was autumn.
But Alex shifted next to him and it was his twenty-seventh birthday. The walls were plain white and it was still winter, edging carefully into spring. He wouldn’t get back to sleep.
He slid out of bed cautiously so that he wouldn’t wake up his wife, and went to make some coffee. He turned the radio on low, and it was trying to scream at him about something important, but he was tired, and after a minute he turned it off. He could still remember most of what he dreamed about, but that never lasted.
After a cup of coffee, he put on jeans and took the elevator down to get a newspaper. He found Eric Munson slouched in a chair in the lobby, fast asleep. His clothes were irreparably wrinkled and his hair was sticking up like it used to. Chavez’s stomach clenched at the sight of him; they hadn’t seen each other in six months, not since the team last went to Detroit.
He went over and put his hand on Munson’s forehead, flicking him softly. “Munce,” he whispered. “Wake up, man.”
Munson stirred and his eyes opened, bloodshot and dark. He looked pretty rough, but he smiled when he saw Chavez. He said hi.
Chavez pulled him up and Munson’s knees popped loudly. “What are you doing?” Chavez asked, scared without knowing why, the million different reasons why Munson might be sleeping in the lobby of his apartment building.
Munson shrugged, rolling his head and stretching his arms out. “My phone died. And I forgot your apartment number. I thought. Thought I had it written down. I had a, a receipt?” He dug into his pocket, his face tightening with panic. Chavez put his hand on Munson’s arm.
“Hey. Settle down.” Munson sighed and closed his eyes, leaning against Chavez for a moment. He was the exact same size as Chavez remembered, shoulders and arms like scaffolding. “Are you okay?”
Munson straightened, lighting a smile that made Chavez’s head hurt. “Of course, dude.”
Chavez swallowed and looked away. He hated it when Munson lied to him. “Come with me to get a paper, then.”
It wasn’t until they’re walking out the door that Chavez realized Munson had no bags. Fear scraped up his throat and he jerked his head around to check, and Munson still had his wedding ring. Munson still played with it as they walked, rolling it around his finger with his thumb.
Munson was squinting against the sun like he hadn’t seen it in weeks. Chavez kept sneaking looks at him until Munson said quietly, “Will you knock it off, please.”
Chavez stopped walking. Munson stopped a step or two ahead, but kept his back to Chavez, his shoulders high and tense.
“What’s going on, Munson?”
Munson’s head dropped minutely, and Chavez stared at the back of his neck, remembering the blank smooth push of it under his hand, how he used to slide his hand up and into Munson’s hair, his elbow jammed into Munson’s shoulder. Chavez remembered almost everything.
“I can’t come see you anymore?”
Chavez swallowed, because once they didn’t even have to talk about it, they just met at the two-trunk elm after school.
“You can. You know you can. But, you should. You don’t look okay.”
Munson’s shoulders fell, and he turned around. His eyes were big and heavy-looking, his face shaded. “I. I’ve kinda had a bad month.” He put his hand up over his face. “Can we not talk about it?”
Chavez rested his hand on Munson’s side and Munson flinched away, giving him a fierce look of warning from between his fingers. Chavez’s mind sparked, ‘fuck that,’ and he set both his hands on Munson, pressing hard under his ribs, because sometimes it was just friendship between them.
“We don’t have to talk about anything. We’re just going to get the paper,” Chavez told him, and Munson was shaking. Chavez was pretty sure that Munson’s wife didn’t know where he was.
The guy at the newsstand asked after Alex and Chavez said the same stuff he said every morning, Munson hanging back with his hands in his pockets, the most fucked-up backstory in the history of time, looking ashamed to be taking up space on the sidewalk.
Chavez took him across the street to the dog run and they leaned their elbows on the fence, watched the fancy little dogs chase each other around, their owners sipping coffees and reading the stock pages. Munson’s breathing steadied, the rhythm of the dogs seeming to calm him.
“Happy birthday, by the way,” Munson told him absently, and Chavez nodded. They were quiet again for awhile, and Chavez was thinking how fucking stupid it had been to put all his anniversaries on the same date. He was thinking, ‘has it really been a year?’
“You think maybe sometimes we were wrong?” Munson asked. Chavez closed his hand tightly on the newspaper, black ink smearing on his palm.
“Yeah,” he answered after a moment.
Munson glanced at him sideways, and Chavez stared at the scar on the angle of Munson’s jaw, something he absolutely did not remember, and that meant it couldn’t be real.
“Do you think we should fix it?” and Munson was starting to look wild and joyful again, it was creeping in around the corners of his mouth and the lines on his forehead. It killed Chavez, seeing that again.
Chavez touched Munson’s arm, curled his fingers around Munson’s wrist, and shook his head.
Munson sucked in an audible breath, and didn’t say anything for a long time. “Nothing’s changed, you know,” he said eventually, his voice breaking slightly. “I thought it would, but it didn’t.”
Chavez pressed the knob of Munson’s wrist like a button, like he could open up a door and they could get out of here. “So you were wrong about that,” he said. “You were right about everything else, though.”
“That’s the part that mattered,” Munson said low. “And I know we can’t do anything about it, but I, I’m not. It’s not like I thought.”
Munson blinked at the ground, and Chavez put his arm around Munson’s shoulders, resting his mouth on the give of Munson’s jacket. Munson leaned into him and the dogs barked like the sky was falling. Pale morning sun and light traffic behind them, and Chavez thought for probably the sixth thousandth time that a life like theirs was impossible in a world like this.
“Hey?” Munson said, fitting his fingers on Chavez’s knee. “Can we go home now?”
Chavez pulled away slightly to look at him, the unchecked brightness in Munson’s eyes and the tautness of his mouth, and nodded slowly. He told Munson, “stay right here,” and went back upstairs, put on a clean shirt and wrote Alex a note, kissed her goodbye as she slept. It was their anniversary too, but she would forgive him. She was very good at that. He took his mitt and his bat, a change of clothes, and the fifteen hundred dollars he kept in an old coffee can for emergencies.
Munson was waiting for him on the street, shivering with anticipation and the wind all over his hair like hands, and they headed south, San Diego on the horizon and everything else behind, and nothing counted except for the highway.