seriously, it wasn't real
okay, so that didn't happen. season starts tomorrow, goddamn it. if we all swear it was a bad dream, then so it shall be.
let's move on.
*
i need your help. all y'all. i wrote the same story twice, though not really. i wrote one months ago and it started off so well and then kinda died about ten pages in and i kept writing it because i don't know how to stop writing something, and then i was unsure.
so last week i decided to write it again, changing certain crucial things like the pairing and the structure, but cannabalizing many of the scenes and lines from the first.
and now i don't know which one is better. my ability to gauge these things i think was eradicated when alex rodriguez hit that grand slam. anyway, i need to be over both of these stories so that i can move on to writing about zito's fucking spun-glass mind and what it's like to be pulled after one and a third in front of a national television audience.
i ask two things of you. which story do you think was written first, and which is better. i am interested in this, whether or not you can tell how i tried to improve it or even which one is the supposed improved one.
oh, also, it's about huston street turning into an angel.
Rise
The fog comes every night. Two weeks ago, it was nothing, barely up to their shoelaces. Now it’s knee-high and rising. Rich Harden feels like maybe he fell asleep at the wheel.
There are dull red marks on Huston Street’s back, set neatly over his shoulder blades, as long as a hand and as thick as a pack of playing cards. They appeared a couple of weeks ago, without fanfare. Street comes in late to day games on Sundays, eighty-five miles an hour through the hills from his church, a black tie hanging loose around his neck and his hair combed.
Street doesn’t know the marks are there because no one will tell him. No one wants to look too hard. Harden can only fight off the sick fascination, the desire to fist his hands in Street’s ironed white shirt and tear it open.
They ignore the signs. It’s important not to pay attention to any of this. Bobby Crosby sleeps in the grass and the fog covers him up, swimming over his arms and legs, pooling on his chest. Harden stands on the porch and chucks pennies into the white until he finds Crosby, sees the dark shadow of Crosby sitting up, his head emerging from the white.
Crosby, wet-eyed from the dew and pale all over, sees the look on Harden’s face and tells him, “It’s just the weather, man,” but Harden has lived here longer. There are things that make sense; this is not one of them.
Street is hungry in the middle of the night and they drive out barefoot, Harden beside him and glad to be here, away from their strange house, the fog already beginning to build. Down and out of the hills, red and yellow neon above the highway, hamburgers and caffeine-free soda in the parking lot, and Street is laughing.
Street is falling asleep in the shotgun seat, smear of ketchup on the side of his mouth. Harden would like to find an alley somewhere and locate his hands on Street’s body, but they’re far from the city and without buildings to shield them, Harden loses his nerve.
“Pay attention for five seconds, will you?” Zito says, and Harden blinks, finds himself sitting in the outfield grass, daydreaming.
“This is how you put your fingers,” Zito explains, and Harden nods, fiddles with the baseball in his hands. “And this is the angle. This is what happens to your wrist. This, it feels like getting punched, but you should see it move.”
Harden’s pretty sure that they have bigger problems at the moment than the weird hinky two-seam Zito picked up in Atlanta. Eric Chavez is in the dugout, scratching at his throat, handing out notes that read, I’ve lost my voice, his eyes all big and pissed-off and worried. Crosby is snapping thin-handled bats over his knee for no good reason.
“It’s not, like, the easiest thing in the world to control,” Zito continues, a closed-up expression on his face.
“Yeah,” Harden answers. He’s already forgotten what Zito was trying to show him.
Chavez’s voice comes back during the game. Only problem is, he’s speaking Latin. Nobody seems to know what to make of it, as Chavez leans gratefully on Marco Scutaro and spits bizarre curses at them. Harden is pitching and his arm burns. Behind him, Chavez is near tears, babbling without end.
Street comes on in the eighth to take the ball away from him, and curiously puts his hand on Chavez’s shoulder, flicking his eyes around the others, is he okay? what happened? But Chavez falls quiet then, breathing in hitches, his eyes downcast and purely relieved, and they look at each other, shrug. Harden goes down to the clubhouse to watch the rest of the game on television.
At their house, the fog hits Harden’s waist.
Street is lying on the floor in the living room, pink bubble gum in his mouth and his hands folded under his head. He’s gazing idly at the ceiling, shirt wrinkled and legs strewn. Harden wants to bring him a Coke and watch Street press it into his stomach, leave a cold gray circle behind.
He sits down beside him, and Street rolls his head to the side, meets Harden’s eyes all sleepy and smelling too sweet. “Tired,” Street says. He squirms. “My back itches.”
Harden makes a vaguely interested noise, more concerned with the muscles pulled by Street’s triangular arms.
“I think maybe there’s mosquitoes,” Street goes on. “Maybe a tear in the screen, and they’re getting in at night.” He shivers, arching on the carpet like a cat, and Harden is stuck in place as if his hands are nailed to the floor. “Driving me crazy.”
Harden nods, dry-mouthed. Street sighs and settles, blowing a bubble that pops over his chin and nose. Harden is confused and he wishes he could turn Street over onto his stomach and push his hands up under Street’s shirt, fabric caught around his wrists and the buck of Street’s spine against his palms.
But it’s too early in the season. Harden can watch but nothing more. He doesn’t know what’s happening to them right now, can’t figure out what’s an omen and what’s just wishful thinking.
Crosby and Zito make a blowtorch from a spray bottle of WD-40 and a red plastic Bic lighter, setting aflame newspaper on the deck, and they sit in a circle as if they’re at camp. They’re drunk enough that it doesn’t seem strange that the fire won’t burn out, though they’re hours and hours out there, warm as bronze.
Harden can see his breath in the air, taste like ice in his lungs. Crosby’s eyes are as silver as a drive-in movie screen, reflecting the orange light and making Harden oddly afraid of him.
Huston Street glows from within. There’s a fuzz of gold limning his head, tracing the outline of his hands on the cement. Harden develops a constant sense of someone watching him.
The marks on Street’s back have taken form, slow shallow curves rising under his skin. Almost like shoulder blades atop his shoulder blades, neatly picked out by Harden as he furtively watches Street making the journey from the bathroom to his bedroom with a towel around his waist. Specific kind of symmetry present here in the morning, a different skeleton gaining power within their boy closer.
Danny Haren takes a wrong step getting out of the cab and his body twists jerkily as he falls, crashing hands first onto the sidewalk. Zito looks down at him nonplussed and says, “Dude. Motor skills.”
Haren laughs through his nose, but his lips are pressed thin and tight and his hands are wrapped around his knee. He shivers and says that he hurt his knee, which freezes them all in place.
He’s drunk; they’re all drunk. The summer’s brakes have been cut, and it’s not okay for Haren to have fucked up his knee trying to get out of a cab. The smell of exhaust and the pain on Haren’s face are doing something strange to Harden’s stomach.
He runs to find Street, fights his way through the bar and spots Street flickering like stop-motion photography. Street smiles brightly when he sees Harden, hugs him tight around the shoulders and Harden gasps, fists his hands in Street’s shirt and blushes deep red, pulls him outside.
Danny is curled up on himself, whispering unintelligibly, and Crosby is standing in the gutter and arguing with Zito, he ripped a tendon, no, he just twisted it, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, he’s done for the season. Haren looks like he wants to cry. Harden’s hand slips up under Street’s shirt and touches the bare skin of his back.
“Fix him, man.”
Crosby snorts and glares at him. “What the fuck is he supposed to do about it?” Crosby asks, but everyone ignores him. Zito wanders over and absent-mindedly weaves his hand in Haren’s hair, gazing without focus at the neon signs across the way.
Street kneels and carefully moves Haren’s hands away, replaces them with his own. Harden crosses his fingers. Street doesn’t know what he’s doing, but it’s okay. He looks up at Harden curiously. “Is that it?”
Harden shrugs, his mouth dry, and Street stands up, offers Haren his hand. Danny rises slowly, his weight on his good leg, and then carefully tests the other. He can stand, he can hop lightly in place and gape at Street, his eyes sheer blue and wet hot flat, other things that end hard.
They’re quiet for a minute, and then Crosby says, “I’m too fucking drunk for this shit,” and goes inside.
Harden is having a rough month. He touches Street casually and finds himself able to remember things that he forgot years ago, like his locker combination from middle school and the precise order of the afternoon cartoons when he was maybe seven years old. Street doesn’t seem to sleep anymore, listens to music in the backyard with his knees drawn up and his eyes on the sky, and Harden watches him from the window, biting his nails, seeing the fog build up around Huston Street and the marks on his back as red as wine stains.
Harden has no system of belief within which to incorporate this. Better to say, he has no fucking idea how to make sense of it.
He gets lost following the guys from one bar to another and just sort of wanders around downtown Cleveland for awhile. Harden is certain that scared is not how he should feel right now, but he doesn’t really know how to be anything else.
Street is throwing faster than he ever has before. Only a few miles an hour more, not quite breaking triple digits, but enough to make the trainers huddle around him like squinty crows and interrogate him as to what he’s been eating and if he’s changed his lifting routine at all. Street shrugs and smiles, his fingers twitching on the baseball.
Crosby leans next to Harden on the big roll of the tarp and mimics his study of Street, his hands folded over his stomach.
“Something’s going on,” Crosby says neutrally.
Harden nods as Street throws slider after slider and each one bends more than the last, trajectory like the shape of a boomerang. “Yeah.”
“Your thoughts?”
Harden glances at him and Crosby’s mouth is twisted up at the corners, small ruined smile. Harden moves his shoulders and the sun is resting in center field, diffuse through his skin.
“I think it doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t fuck him up on the field,” Harden replies, and that is a lie.
Eric Chavez watches Street suspiciously, pressing his fingers down on his own chest, where the cross he wears makes a thin shape under his T-shirt. Zito is acting stoned all the time, though Harden knows he doesn’t smoke during the season, it seems to be Zito’s way of pretending he doesn’t notice anything. Danny Haren looks at Street like Street saved his life. Everyone pretty much avoids Street, like they would avoid someone on a really bad or really good hitting streak.
Harden can’t stop following Street around, bringing him bottles of water and napkins when someone spills Coke all over Street’s chair. He feels vaguely stunned, constantly recovering from a blow to the head.
He’s watching from his bedroom as the bathroom door in the hall opens, the smell of steam and shampoo rolling towards him. Street passes wet and wearing only jeans, tipping a smile in Harden’s direction and heading for his room, and Harden sees the skin give way on his back.
He’s up out of his chair and trying to say Street’s name, his eyes growing big as poker chips, red and white emerging from Street’s back as the skin parts like wax. Harden isn’t thinking, pressing his hands to the rips, feeling blood slick on his palms.
“Rich, what-” Street says, half-turning to face him, but Harden won’t let him, pushes Street up against the wall to apply more pressure.
Hard ridge of Street’s shoulder blades, longer and higher than they should be, and something soft under all that, driving up into Harden’s hands. Harden stares, biting down on the insides of his mouth, a brush as white as Huston Street’s teeth peeking out from between his fingers.
He takes his hand away and there are small feathers coming out of Street’s back, red-streaked, both ridges broke open along drawn lines. There is structure under there, run and curve and rise, and when Street flexes his back, the feathers whicker.
“What is it?” Street asks in his low, even voice, looking back over his shoulder at Harden’s terrified face.
Harden shakes his head, his throat rich and thick. “Huston, I. I think I know what’s been happening to you.”
Street’s eyes light up like candles, and Harden swallows acid, his gaze fixed on the bloody handprint between the wings emerging on Street’s back.
Harden can’t process it, and so he leaves Street alone in the house and goes out to get historically drunk. Problem with that is, he’s got to call Street to come pick him up, because Crosby is probably just as drunk in the bar next door and Melhuse never answers his phone and no one else would deign to drive to Walnut Creek at two in the morning. Except maybe Zito, but he’d only do it for something to hold over Harden later, and Harden is too smart for that tonight.
Harden sits on the curb, having been thrown out of the bar for harassing (or asking politely, depending on your point of view) the other patrons about their religious beliefs. He doesn’t really remember, though his throat hurts and he thinks he might have screamed, “What the fuck do you mean people can’t fly?” immediately prior to getting rolled.
The curb is uncomfortable, and his head is atop his arms, which are crossed on his knees. He focuses on the sewer grate a few yards away, something solid and stationary to keep him from vomiting.
He doesn’t hear Street coming, just all of a sudden a hand on his back and Harden panics, almost falls off the curb before Street catches him and pulls him back. Harden peers at Street from under his bent arm, hissing like a vampire in the light. Street holds up his hand, blinking widely.
“Hey. Just me,” Street tells him, and Harden has to laugh, at the pure insanity of his life at this moment, because Street has fucking wings growing out of his back and he thinks he can just sit next to Harden on the curb like nothing’s different.
“Take me home,” Harden manages, and Street picks him up, put him in the shotgun seat. Harden checks Street’s shirt for blood and starts to ask, “Huston, what the fuck,” about twenty-seven times on the drive back, but never quite gets it out.
There’s the team to think about and also what will Street’s parents say? Scratch that. They’ll probably be thrilled. Fucking Catholics. There’s a million ways that this will go bad, and Huston Street will be cut up into little pieces and put under microscopes, a fact of which he does not seem aware, judging by the way he is singing along with the radio and fidgeting, rubbing his back into the seat. Harden is so drunk that he reaches out and starts scratching Street’s back for him, digging his nails into the protrusions, and Street moans and keeps almost closing his eyes, until he remembers that he’s driving.
Rich Harden wakes up with a blinding headache and a wild hope that it was all a dream, hallucination, psychotic break, something other than real. He can feel it beating like a tiny bird in his chest, and he spills out of bed in a flail of arms and legs. He’s down the hall before he registers that he’s moving, and his head is a blur of red-neon pain and blue prayers. He does not have time to register the irony.
He goes into Street’s room without knocking, shoved forward by something inside, and crashes onto Street’s bed, fighting through the sheets and pillows and finding Street burrowed down, helpfully sleeping on his stomach. Harden pushes up Street’s shirt with only a faint nod to the knowledge that he has wanted to do this since long before Street started mutating. Or whatever the fuck.
The shirt catches on the wings as Street is murmuring and waking up. Harden feels them bump into his fingers and his heart breaks. He collapses down beside Street, his hand moving in disbelief across the softsoft feathers and the way the wings are undeniably bigger than they were last night.
“Hey?” Street says muffled, turning to face Harden. Harden goes still, because he’s in Street’s bed in the sepia-gray light and his hand is under Street’s shirt.
“Oh. Hi,” Harden whispers. Street hums, blinking at him, his eyes never coming more than halfway open.
“You okay?” Street asks simply.
Harden’s hand closes, too tight, he thinks, but Street just exhales a rusty pleased noise, arching his back to press into Harden’s grip. Harden thinks in a never-ending loop, fuckfuckfuck, his headache messing with his depth perception and his grasp on how fucking ludicrous this is.
“No,” Harden answers. Truly honest for the first time in his life, because there’s no way to survive something like this.
Street makes a concerned sound and rolls into him, open-mouthed kiss on Harden’s shoulder and Street mumbling, “Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong, gonna be fine.”
Street’s arm is slung across Harden’s side, curling up his back, warm sleepy heat, and Harden is shaking, barely able to respond when Street kisses him on the lips and then falls back asleep. Harden learns the shape of the wings as they push out, tasting Street vague in his mouth, thinking helplessly, if you are what you seem, what’s that make me?
Very little changes. Harden can’t afford to let it. He makes Street wear two T-shirts under his button-up and obsessively checks his back before they go to the ballpark. Still just baby-wings, only visible through the clothes if someone is looking for them, and no one is looking for them except Rich Harden. Harden keeps placing his fingers against his mouth, the hook of Street’s arm over his side branded on his skin.
Street doesn’t seem to understand. He’s just like normal, eating toast and burning his tongue on the coffee. He skates his hand on the wind outside the car window and changes the CD three times on the twenty-minute drive to the stadium. Harden is wishing for a blowout, a rainout, anything that will keep Street out of the game.
He hustles Street into the bathroom when it’s time to change into his uniform, away from their teammates and Zito’s fucking camera, and Street obediently dresses in the stall, echo-talking about maybe buying a ferret. Harden rests his forehead against the cool metal of the paper towel dispenser and doesn’t tell him that ferrets are illegal in California.
Street doesn’t get into the game, but Harden hears him say Chavez’s name and in that same instant Chavez swings awkwardly and everyone goes quiet as they watch the ball rise and rise and disappear over the fence in left-center. Chavez stands at the plate, blinking in astonishment, and jogs around the bases with a stupid look on his face.
“I was under it,” Chavez says, absently rapping fists with everyone. “I didn’t hardly get a piece of it at all.”
Ellis calls him a lucky motherfucker and everyone starts rubbing their hands through Chavez’s hair, trying to siphon some of the luck off. By the end of the game, Chavez is just this wreck under a black hurricane, scowling and pushing his hair back off his forehead with chalked fingers.
Street is too excited, burring in the car and dragging Harden through the house. Harden is dizzy and terrified beyond words. Street digs an old Polaroid camera out of his closet and pushes it into Harden’s hands, stripping off his shirt. Harden stares dry-mouthed at the taper of Street’s chest, the defined trail of hair on his stomach.
“I wanna see, man, the mirror’s no good.” Street turns around and Harden falls back against the door, fucking unnatural things coming out of Street’s back, like sightless birds nudging into the air. Feathers as white as fresh baseballs, already bigger now than Harden remembered.
“C’mon, take a picture.” Street stretches out his arms and the wings stretch too, reaching blind towards Harden.
Harden lifts the camera, trembling almost too bad to focus it. The flash beats across Street’s body, painting his outline on the wall. He takes a whole roll of pictures, and Street keeps laughing, sitting on the edge of the bed and flapping each photo until it’s dry.
“Can you believe this?” Street asks, looking up at Harden all eyes and teeth, and Harden hasn’t spoken a word since they left the ballpark. He bites his lip, shakes his head. Street studies the picture in his hands and says, “This is the best one yet.”
Harden sits down hard on the couch next to him, dropping his head into his hands. “Fuck, Huston,” he manages. “I mean. Fuck.”
Street’s hand alights comfortingly on his back. “What?”
Harden scrapes out a harsh laugh. “Oh, fuck you.”
Street goes silent, drawing little circles on Harden’s back. Harden breathes for awhile, concentrating intently on the movement of Street’s hand to the exclusion of all else.
“This is really bad, dude,” he says eventually, the heels of his hands pressed tight into his eye-sockets.
“You think?”
Harden can’t believe it, can’t reconcile this with the world he knows. He keeps thinking there must be a medical textbook somewhere with this laid out clearly on page eighty-seven, some complicated Latinate name for it, a malformation of the shoulder blades and the feathers are probably just some extremely rare build-up of proteins. He’s seen wolfmen on the Discovery Channel and Siamese twins on A&E. He doesn’t have to accept this.
He angles into Street’s body, exhausted past all measure. Street hums and wraps his arm around Harden’s shoulders.
“Don’t you get it?” Harden asks hoarsely. “Don’t you see what you are now?”
He looks up and Street meets his eyes, total innocence. “I’m the exact same.”
Harden chokes on a laugh and hides his face against Street’s bare shoulder, jersey-chafed skin and sun under Harden’s mouth.
“Richie?”
Harden makes an acknowledging noise, squeezing his eyes shut as tight as they will go.
“Did I. Did I kiss you this morning?”
Harden tenses, his shoulders going stiff in the bend of Street’s arm. He keeps his eyes shut. “Yeah, you did.”
“Oh.” Street’s hand is smoothing up and through his hair, and Harden can feel little pieces of his mind snapping off almost audibly. “Good.”
Harden shakes his head, mouthing soundlessly, you’re so fucking stupid, but he doesn’t pull away when Street puts his fingers under his jaw and tips his face up, doesn’t do anything but breathe through his nose and open his mouth when Street kisses him again, when Street breaks away for air and says in amazement, “You taste like salt.”
Harden wakes up in Street’s bed, still fully-clothed, his mouth feeling broken, and the fog is high enough to curl along the bottom edge of the window glass, high enough to conceal a bike. Harden wonders if Crosby’s out in there, blanketed and blind.
Street is sleeping without care. He kissed Harden until Harden’s hands wrenched in Street’s jeans, knuckles jabbing into Street’s hips, and then laid Harden down, kept telling him it would be okay until Harden fell asleep. Harden dreamt fitfully of hands with bullet holes in the palms, hauling him across an endless kitchen, the heels of his feet leaving parallel streaks of blood on the long tile floor.
Harden tugs the sheets down to Street’s waist and sits cross-legged at the foot of the bed, keeping watch, believing that he can see the wings grow.
Three days later, and Street is still acting like this is perfectly normal, as if this is just another part of his rookie year. Harden finds himself twisting in the mirror, trying to look at his own back, the scars of disappeared wings that must be there. He must have blocked it out.
He sleeps in Street’s bed and Adam Melhuse cocks his eyebrow ever-so-slightly when Harden stumbles into him in the hallway one morning. Harden slams him into the wall, forearm tough across Melhuse’s chest, and Melhuse stomps on Harden’s foot hard enough to make stars explode behind Harden’s eyes. He lets Melhuse go, gasping with pain, and Adam says, “Get a fucking grip, Rich, Jesus fucking Christ,” and when Harden limps into the kitchen a few minutes later, Melhuse already has a cup of coffee waiting for him, because that’s how they forgive things in this house.
Melhuse can keep a secret, though, and he kindly looks away when he sees Harden and Street slumped against each other on the couch, Harden’s hand tilted up on Street’s knee. It occurs to Harden that messing around with Street is actually not the most important thing to keep hidden right now, but that idea is loose and filtered through cotton. Harden isn’t really thinking too clearly these days.
The wings have gotten bigger, enough to where Harden wants to tape them down in the morning, like girls playing at being boys, but all they have is packing tape and it tears out feathers, makes Street breathe out, “Lord,” in pain, so Harden gives up on that.
He can see Chavez staring in the clubhouse, his eyes fixed on Street’s back as Street bends over to get a baseball and his jersey pulls tight, and Harden thinks frantically that it’s just shoulder blades, just arched out because Street is bent like that, don’t look so close, Chavvy. He stands between Street and the rest of the team as much as possible, stands at the door to the showers when Street is in there after everyone else is done.
Harden hasn’t slept in days.
Street is pitching and he can chip a dime off the black with his slider, he can move time backwards with his fastball, so that Harden blinks when the ball smacks into the catcher’s glove and sees the ball leaving Street’s hand. Zito drops his iPod on the concrete floor and it’s no-doubt broken, the metal casing split and separating from the white plastic, green circuits showing through, but Street fiddles with it for a second and suddenly crappy emo rock is bleeding note-clear through the clubhouse, which is strange because Zito’s iPod never used to play out loud.
Crosby corners Harden and asks him, “Am I the only one who hasn’t lost his fucking mind?”
Harden presses back against the locker, trapped. He shakes his head. “No.”
“Because, like.” Crosby flaps his hand in the general direction of where Street is improbably kicking the shit out of Ellis on the arcade game. “Since when can he play videogames and since when can he pitch like that and what the fuck are those things on his back?”
Harden feels abruptly betrayed, cold like metal drawing thin and tense in his chest. He tries to make his eyes go sky-hard. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Fucking don’t tell me what to fucking worry about, Rich, I’ve got as much right as you.”
Harden shakes his head again, closes his hands in fists behind his back. He can see himself taking a swing at Crosby, hit him hard enough to make him forget.
“We’re gonna figure it out,” Harden says, lie lie lie. “Things’ll be back to normal pretty soon.”
Crosby sneers and calls him a bad name and then leaves to go annoy Nick Swisher. Harden works on breathing until he’s steady enough to get Street and drive him home, lock the door behind them and spread Street out on the bed. The wings cant Street’s shoulders up, slow curve of his back so that his shirt falls away and rustles like paper against the sheets.
Harden wants to have sex with him, because Harden has been gay since he was twelve years old and the day he met Street, he thought he’d finally found the reason for all the fucking drama he went through when he was sixteen and just wanted to suck dick occasionally and not get beaten up for it. He wants to have sex with Street, if for no other reason than that he’s certain that if he does, all the weirdness will dissipate while they’re sleeping sweat-sticky and fucked-out, wake up to Huston Street’s back smooth as glass and his fastball no more than ninety-five miles an hour again.
But Street pushes up against him and licks his throat and something in Harden keeps his hands above Street’s waist, keeps Street’s leg pinned down whenever he tries to skid his knee up Harden’s side. Because Harden wants to fuck him, but he also doesn’t want to go to hell.
Street falls asleep, and Harden falls into a strange near-doze sort of thing where his mouth itches and his legs jerk. He keeps a hand on one of Street’s wings, like if his hand is there, it won’t get any bigger. Street breathes easy and mumbles, torn up like talking with an imaginary friend, his face in the pillow.
Harden’s half-open eyes catch something, peripheral, a black shape moving along the wall, jagged teeth and the high ridge of an animal’s spine, and Harden slams fully awake. A demon has come to balance out the impossible thing that’s happening to Huston Street, and Harden rips the alarm clock out of the wall and throws it across the room as hard as he can, which is pretty fucking hard.
It explodes against the wall. Black plastic and wires and red glass sparkle in the porchlight through the window. Street bolts upright, one hand back on Harden’s chest, like Harden’s dad stopping short in the car and his arm flying out instinctively to keep Harden from launching through the windshield.
“What?” Street says, confused and frightened, his eyes jigging around the room. “What?”
Harden stares at the destroyed alarm clock and the black shape on the wall is the shadow of a crumpled-up paper bag on the dresser, the porchlight flickering like it always does when the washing machine is on, counterfeiting movement. Harden is shaking so hard the bedframe drums against the wall.
“Nothing,” he answers breathlessly. “Thought there was. It’s nothing.”
Street puts his arms around him and rests his forehead on Harden’s shoulder. His arms fold across Harden’s stomach and Harden can feel Street’s pulse against the bare skin of his stomach, but only barely, because Street’s heart is beating as slow as watching a home run vanish over the outfield fence.
In the morning, Street puts on the two undershirts and then his regular shirt, and Harden shakes his head, his throat closing up.
“No good,” he says, proud of his voice for only breaking a little.
Street tries to contort and look at his back, and he looks so dumb that Harden would laugh, if it was at all funny.
“No?”
Harden winds his finger in the loose thread of the comforter, doing his best not to look at Street’s back. “They’ve gotten too big.”
Street considers that, shifting from foot to foot and moving his shoulders. He’s been moving his shoulders a lot recently; Harden thinks he must like the feel of the wings stretching and chafing against fabric. He can picture them fluttering and preening. He feels like he’s gonna be sick.
“Okay,” Street says with a shrug. “So much for that.”
Harden clenches his hands in the sheets, knuckles dead white. Air and words pour out of him in a mess of fear and anger and helplessness. “Goddamn it, Huston, you need to, you, you, take this seriously, please, for christ’s fucking sake before it kills me, please.”
The groundsheet comes unhooked from the mattress and now there’s nothing to pull against and Harden feels tears on his face and he’s so fucking confused.
“Hey, hey,” Street says, sounding surprised. Harden knows that in a second Street will put his hand somewhere on Harden, on his head or his back or maybe slipped down onto his chest, and Harden’s mind will clear out like a snowfield and he will remember something like the name of the Phoenix newscaster who’d been talking in the background as Street introduced himself to Harden for the first time. Harden doesn’t think he can take many more new memories.
Street sits down on the bed beside him and lets their shoulders lean together. Harden is breathing raggedly, trying to get himself under control.
“You. You can’t go out like this,” he says. “Everybody will see.”
“I think maybe. That’s what’s supposed to happen?”
Harden jerks his head to the side roughly, his eyes shut and his life falling apart. He can’t make Street understand that this needs to be fought back, this needs to be rewound and shoved away and refused. It’s making Harden lose his mind in a blunt and tangible way that freezes his blood, and if Street doesn’t care about anything else, he should still care about that.
He exhales, straightens up and wipes his eyes. He looks at Street and Street is looking back, blinking whitely and his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth. Street is calm, he has been nothing but calm all year long.
“How can you not understand?” Harden asks him. “This is not fucking normal, man, they won’t let you live like this. If they see what’s happened to you, they’ll break you apart until there’s nothing left.”
Street places his hand on the side of Harden’s face. “It’s not up to anybody else whether I live or die. Nobody can touch me now.”
And Harden can see the wings rising above Street’s shoulders, shirt-covered and spreading out. Harden can see the light raining from Street and there isn’t anything he can do but put his body between Street and anyone who tries to hurt him, but Harden has always been pretty small for baseball and it won’t take much to cast him aside.
“I can’t let you do this,” Harden says. “Stay here. Just for today. Off-day tomorrow, maybe we can, we can figure out how to make them go away.”
Street’s eyes widen, and he laughs, his hand skittering on Harden’s cheek. “Why would I want them to go away?”
Harden can’t argue with him, so he leans forward and touches his mouth to Street’s jaw and whispers pleasepleaseplease until Street agrees to stay home.
Street covers his ears when Harden makes the call, humming to block out the sound. Harden paces around and wonders if even hearing a lie would be enough wickedness to snap Street out of it.
Macha wants to know why Street isn’t calling himself, and Harden stutters that Street lost his voice, he’ll be okay tomorrow, just can’t pitch today. Macha tells him sharply that if the kid is just fucking hungover, he’ll find out and they’ll both pay, and Harden almost has to laugh. He’d take any punishment the team can dream up if it means Street’s just hungover.
He kisses Street good-bye, holding onto Street’s head, ears hot in his palms. He checks his rearview mirror as he’s pulling out of the driveway and spots Street standing in the window, thin arm making a V. It’s a weird four p.m. start to fit into ESPN’s schedule and that’s good. Maybe with the whole evening and night and off-day before them, Harden can convince Street to run away with him. Move home to Canada, way up north where Street’s wings will blend into the white of the land and they can disappear into a wooden house forever.
But the game lasts twenty-seven innings and almost eight hours, until the stadium lights are the only real thing in the world. There is no moon, and no stars, the sky unbroken, and the position players drop, collapse into the dirt or onto the grass and they are carried off, replaced one by one until only Mark Ellis has been in the whole game, and he has a glossy silver sheen on his eyes, blind and fielding by vibration and sense of smell. Swisher is asleep on the dugout bench, his glove under his face. Around the seventeenth, Harden would give everything he has for an end to this.
He’s scared that Street will show up, because if ever they’ve needed every pitcher on the staff, it’s now, and he’s scared that the game won’t be over until Street does. But they get out of it, somehow, and Harden wakes up in his car, driving through the tunnel. He doesn’t remember whether they won or lost, nothing except green and white light and the dull stretch of time and space in the open night above the stadium. He feels as if he’s been picked up and shaken hard like an etch-a-sketch, all his inside pieces jarred free.
Harden stumbles coming into the house, almost falling but Street is there to catch him, which isn’t possible because Harden’s not the one who went blind, he should have seen Street coming. Street’s arms are around his waist and Harden is clinging to him, holding him so tight his elbows are chocked under Street’s wings, a perfect fit.
Street is saying something about the game, saying, can’t believe that, man, how’d you get through it, and Harden is working on breathing, the scent of Street’s shampoo and new sweat. Twenty-seven innings is longer than his whole life, so he doesn’t have to worry about going to hell anymore.
Street takes him to bed, pulls Harden’s clothes off and his hands are everywhere. They’re both stripped down to nothing and Harden touches Street’s chest, licks the place where his leg runs into his stomach and Street’s fingers slide through his hair. Street says his name over and over again, but Harden is so tired and the game wouldn’t fucking end.
He’s pretty sure Street’s never done anything like this before, the world moving humidly around him and his muscles shivering. Taste like paint in the back of his throat and Street cries out, god, god, and Harden can’t imagine blasphemy better than this.
He falls asleep tucked into Street’s back, soft graceful curve under his face. Perfect fit here, too.
Wake up into sunlight on their off-day and Street pushed him away as they slept, or maybe not Street, the thing inside of him, because Street’s wings are long now, just past his waist, and Harden wants to cry, they’ll never be able to hide it again.
Street murmurs and reaches out, and Harden thinks that Street can’t be reaching for him, because they’ve only been fooling around for a week and that’s not long for him to have seeped into Street’s unconscious. God knows Street has seeped into his, but the truth is, that happened months ago
Harden needs to come up with a plan, something that won’t ruin them both. Everything comes back to running away, though, and Street won’t allow them that.
Harden gets them oranges from the refrigerator for breakfast and they eat in bed, sticky hands hovering above the sheets. Harden licks Street’s palms and fingers until the sharp taste is gone, and Street topples him, crawling up Harden’s body with tongue and teeth and nails writing letters on his stomach. Harden presses his head back into the bed and Street’s wings are spread all the way out and rippling the air, magazines and receipts blown off the nightstand, circling around them.
They wake up for the second time and Harden berates himself for awhile, because he was supposed to be finding a way out, and he’s spent half the day asleep in Street’s bed. Street doesn’t seem to mind, shaping Harden’s collarbone with his mouth and weaving their legs together.
“Hang on,” Harden says when Street’s hands start to venture into dangerous territory. “Just wait a minute, will you.”
Street stills, blinking whitely at Harden and Harden hates that open, careless look on his face, as if Street isn’t protected from gravity right now.
“We’ve got to do something, man,” Harden says, and Street is pressed all up along his side, heat-seeking.
“I think we’re doing all right,” Street answers.
Harden clenches his teeth, Chinese figures scrawled in black ink on the ceiling and Street’s blood rattling under his skin, hot as coffee. “You know you can’t pitch like this.”
Street smiles cleanly, his hair skating along the underside of Harden’s jaw. “No, better than ever.”
Harden puts a hand up over his eyes and concentrates on the bursts of color, the sick low pressure in his sinuses. “You’re gonna get us both killed.”
Street gets up, his joints snick-popping, and grins at Harden. “You’re so pessimistic.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve turned into a fucking hallucination, so I think I’m doing just fine,” Harden snaps. He stands up too, placing his hands on Harden’s hips and steering him over to the mirror. “Will you take a look at yourself, for fuck’s sake. There are fucking wings coming out of your back. Can you, like, not see that? Do you see anyone else walking around with fucking wings?”
Street studies himself in the mirror, and Harden watches Street’s face, narrow eyes and cold-sculpted shoulders. His hands are still closed around Street’s hips, the twists of bones ripped like the movement of cutter, and Street’s wings brush his bare chest. Without thinking, Harden angles himself into the space between them, his fingers stuttering on Street’s stomach.
Street meets his gaze in the mirror. “I’ve never been exactly what you’d call normal.”
Harden coughs out a quiet laugh and rakes his teeth on Street’s shoulder. “We’ve got to get out of here. Find some place for you where nobody will see.”
Street shakes his head, his wings beginning to beat slowly, rustling on Harden’s upper arms. “I’m not meant to hide myself from the world.”
Harden bites him, half in anger and half something else, holding him tight around the waist, clutching his own wrists. “You don’t know what you’re meant for.”
Street laughs, and Harden realizes suddenly that they’re floating three inches above the floor.
Harden finds a pair of scissors in his junk drawer and slashes two skinny openings in the back of a blue and green T-shirt that Street hardly wears anymore. He helps Street fit the wings through the holes, fabric tearing as it’s pulled, and then Street is dressed, shaggy tears in the knees of his jeans and the hem of his shirt tattered, his wings wide and white like a frame around his body. He looks like a refugee from a Christmas pageant.
Harden’s smoothing his hands over Street’s chest again and again, thinking that if he can just keep Street distracted and keep him here in this room, but Street’s eyes are stuck on the window and he breathes out, “Look, look at that.”
Harden turns and the window is solid gray, covered completely by the fog. Trapped in here, better than a snowstorm. Harden gets momentarily hopeful, like they won’t be able to leave, this tragic weather, nothing that they can be expected to face.
But Street’s got a wild smile on his face and he’s grabbing Harden’s hand, “C’mon, hey,” and pulling him out into the hallway before Harden can figure out how to talk.
“Stop,” Harden says frantically, because Crosby will see and tear the roof off with his disbelief, or Melhuse will stare with his pale, implacable eyes and say something that won’t match up with any of Harden’s half-thought plans.
The house is dark, though, smothered, and there’s a white slash of a note taped to the television, because Crosby always likes people to know where he is, and then Street is jerking open the door and leading Harden out in the fog. He lets go of Harden’s hand and Harden immediately loses him, silver in his mouth and wires of color and light in his mind.
“Huston?” he calls out, broken-voiced. The fog is sea-deep, closing around him like hands on his arms, and Street is somewhere out there laughing.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Street’s voice comes back to him. “It’s incredible.”
Harden sees a blur of white in front of him, and he walks with his hands held out, expecting an attack from the side, an ambush because they’re totally helpless right now. Street’s face swims into view and then is gone again.
“Come back here,” Harden says, reaching out and cotton brushes his palms, tries to grab hold but it’s just the fog. He can’t breathe in this.
Street taps Harden’s shoulder from behind and Harden cries out, jumping like an electric shock. Street laughs and comes around to Harden’s front, his wings nudging Harden and his eyes are very dark. He hooks his hands in Harden’s belt and the fog is so thick that Harden can’t even see the wings from over Street’s shoulders, and he almost breaks down in relief. Street looks finally normal, like how he used to be and how Harden wants to remember him.
“Something’s gonna happen,” Street tells him, bright and excited and his cheeks flushed.
“Something already has.”
Street shakes his head, a smile biting at his mouth. “No, man, something else.”
Harden swallows, fear climbing back in, hard fingers using his spine as a ladder. “What?”
Street tips his face up, invisible sky and fog in Street’s hair, in the folds of his shirt. “I don’t know. But I can feel it.”
He tugs at Harden’s belt and kisses him, closed mouth and Harden can remember when he saw Street standing in the parking lot lights with his shirt on inside-out and his hair in wet spikes, a toothpick in his mouth and a sweet smile around it, that moment when Harden thought very clearly that this is what he wants for the rest of his life.
Street is moving away, turning his back on Harden and Harden can see the wings moving broad and dangerous before Street goes missing in the fog again. Harden tries to say Street’s name but his voice is gone.
“Listen, man,” Street says as everything Harden knows is falling away. “Listen, I think maybe you can hear it.”
Harden tries to hear, but no hope of that, because Street is on some new wavelength, Street is being taken away and Harden is moving forward, looking for him, he will put his arms around Street and that will be enough. His hand latches onto something that’s impossible, stringy denim and a hard ankle bone, Street is four feet above the ground and rising.
“Don’t,” Harden begs. If Street goes up, he won’t come back down, and what then? Harden can’t take the blame for misplacing Street, nothing he can do to fix it. His faith will go when his heart does, thinking crookedly of salvation and yellow-red fast food signs and the huge, overtaking force within him that wishes everything could go back to the way it was.
“It’s okay, Richie,” Street says from above him, sounding like a ghost and turning his foot in Harden’s hand. “I’ll be right back.”
Harden doesn’t believe him, but he lets him go, fingers sliding off Street’s heel, trying to say godspeed, but it doesn’t work. Street vanishes and Rich Harden stands alone in the fog, broken like a curse, and he’ll wait here forever, as long as it takes for Street to come back down.
THE END
the other one
let's move on.
*
i need your help. all y'all. i wrote the same story twice, though not really. i wrote one months ago and it started off so well and then kinda died about ten pages in and i kept writing it because i don't know how to stop writing something, and then i was unsure.
so last week i decided to write it again, changing certain crucial things like the pairing and the structure, but cannabalizing many of the scenes and lines from the first.
and now i don't know which one is better. my ability to gauge these things i think was eradicated when alex rodriguez hit that grand slam. anyway, i need to be over both of these stories so that i can move on to writing about zito's fucking spun-glass mind and what it's like to be pulled after one and a third in front of a national television audience.
i ask two things of you. which story do you think was written first, and which is better. i am interested in this, whether or not you can tell how i tried to improve it or even which one is the supposed improved one.
oh, also, it's about huston street turning into an angel.
Rise
The fog comes every night. Two weeks ago, it was nothing, barely up to their shoelaces. Now it’s knee-high and rising. Rich Harden feels like maybe he fell asleep at the wheel.
There are dull red marks on Huston Street’s back, set neatly over his shoulder blades, as long as a hand and as thick as a pack of playing cards. They appeared a couple of weeks ago, without fanfare. Street comes in late to day games on Sundays, eighty-five miles an hour through the hills from his church, a black tie hanging loose around his neck and his hair combed.
Street doesn’t know the marks are there because no one will tell him. No one wants to look too hard. Harden can only fight off the sick fascination, the desire to fist his hands in Street’s ironed white shirt and tear it open.
They ignore the signs. It’s important not to pay attention to any of this. Bobby Crosby sleeps in the grass and the fog covers him up, swimming over his arms and legs, pooling on his chest. Harden stands on the porch and chucks pennies into the white until he finds Crosby, sees the dark shadow of Crosby sitting up, his head emerging from the white.
Crosby, wet-eyed from the dew and pale all over, sees the look on Harden’s face and tells him, “It’s just the weather, man,” but Harden has lived here longer. There are things that make sense; this is not one of them.
Street is hungry in the middle of the night and they drive out barefoot, Harden beside him and glad to be here, away from their strange house, the fog already beginning to build. Down and out of the hills, red and yellow neon above the highway, hamburgers and caffeine-free soda in the parking lot, and Street is laughing.
Street is falling asleep in the shotgun seat, smear of ketchup on the side of his mouth. Harden would like to find an alley somewhere and locate his hands on Street’s body, but they’re far from the city and without buildings to shield them, Harden loses his nerve.
“Pay attention for five seconds, will you?” Zito says, and Harden blinks, finds himself sitting in the outfield grass, daydreaming.
“This is how you put your fingers,” Zito explains, and Harden nods, fiddles with the baseball in his hands. “And this is the angle. This is what happens to your wrist. This, it feels like getting punched, but you should see it move.”
Harden’s pretty sure that they have bigger problems at the moment than the weird hinky two-seam Zito picked up in Atlanta. Eric Chavez is in the dugout, scratching at his throat, handing out notes that read, I’ve lost my voice, his eyes all big and pissed-off and worried. Crosby is snapping thin-handled bats over his knee for no good reason.
“It’s not, like, the easiest thing in the world to control,” Zito continues, a closed-up expression on his face.
“Yeah,” Harden answers. He’s already forgotten what Zito was trying to show him.
Chavez’s voice comes back during the game. Only problem is, he’s speaking Latin. Nobody seems to know what to make of it, as Chavez leans gratefully on Marco Scutaro and spits bizarre curses at them. Harden is pitching and his arm burns. Behind him, Chavez is near tears, babbling without end.
Street comes on in the eighth to take the ball away from him, and curiously puts his hand on Chavez’s shoulder, flicking his eyes around the others, is he okay? what happened? But Chavez falls quiet then, breathing in hitches, his eyes downcast and purely relieved, and they look at each other, shrug. Harden goes down to the clubhouse to watch the rest of the game on television.
At their house, the fog hits Harden’s waist.
Street is lying on the floor in the living room, pink bubble gum in his mouth and his hands folded under his head. He’s gazing idly at the ceiling, shirt wrinkled and legs strewn. Harden wants to bring him a Coke and watch Street press it into his stomach, leave a cold gray circle behind.
He sits down beside him, and Street rolls his head to the side, meets Harden’s eyes all sleepy and smelling too sweet. “Tired,” Street says. He squirms. “My back itches.”
Harden makes a vaguely interested noise, more concerned with the muscles pulled by Street’s triangular arms.
“I think maybe there’s mosquitoes,” Street goes on. “Maybe a tear in the screen, and they’re getting in at night.” He shivers, arching on the carpet like a cat, and Harden is stuck in place as if his hands are nailed to the floor. “Driving me crazy.”
Harden nods, dry-mouthed. Street sighs and settles, blowing a bubble that pops over his chin and nose. Harden is confused and he wishes he could turn Street over onto his stomach and push his hands up under Street’s shirt, fabric caught around his wrists and the buck of Street’s spine against his palms.
But it’s too early in the season. Harden can watch but nothing more. He doesn’t know what’s happening to them right now, can’t figure out what’s an omen and what’s just wishful thinking.
Crosby and Zito make a blowtorch from a spray bottle of WD-40 and a red plastic Bic lighter, setting aflame newspaper on the deck, and they sit in a circle as if they’re at camp. They’re drunk enough that it doesn’t seem strange that the fire won’t burn out, though they’re hours and hours out there, warm as bronze.
Harden can see his breath in the air, taste like ice in his lungs. Crosby’s eyes are as silver as a drive-in movie screen, reflecting the orange light and making Harden oddly afraid of him.
Huston Street glows from within. There’s a fuzz of gold limning his head, tracing the outline of his hands on the cement. Harden develops a constant sense of someone watching him.
The marks on Street’s back have taken form, slow shallow curves rising under his skin. Almost like shoulder blades atop his shoulder blades, neatly picked out by Harden as he furtively watches Street making the journey from the bathroom to his bedroom with a towel around his waist. Specific kind of symmetry present here in the morning, a different skeleton gaining power within their boy closer.
Danny Haren takes a wrong step getting out of the cab and his body twists jerkily as he falls, crashing hands first onto the sidewalk. Zito looks down at him nonplussed and says, “Dude. Motor skills.”
Haren laughs through his nose, but his lips are pressed thin and tight and his hands are wrapped around his knee. He shivers and says that he hurt his knee, which freezes them all in place.
He’s drunk; they’re all drunk. The summer’s brakes have been cut, and it’s not okay for Haren to have fucked up his knee trying to get out of a cab. The smell of exhaust and the pain on Haren’s face are doing something strange to Harden’s stomach.
He runs to find Street, fights his way through the bar and spots Street flickering like stop-motion photography. Street smiles brightly when he sees Harden, hugs him tight around the shoulders and Harden gasps, fists his hands in Street’s shirt and blushes deep red, pulls him outside.
Danny is curled up on himself, whispering unintelligibly, and Crosby is standing in the gutter and arguing with Zito, he ripped a tendon, no, he just twisted it, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, he’s done for the season. Haren looks like he wants to cry. Harden’s hand slips up under Street’s shirt and touches the bare skin of his back.
“Fix him, man.”
Crosby snorts and glares at him. “What the fuck is he supposed to do about it?” Crosby asks, but everyone ignores him. Zito wanders over and absent-mindedly weaves his hand in Haren’s hair, gazing without focus at the neon signs across the way.
Street kneels and carefully moves Haren’s hands away, replaces them with his own. Harden crosses his fingers. Street doesn’t know what he’s doing, but it’s okay. He looks up at Harden curiously. “Is that it?”
Harden shrugs, his mouth dry, and Street stands up, offers Haren his hand. Danny rises slowly, his weight on his good leg, and then carefully tests the other. He can stand, he can hop lightly in place and gape at Street, his eyes sheer blue and wet hot flat, other things that end hard.
They’re quiet for a minute, and then Crosby says, “I’m too fucking drunk for this shit,” and goes inside.
Harden is having a rough month. He touches Street casually and finds himself able to remember things that he forgot years ago, like his locker combination from middle school and the precise order of the afternoon cartoons when he was maybe seven years old. Street doesn’t seem to sleep anymore, listens to music in the backyard with his knees drawn up and his eyes on the sky, and Harden watches him from the window, biting his nails, seeing the fog build up around Huston Street and the marks on his back as red as wine stains.
Harden has no system of belief within which to incorporate this. Better to say, he has no fucking idea how to make sense of it.
He gets lost following the guys from one bar to another and just sort of wanders around downtown Cleveland for awhile. Harden is certain that scared is not how he should feel right now, but he doesn’t really know how to be anything else.
Street is throwing faster than he ever has before. Only a few miles an hour more, not quite breaking triple digits, but enough to make the trainers huddle around him like squinty crows and interrogate him as to what he’s been eating and if he’s changed his lifting routine at all. Street shrugs and smiles, his fingers twitching on the baseball.
Crosby leans next to Harden on the big roll of the tarp and mimics his study of Street, his hands folded over his stomach.
“Something’s going on,” Crosby says neutrally.
Harden nods as Street throws slider after slider and each one bends more than the last, trajectory like the shape of a boomerang. “Yeah.”
“Your thoughts?”
Harden glances at him and Crosby’s mouth is twisted up at the corners, small ruined smile. Harden moves his shoulders and the sun is resting in center field, diffuse through his skin.
“I think it doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t fuck him up on the field,” Harden replies, and that is a lie.
Eric Chavez watches Street suspiciously, pressing his fingers down on his own chest, where the cross he wears makes a thin shape under his T-shirt. Zito is acting stoned all the time, though Harden knows he doesn’t smoke during the season, it seems to be Zito’s way of pretending he doesn’t notice anything. Danny Haren looks at Street like Street saved his life. Everyone pretty much avoids Street, like they would avoid someone on a really bad or really good hitting streak.
Harden can’t stop following Street around, bringing him bottles of water and napkins when someone spills Coke all over Street’s chair. He feels vaguely stunned, constantly recovering from a blow to the head.
He’s watching from his bedroom as the bathroom door in the hall opens, the smell of steam and shampoo rolling towards him. Street passes wet and wearing only jeans, tipping a smile in Harden’s direction and heading for his room, and Harden sees the skin give way on his back.
He’s up out of his chair and trying to say Street’s name, his eyes growing big as poker chips, red and white emerging from Street’s back as the skin parts like wax. Harden isn’t thinking, pressing his hands to the rips, feeling blood slick on his palms.
“Rich, what-” Street says, half-turning to face him, but Harden won’t let him, pushes Street up against the wall to apply more pressure.
Hard ridge of Street’s shoulder blades, longer and higher than they should be, and something soft under all that, driving up into Harden’s hands. Harden stares, biting down on the insides of his mouth, a brush as white as Huston Street’s teeth peeking out from between his fingers.
He takes his hand away and there are small feathers coming out of Street’s back, red-streaked, both ridges broke open along drawn lines. There is structure under there, run and curve and rise, and when Street flexes his back, the feathers whicker.
“What is it?” Street asks in his low, even voice, looking back over his shoulder at Harden’s terrified face.
Harden shakes his head, his throat rich and thick. “Huston, I. I think I know what’s been happening to you.”
Street’s eyes light up like candles, and Harden swallows acid, his gaze fixed on the bloody handprint between the wings emerging on Street’s back.
Harden can’t process it, and so he leaves Street alone in the house and goes out to get historically drunk. Problem with that is, he’s got to call Street to come pick him up, because Crosby is probably just as drunk in the bar next door and Melhuse never answers his phone and no one else would deign to drive to Walnut Creek at two in the morning. Except maybe Zito, but he’d only do it for something to hold over Harden later, and Harden is too smart for that tonight.
Harden sits on the curb, having been thrown out of the bar for harassing (or asking politely, depending on your point of view) the other patrons about their religious beliefs. He doesn’t really remember, though his throat hurts and he thinks he might have screamed, “What the fuck do you mean people can’t fly?” immediately prior to getting rolled.
The curb is uncomfortable, and his head is atop his arms, which are crossed on his knees. He focuses on the sewer grate a few yards away, something solid and stationary to keep him from vomiting.
He doesn’t hear Street coming, just all of a sudden a hand on his back and Harden panics, almost falls off the curb before Street catches him and pulls him back. Harden peers at Street from under his bent arm, hissing like a vampire in the light. Street holds up his hand, blinking widely.
“Hey. Just me,” Street tells him, and Harden has to laugh, at the pure insanity of his life at this moment, because Street has fucking wings growing out of his back and he thinks he can just sit next to Harden on the curb like nothing’s different.
“Take me home,” Harden manages, and Street picks him up, put him in the shotgun seat. Harden checks Street’s shirt for blood and starts to ask, “Huston, what the fuck,” about twenty-seven times on the drive back, but never quite gets it out.
There’s the team to think about and also what will Street’s parents say? Scratch that. They’ll probably be thrilled. Fucking Catholics. There’s a million ways that this will go bad, and Huston Street will be cut up into little pieces and put under microscopes, a fact of which he does not seem aware, judging by the way he is singing along with the radio and fidgeting, rubbing his back into the seat. Harden is so drunk that he reaches out and starts scratching Street’s back for him, digging his nails into the protrusions, and Street moans and keeps almost closing his eyes, until he remembers that he’s driving.
Rich Harden wakes up with a blinding headache and a wild hope that it was all a dream, hallucination, psychotic break, something other than real. He can feel it beating like a tiny bird in his chest, and he spills out of bed in a flail of arms and legs. He’s down the hall before he registers that he’s moving, and his head is a blur of red-neon pain and blue prayers. He does not have time to register the irony.
He goes into Street’s room without knocking, shoved forward by something inside, and crashes onto Street’s bed, fighting through the sheets and pillows and finding Street burrowed down, helpfully sleeping on his stomach. Harden pushes up Street’s shirt with only a faint nod to the knowledge that he has wanted to do this since long before Street started mutating. Or whatever the fuck.
The shirt catches on the wings as Street is murmuring and waking up. Harden feels them bump into his fingers and his heart breaks. He collapses down beside Street, his hand moving in disbelief across the softsoft feathers and the way the wings are undeniably bigger than they were last night.
“Hey?” Street says muffled, turning to face Harden. Harden goes still, because he’s in Street’s bed in the sepia-gray light and his hand is under Street’s shirt.
“Oh. Hi,” Harden whispers. Street hums, blinking at him, his eyes never coming more than halfway open.
“You okay?” Street asks simply.
Harden’s hand closes, too tight, he thinks, but Street just exhales a rusty pleased noise, arching his back to press into Harden’s grip. Harden thinks in a never-ending loop, fuckfuckfuck, his headache messing with his depth perception and his grasp on how fucking ludicrous this is.
“No,” Harden answers. Truly honest for the first time in his life, because there’s no way to survive something like this.
Street makes a concerned sound and rolls into him, open-mouthed kiss on Harden’s shoulder and Street mumbling, “Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong, gonna be fine.”
Street’s arm is slung across Harden’s side, curling up his back, warm sleepy heat, and Harden is shaking, barely able to respond when Street kisses him on the lips and then falls back asleep. Harden learns the shape of the wings as they push out, tasting Street vague in his mouth, thinking helplessly, if you are what you seem, what’s that make me?
Very little changes. Harden can’t afford to let it. He makes Street wear two T-shirts under his button-up and obsessively checks his back before they go to the ballpark. Still just baby-wings, only visible through the clothes if someone is looking for them, and no one is looking for them except Rich Harden. Harden keeps placing his fingers against his mouth, the hook of Street’s arm over his side branded on his skin.
Street doesn’t seem to understand. He’s just like normal, eating toast and burning his tongue on the coffee. He skates his hand on the wind outside the car window and changes the CD three times on the twenty-minute drive to the stadium. Harden is wishing for a blowout, a rainout, anything that will keep Street out of the game.
He hustles Street into the bathroom when it’s time to change into his uniform, away from their teammates and Zito’s fucking camera, and Street obediently dresses in the stall, echo-talking about maybe buying a ferret. Harden rests his forehead against the cool metal of the paper towel dispenser and doesn’t tell him that ferrets are illegal in California.
Street doesn’t get into the game, but Harden hears him say Chavez’s name and in that same instant Chavez swings awkwardly and everyone goes quiet as they watch the ball rise and rise and disappear over the fence in left-center. Chavez stands at the plate, blinking in astonishment, and jogs around the bases with a stupid look on his face.
“I was under it,” Chavez says, absently rapping fists with everyone. “I didn’t hardly get a piece of it at all.”
Ellis calls him a lucky motherfucker and everyone starts rubbing their hands through Chavez’s hair, trying to siphon some of the luck off. By the end of the game, Chavez is just this wreck under a black hurricane, scowling and pushing his hair back off his forehead with chalked fingers.
Street is too excited, burring in the car and dragging Harden through the house. Harden is dizzy and terrified beyond words. Street digs an old Polaroid camera out of his closet and pushes it into Harden’s hands, stripping off his shirt. Harden stares dry-mouthed at the taper of Street’s chest, the defined trail of hair on his stomach.
“I wanna see, man, the mirror’s no good.” Street turns around and Harden falls back against the door, fucking unnatural things coming out of Street’s back, like sightless birds nudging into the air. Feathers as white as fresh baseballs, already bigger now than Harden remembered.
“C’mon, take a picture.” Street stretches out his arms and the wings stretch too, reaching blind towards Harden.
Harden lifts the camera, trembling almost too bad to focus it. The flash beats across Street’s body, painting his outline on the wall. He takes a whole roll of pictures, and Street keeps laughing, sitting on the edge of the bed and flapping each photo until it’s dry.
“Can you believe this?” Street asks, looking up at Harden all eyes and teeth, and Harden hasn’t spoken a word since they left the ballpark. He bites his lip, shakes his head. Street studies the picture in his hands and says, “This is the best one yet.”
Harden sits down hard on the couch next to him, dropping his head into his hands. “Fuck, Huston,” he manages. “I mean. Fuck.”
Street’s hand alights comfortingly on his back. “What?”
Harden scrapes out a harsh laugh. “Oh, fuck you.”
Street goes silent, drawing little circles on Harden’s back. Harden breathes for awhile, concentrating intently on the movement of Street’s hand to the exclusion of all else.
“This is really bad, dude,” he says eventually, the heels of his hands pressed tight into his eye-sockets.
“You think?”
Harden can’t believe it, can’t reconcile this with the world he knows. He keeps thinking there must be a medical textbook somewhere with this laid out clearly on page eighty-seven, some complicated Latinate name for it, a malformation of the shoulder blades and the feathers are probably just some extremely rare build-up of proteins. He’s seen wolfmen on the Discovery Channel and Siamese twins on A&E. He doesn’t have to accept this.
He angles into Street’s body, exhausted past all measure. Street hums and wraps his arm around Harden’s shoulders.
“Don’t you get it?” Harden asks hoarsely. “Don’t you see what you are now?”
He looks up and Street meets his eyes, total innocence. “I’m the exact same.”
Harden chokes on a laugh and hides his face against Street’s bare shoulder, jersey-chafed skin and sun under Harden’s mouth.
“Richie?”
Harden makes an acknowledging noise, squeezing his eyes shut as tight as they will go.
“Did I. Did I kiss you this morning?”
Harden tenses, his shoulders going stiff in the bend of Street’s arm. He keeps his eyes shut. “Yeah, you did.”
“Oh.” Street’s hand is smoothing up and through his hair, and Harden can feel little pieces of his mind snapping off almost audibly. “Good.”
Harden shakes his head, mouthing soundlessly, you’re so fucking stupid, but he doesn’t pull away when Street puts his fingers under his jaw and tips his face up, doesn’t do anything but breathe through his nose and open his mouth when Street kisses him again, when Street breaks away for air and says in amazement, “You taste like salt.”
Harden wakes up in Street’s bed, still fully-clothed, his mouth feeling broken, and the fog is high enough to curl along the bottom edge of the window glass, high enough to conceal a bike. Harden wonders if Crosby’s out in there, blanketed and blind.
Street is sleeping without care. He kissed Harden until Harden’s hands wrenched in Street’s jeans, knuckles jabbing into Street’s hips, and then laid Harden down, kept telling him it would be okay until Harden fell asleep. Harden dreamt fitfully of hands with bullet holes in the palms, hauling him across an endless kitchen, the heels of his feet leaving parallel streaks of blood on the long tile floor.
Harden tugs the sheets down to Street’s waist and sits cross-legged at the foot of the bed, keeping watch, believing that he can see the wings grow.
Three days later, and Street is still acting like this is perfectly normal, as if this is just another part of his rookie year. Harden finds himself twisting in the mirror, trying to look at his own back, the scars of disappeared wings that must be there. He must have blocked it out.
He sleeps in Street’s bed and Adam Melhuse cocks his eyebrow ever-so-slightly when Harden stumbles into him in the hallway one morning. Harden slams him into the wall, forearm tough across Melhuse’s chest, and Melhuse stomps on Harden’s foot hard enough to make stars explode behind Harden’s eyes. He lets Melhuse go, gasping with pain, and Adam says, “Get a fucking grip, Rich, Jesus fucking Christ,” and when Harden limps into the kitchen a few minutes later, Melhuse already has a cup of coffee waiting for him, because that’s how they forgive things in this house.
Melhuse can keep a secret, though, and he kindly looks away when he sees Harden and Street slumped against each other on the couch, Harden’s hand tilted up on Street’s knee. It occurs to Harden that messing around with Street is actually not the most important thing to keep hidden right now, but that idea is loose and filtered through cotton. Harden isn’t really thinking too clearly these days.
The wings have gotten bigger, enough to where Harden wants to tape them down in the morning, like girls playing at being boys, but all they have is packing tape and it tears out feathers, makes Street breathe out, “Lord,” in pain, so Harden gives up on that.
He can see Chavez staring in the clubhouse, his eyes fixed on Street’s back as Street bends over to get a baseball and his jersey pulls tight, and Harden thinks frantically that it’s just shoulder blades, just arched out because Street is bent like that, don’t look so close, Chavvy. He stands between Street and the rest of the team as much as possible, stands at the door to the showers when Street is in there after everyone else is done.
Harden hasn’t slept in days.
Street is pitching and he can chip a dime off the black with his slider, he can move time backwards with his fastball, so that Harden blinks when the ball smacks into the catcher’s glove and sees the ball leaving Street’s hand. Zito drops his iPod on the concrete floor and it’s no-doubt broken, the metal casing split and separating from the white plastic, green circuits showing through, but Street fiddles with it for a second and suddenly crappy emo rock is bleeding note-clear through the clubhouse, which is strange because Zito’s iPod never used to play out loud.
Crosby corners Harden and asks him, “Am I the only one who hasn’t lost his fucking mind?”
Harden presses back against the locker, trapped. He shakes his head. “No.”
“Because, like.” Crosby flaps his hand in the general direction of where Street is improbably kicking the shit out of Ellis on the arcade game. “Since when can he play videogames and since when can he pitch like that and what the fuck are those things on his back?”
Harden feels abruptly betrayed, cold like metal drawing thin and tense in his chest. He tries to make his eyes go sky-hard. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Fucking don’t tell me what to fucking worry about, Rich, I’ve got as much right as you.”
Harden shakes his head again, closes his hands in fists behind his back. He can see himself taking a swing at Crosby, hit him hard enough to make him forget.
“We’re gonna figure it out,” Harden says, lie lie lie. “Things’ll be back to normal pretty soon.”
Crosby sneers and calls him a bad name and then leaves to go annoy Nick Swisher. Harden works on breathing until he’s steady enough to get Street and drive him home, lock the door behind them and spread Street out on the bed. The wings cant Street’s shoulders up, slow curve of his back so that his shirt falls away and rustles like paper against the sheets.
Harden wants to have sex with him, because Harden has been gay since he was twelve years old and the day he met Street, he thought he’d finally found the reason for all the fucking drama he went through when he was sixteen and just wanted to suck dick occasionally and not get beaten up for it. He wants to have sex with Street, if for no other reason than that he’s certain that if he does, all the weirdness will dissipate while they’re sleeping sweat-sticky and fucked-out, wake up to Huston Street’s back smooth as glass and his fastball no more than ninety-five miles an hour again.
But Street pushes up against him and licks his throat and something in Harden keeps his hands above Street’s waist, keeps Street’s leg pinned down whenever he tries to skid his knee up Harden’s side. Because Harden wants to fuck him, but he also doesn’t want to go to hell.
Street falls asleep, and Harden falls into a strange near-doze sort of thing where his mouth itches and his legs jerk. He keeps a hand on one of Street’s wings, like if his hand is there, it won’t get any bigger. Street breathes easy and mumbles, torn up like talking with an imaginary friend, his face in the pillow.
Harden’s half-open eyes catch something, peripheral, a black shape moving along the wall, jagged teeth and the high ridge of an animal’s spine, and Harden slams fully awake. A demon has come to balance out the impossible thing that’s happening to Huston Street, and Harden rips the alarm clock out of the wall and throws it across the room as hard as he can, which is pretty fucking hard.
It explodes against the wall. Black plastic and wires and red glass sparkle in the porchlight through the window. Street bolts upright, one hand back on Harden’s chest, like Harden’s dad stopping short in the car and his arm flying out instinctively to keep Harden from launching through the windshield.
“What?” Street says, confused and frightened, his eyes jigging around the room. “What?”
Harden stares at the destroyed alarm clock and the black shape on the wall is the shadow of a crumpled-up paper bag on the dresser, the porchlight flickering like it always does when the washing machine is on, counterfeiting movement. Harden is shaking so hard the bedframe drums against the wall.
“Nothing,” he answers breathlessly. “Thought there was. It’s nothing.”
Street puts his arms around him and rests his forehead on Harden’s shoulder. His arms fold across Harden’s stomach and Harden can feel Street’s pulse against the bare skin of his stomach, but only barely, because Street’s heart is beating as slow as watching a home run vanish over the outfield fence.
In the morning, Street puts on the two undershirts and then his regular shirt, and Harden shakes his head, his throat closing up.
“No good,” he says, proud of his voice for only breaking a little.
Street tries to contort and look at his back, and he looks so dumb that Harden would laugh, if it was at all funny.
“No?”
Harden winds his finger in the loose thread of the comforter, doing his best not to look at Street’s back. “They’ve gotten too big.”
Street considers that, shifting from foot to foot and moving his shoulders. He’s been moving his shoulders a lot recently; Harden thinks he must like the feel of the wings stretching and chafing against fabric. He can picture them fluttering and preening. He feels like he’s gonna be sick.
“Okay,” Street says with a shrug. “So much for that.”
Harden clenches his hands in the sheets, knuckles dead white. Air and words pour out of him in a mess of fear and anger and helplessness. “Goddamn it, Huston, you need to, you, you, take this seriously, please, for christ’s fucking sake before it kills me, please.”
The groundsheet comes unhooked from the mattress and now there’s nothing to pull against and Harden feels tears on his face and he’s so fucking confused.
“Hey, hey,” Street says, sounding surprised. Harden knows that in a second Street will put his hand somewhere on Harden, on his head or his back or maybe slipped down onto his chest, and Harden’s mind will clear out like a snowfield and he will remember something like the name of the Phoenix newscaster who’d been talking in the background as Street introduced himself to Harden for the first time. Harden doesn’t think he can take many more new memories.
Street sits down on the bed beside him and lets their shoulders lean together. Harden is breathing raggedly, trying to get himself under control.
“You. You can’t go out like this,” he says. “Everybody will see.”
“I think maybe. That’s what’s supposed to happen?”
Harden jerks his head to the side roughly, his eyes shut and his life falling apart. He can’t make Street understand that this needs to be fought back, this needs to be rewound and shoved away and refused. It’s making Harden lose his mind in a blunt and tangible way that freezes his blood, and if Street doesn’t care about anything else, he should still care about that.
He exhales, straightens up and wipes his eyes. He looks at Street and Street is looking back, blinking whitely and his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth. Street is calm, he has been nothing but calm all year long.
“How can you not understand?” Harden asks him. “This is not fucking normal, man, they won’t let you live like this. If they see what’s happened to you, they’ll break you apart until there’s nothing left.”
Street places his hand on the side of Harden’s face. “It’s not up to anybody else whether I live or die. Nobody can touch me now.”
And Harden can see the wings rising above Street’s shoulders, shirt-covered and spreading out. Harden can see the light raining from Street and there isn’t anything he can do but put his body between Street and anyone who tries to hurt him, but Harden has always been pretty small for baseball and it won’t take much to cast him aside.
“I can’t let you do this,” Harden says. “Stay here. Just for today. Off-day tomorrow, maybe we can, we can figure out how to make them go away.”
Street’s eyes widen, and he laughs, his hand skittering on Harden’s cheek. “Why would I want them to go away?”
Harden can’t argue with him, so he leans forward and touches his mouth to Street’s jaw and whispers pleasepleaseplease until Street agrees to stay home.
Street covers his ears when Harden makes the call, humming to block out the sound. Harden paces around and wonders if even hearing a lie would be enough wickedness to snap Street out of it.
Macha wants to know why Street isn’t calling himself, and Harden stutters that Street lost his voice, he’ll be okay tomorrow, just can’t pitch today. Macha tells him sharply that if the kid is just fucking hungover, he’ll find out and they’ll both pay, and Harden almost has to laugh. He’d take any punishment the team can dream up if it means Street’s just hungover.
He kisses Street good-bye, holding onto Street’s head, ears hot in his palms. He checks his rearview mirror as he’s pulling out of the driveway and spots Street standing in the window, thin arm making a V. It’s a weird four p.m. start to fit into ESPN’s schedule and that’s good. Maybe with the whole evening and night and off-day before them, Harden can convince Street to run away with him. Move home to Canada, way up north where Street’s wings will blend into the white of the land and they can disappear into a wooden house forever.
But the game lasts twenty-seven innings and almost eight hours, until the stadium lights are the only real thing in the world. There is no moon, and no stars, the sky unbroken, and the position players drop, collapse into the dirt or onto the grass and they are carried off, replaced one by one until only Mark Ellis has been in the whole game, and he has a glossy silver sheen on his eyes, blind and fielding by vibration and sense of smell. Swisher is asleep on the dugout bench, his glove under his face. Around the seventeenth, Harden would give everything he has for an end to this.
He’s scared that Street will show up, because if ever they’ve needed every pitcher on the staff, it’s now, and he’s scared that the game won’t be over until Street does. But they get out of it, somehow, and Harden wakes up in his car, driving through the tunnel. He doesn’t remember whether they won or lost, nothing except green and white light and the dull stretch of time and space in the open night above the stadium. He feels as if he’s been picked up and shaken hard like an etch-a-sketch, all his inside pieces jarred free.
Harden stumbles coming into the house, almost falling but Street is there to catch him, which isn’t possible because Harden’s not the one who went blind, he should have seen Street coming. Street’s arms are around his waist and Harden is clinging to him, holding him so tight his elbows are chocked under Street’s wings, a perfect fit.
Street is saying something about the game, saying, can’t believe that, man, how’d you get through it, and Harden is working on breathing, the scent of Street’s shampoo and new sweat. Twenty-seven innings is longer than his whole life, so he doesn’t have to worry about going to hell anymore.
Street takes him to bed, pulls Harden’s clothes off and his hands are everywhere. They’re both stripped down to nothing and Harden touches Street’s chest, licks the place where his leg runs into his stomach and Street’s fingers slide through his hair. Street says his name over and over again, but Harden is so tired and the game wouldn’t fucking end.
He’s pretty sure Street’s never done anything like this before, the world moving humidly around him and his muscles shivering. Taste like paint in the back of his throat and Street cries out, god, god, and Harden can’t imagine blasphemy better than this.
He falls asleep tucked into Street’s back, soft graceful curve under his face. Perfect fit here, too.
Wake up into sunlight on their off-day and Street pushed him away as they slept, or maybe not Street, the thing inside of him, because Street’s wings are long now, just past his waist, and Harden wants to cry, they’ll never be able to hide it again.
Street murmurs and reaches out, and Harden thinks that Street can’t be reaching for him, because they’ve only been fooling around for a week and that’s not long for him to have seeped into Street’s unconscious. God knows Street has seeped into his, but the truth is, that happened months ago
Harden needs to come up with a plan, something that won’t ruin them both. Everything comes back to running away, though, and Street won’t allow them that.
Harden gets them oranges from the refrigerator for breakfast and they eat in bed, sticky hands hovering above the sheets. Harden licks Street’s palms and fingers until the sharp taste is gone, and Street topples him, crawling up Harden’s body with tongue and teeth and nails writing letters on his stomach. Harden presses his head back into the bed and Street’s wings are spread all the way out and rippling the air, magazines and receipts blown off the nightstand, circling around them.
They wake up for the second time and Harden berates himself for awhile, because he was supposed to be finding a way out, and he’s spent half the day asleep in Street’s bed. Street doesn’t seem to mind, shaping Harden’s collarbone with his mouth and weaving their legs together.
“Hang on,” Harden says when Street’s hands start to venture into dangerous territory. “Just wait a minute, will you.”
Street stills, blinking whitely at Harden and Harden hates that open, careless look on his face, as if Street isn’t protected from gravity right now.
“We’ve got to do something, man,” Harden says, and Street is pressed all up along his side, heat-seeking.
“I think we’re doing all right,” Street answers.
Harden clenches his teeth, Chinese figures scrawled in black ink on the ceiling and Street’s blood rattling under his skin, hot as coffee. “You know you can’t pitch like this.”
Street smiles cleanly, his hair skating along the underside of Harden’s jaw. “No, better than ever.”
Harden puts a hand up over his eyes and concentrates on the bursts of color, the sick low pressure in his sinuses. “You’re gonna get us both killed.”
Street gets up, his joints snick-popping, and grins at Harden. “You’re so pessimistic.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve turned into a fucking hallucination, so I think I’m doing just fine,” Harden snaps. He stands up too, placing his hands on Harden’s hips and steering him over to the mirror. “Will you take a look at yourself, for fuck’s sake. There are fucking wings coming out of your back. Can you, like, not see that? Do you see anyone else walking around with fucking wings?”
Street studies himself in the mirror, and Harden watches Street’s face, narrow eyes and cold-sculpted shoulders. His hands are still closed around Street’s hips, the twists of bones ripped like the movement of cutter, and Street’s wings brush his bare chest. Without thinking, Harden angles himself into the space between them, his fingers stuttering on Street’s stomach.
Street meets his gaze in the mirror. “I’ve never been exactly what you’d call normal.”
Harden coughs out a quiet laugh and rakes his teeth on Street’s shoulder. “We’ve got to get out of here. Find some place for you where nobody will see.”
Street shakes his head, his wings beginning to beat slowly, rustling on Harden’s upper arms. “I’m not meant to hide myself from the world.”
Harden bites him, half in anger and half something else, holding him tight around the waist, clutching his own wrists. “You don’t know what you’re meant for.”
Street laughs, and Harden realizes suddenly that they’re floating three inches above the floor.
Harden finds a pair of scissors in his junk drawer and slashes two skinny openings in the back of a blue and green T-shirt that Street hardly wears anymore. He helps Street fit the wings through the holes, fabric tearing as it’s pulled, and then Street is dressed, shaggy tears in the knees of his jeans and the hem of his shirt tattered, his wings wide and white like a frame around his body. He looks like a refugee from a Christmas pageant.
Harden’s smoothing his hands over Street’s chest again and again, thinking that if he can just keep Street distracted and keep him here in this room, but Street’s eyes are stuck on the window and he breathes out, “Look, look at that.”
Harden turns and the window is solid gray, covered completely by the fog. Trapped in here, better than a snowstorm. Harden gets momentarily hopeful, like they won’t be able to leave, this tragic weather, nothing that they can be expected to face.
But Street’s got a wild smile on his face and he’s grabbing Harden’s hand, “C’mon, hey,” and pulling him out into the hallway before Harden can figure out how to talk.
“Stop,” Harden says frantically, because Crosby will see and tear the roof off with his disbelief, or Melhuse will stare with his pale, implacable eyes and say something that won’t match up with any of Harden’s half-thought plans.
The house is dark, though, smothered, and there’s a white slash of a note taped to the television, because Crosby always likes people to know where he is, and then Street is jerking open the door and leading Harden out in the fog. He lets go of Harden’s hand and Harden immediately loses him, silver in his mouth and wires of color and light in his mind.
“Huston?” he calls out, broken-voiced. The fog is sea-deep, closing around him like hands on his arms, and Street is somewhere out there laughing.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Street’s voice comes back to him. “It’s incredible.”
Harden sees a blur of white in front of him, and he walks with his hands held out, expecting an attack from the side, an ambush because they’re totally helpless right now. Street’s face swims into view and then is gone again.
“Come back here,” Harden says, reaching out and cotton brushes his palms, tries to grab hold but it’s just the fog. He can’t breathe in this.
Street taps Harden’s shoulder from behind and Harden cries out, jumping like an electric shock. Street laughs and comes around to Harden’s front, his wings nudging Harden and his eyes are very dark. He hooks his hands in Harden’s belt and the fog is so thick that Harden can’t even see the wings from over Street’s shoulders, and he almost breaks down in relief. Street looks finally normal, like how he used to be and how Harden wants to remember him.
“Something’s gonna happen,” Street tells him, bright and excited and his cheeks flushed.
“Something already has.”
Street shakes his head, a smile biting at his mouth. “No, man, something else.”
Harden swallows, fear climbing back in, hard fingers using his spine as a ladder. “What?”
Street tips his face up, invisible sky and fog in Street’s hair, in the folds of his shirt. “I don’t know. But I can feel it.”
He tugs at Harden’s belt and kisses him, closed mouth and Harden can remember when he saw Street standing in the parking lot lights with his shirt on inside-out and his hair in wet spikes, a toothpick in his mouth and a sweet smile around it, that moment when Harden thought very clearly that this is what he wants for the rest of his life.
Street is moving away, turning his back on Harden and Harden can see the wings moving broad and dangerous before Street goes missing in the fog again. Harden tries to say Street’s name but his voice is gone.
“Listen, man,” Street says as everything Harden knows is falling away. “Listen, I think maybe you can hear it.”
Harden tries to hear, but no hope of that, because Street is on some new wavelength, Street is being taken away and Harden is moving forward, looking for him, he will put his arms around Street and that will be enough. His hand latches onto something that’s impossible, stringy denim and a hard ankle bone, Street is four feet above the ground and rising.
“Don’t,” Harden begs. If Street goes up, he won’t come back down, and what then? Harden can’t take the blame for misplacing Street, nothing he can do to fix it. His faith will go when his heart does, thinking crookedly of salvation and yellow-red fast food signs and the huge, overtaking force within him that wishes everything could go back to the way it was.
“It’s okay, Richie,” Street says from above him, sounding like a ghost and turning his foot in Harden’s hand. “I’ll be right back.”
Harden doesn’t believe him, but he lets him go, fingers sliding off Street’s heel, trying to say godspeed, but it doesn’t work. Street vanishes and Rich Harden stands alone in the fog, broken like a curse, and he’ll wait here forever, as long as it takes for Street to come back down.
THE END
the other one