Winter Oranges (26 page)

“You’re right. I am tired.”

“I know, Jase.” Dylan kissed his temple again. “I know. And God, I want nothing more right now than to take you upstairs and put you to bed the right way. Will you let me?”

Jason shook his head, unsure what he’d do if Dylan tried to press him on the point, but to his relief, Dylan only sighed.

“Okay, JayWalk. Whatever you need.” He pulled back to cup Jason’s cheek in his hand, ducking his head a bit to meet Jason’s eyes, and Jason thought how Dylan had about the same height advantage on him that Jason had on Ben. “Let me give you something though, okay? It’ll help you sleep. That’s all.”

Jason nodded. “Okay.”

He preceded Dylan up the stairs, feeling like a penitent child. He found Ben waiting in the bedroom, his forehead creased with concern. It was an expression he was unaccustomed to seeing on Ben’s face. He worried Dylan would make a fuss about the snow globe being in his room, but he didn’t. He only dropped a few pills into Jason’s palm. Jason kissed him on the cheek and said good-night. He waited until he heard Dylan’s slow steps going down the stairs. Only then did he turn to Ben and motion him close, so he could whisper in his ear, “We need to talk.”

They spent half the night hashing it over. They came up with wild plans of tracking down somebody else who could see Ben, of somehow proving to Dylan that Jason’s story was true, but they knew all along those were fantasies. In the end, they had only one real option.

“It’ll never work,” Ben said. “You’ll never convince him to leave without you.”

“I think I can. I know him pretty well.”

“He loves you.”

“Maybe, in his own way. But as much as he wants to help me, he’s absolutely serious about his career. And he has to be back in LA by Wednesday morning. That’s our ace in the hole.”

“But he’s already said he’ll cancel.”

“I know what he said, but believe me, canceling is a bad idea, and he knows it.” Dylan was undoubtedly already wondering if he couldn’t help Jason
and
meet his acting obligation rather than having to choose one over the other. “All I have to do is convince him that I’ve come to my senses.”

“Convince him that you’ve suddenly stopped believing in me, you mean,” Ben said, his voice unsteady.

It hurt to even contemplate. Jason saw the hesitation and the doubt in Ben’s eyes, but what else could they do?

“It’s only acting,” Jason assured Ben. “I’ve been doing it since I was nine.”

But unlike every acting job he’d ever had, he had no script. He had no way of knowing how the other character in his farce would react. He was playing the most important role of his life to a one-man audience, and no matter how he looked at it—no matter how he saw the scene unfolding in his brain—two things remained certain: he couldn’t do it with Ben watching, and he had to keep the globe out of sight lest Dylan try to take it from him.

At four o’clock in the morning, while Dylan slept soundly in the bedroom next door, Jason snuck up the stairs to the attic. He stashed the globe in the corner of the room, tucked behind some of his unpacked boxes, deep in the shadows. Ben would be confined to the empty room, but at least he’d have access to a window. Jason hated to leave him alone, without even a radio, but he couldn’t risk drawing attention to the attic.

“Don’t worry,” Ben said, taking his turn at reassurances. “I’ve spent plenty of time in empty rooms. A couple more days won’t hurt.”

Jason knew it was true, and yet he saw the darkness in Ben’s eyes. He thought again of Ben’s explanation of walking in and out of the shadow of madness. If Jason abandoned him now, he may as well turn off the sun.

That wasn’t going to happen. As long as Jason could keep Dylan from searching the house for the globe, they’d be back to their normal life in no time.

Or so Jason hoped.

He climbed back into bed and snuggled into the warm familiarity of his sheets, going over his lines in his head. Planning his scenes. Double-checking his pacing.

Somehow, he managed to sleep.

He woke shortly before nine, coming instantly awake in that way he always did when he had a scene to shoot. No cameras this time. No retakes. No counting on the editors to patch things up at the end. This would be just him and Dylan, and he had to make it count.

Jason’s formal training had been spotty, but he knew his own methods. He’d learned over the years that he relied on a combination of sense memory and substitution. Whatever the instructors and the purists called it, he thought of it only as swallowing himself whole. Letting “Jason” fall to some small, abandoned place to wait in the dark while a new person wore his skin.

What must he feel?

Shame.

Despair.

Embarrassment and self-reproach.

He sat on the edge of his bed, his head in his hands. He concentrated on his breathing, keeping it ragged and uneven. He thought about all the failed acting jobs he’d had. All the roles he’d been denied. All the times he’d looked up at the checkout line to find his own face staring back at him from the tabloids. He thought of the lunacy they tried to pin on him, and he pulled it around himself and breathed it deep, letting it fill his lungs and work its way slowly through his veins until his fingers tingled with it. He thought of Ben’s loneliness in the globe while trying his best not to think about
Ben
. He thought of those weeks or months or years in the dark. He wallowed in the seeming eons of silence. In the surety of looming madness.

And finally, when tears burned behind his eyes, he dragged up Andrew’s death—not quite as it had actually been, all flashing lights and loud voices—but the way it had
felt
. The horror of his lover lying dead. The knowledge that he was on that same path. The shame of wondering whether he was the one who should have died. He doubled over, fighting the sob that burned in his chest.

This was his role.

He nurtured it, urging it to grow until it filled every inch of him. He messed up his hair as he fought to keep the darkness intact but contained. He rubbed at his eyes, needing them to be red and swollen. He glanced down at his hands and swallowed the satisfaction that rose up when he saw the way they shook. There’d be time for self-congratulation later. For now, there was only
this
. This emptiness. This sorrow. This memory of resounding silence and heartbreaking loneliness. There was only the certainty of loss and the fear of madness. He gathered it all, mentally pulling it in and wadding it up despite its bulk, cramming it into a space that was much too small to hold it for long.

He’d cut that all loose when the time came.

But not yet.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself in this dark mental place, feeling the power of that storm locked away inside, and he went slowly, painfully down the stairs.

He found Dylan in the dining room, his cell phone at his ear. “I don’t know,” Dylan said, his voice low and taut with frustration. “I’m not saying I won’t be there. I’m just asking, how tight is the timeline? Is there any chance of delaying it, even by a day?” Silence, while Dylan listened to the response, and then a sigh. “Okay. I understand.”

This was exactly what Jason needed, but he slammed the door on it. He didn’t allow any hope to enter the dark place he’d created for himself. He closed his eyes, focused on his unsteady breath and his aching heart. He examined the anguish and rage bottled up in his chest, sounding its depth like some ancient mariner, reaching in fear for the murky bottom of the sea.

It was enough.

“I’ll know more in a couple of hours,” Dylan said. “Don’t say anything quite yet.”

Dylan hung up and turned toward the door, and Jason knew instinctively that was his cue to step into the room.

“Hey.” Dylan spoke gently, as if to a terrified child. “How’re you feeling?”

Not yet. Don’t let it out yet. Let the pressure build. Feel it pushing higher up your throat.
“I’m better,” Jason choked out, and the words tasted like a lie, exactly as he needed them to.

“Did you sleep?”

“I tried.” The storm rose higher, raging against his temples, and he put his face in his hands, trying to keep it in.
Just a bit longer. Just a little bit more.

“Jason?”

“Dylan, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry for anything. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I’m so scared.”

“I know you are. I know how hard it’s been, but I can help you fix this. I swear to you, we can make it okay again.”

“Dylan, I . . .” It was close now, almost at the point where he couldn’t keep it back. Fighting it was an honest-to-God struggle. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

“Do you mean . . . do you mean Ben?”

Jason nodded, or shook his head. He couldn’t be sure which. He only knew that it felt like defeat. It felt like drowning.

It felt absolutely perfect.

“Jesus, Dylan, what’s happening to me?”

“You’ve been alone too long.”

“But he was real. Oh God, I swear he was real. He has to be real!”

“Jason, honey. No. He was only in your head.”

Jason took a deep breath, felt the walls crumbling under the weight of his grief, and he crumpled with them. He let the wave push him under. He fell forward, wrenched almost in half by the pain of admitting it, and was both relieved and gratified when Dylan caught him and pulled him into his arms. “Jason—”

“Oh God!” And now it was on him, the entire storm raging in his chest, battering at his throat, sending a torrent of liquid pain from his sore, swollen eyes, and he threw himself into it. He let the tempest have him. He clung to Dylan and let the sobs wrack through his body. “Oh God, Dylan, it felt so real! How could it feel so real?”

“It’s how we protect ourselves. It’s what you needed. But you have to let it go now. You see that, don’t you? You see that you have to let this fantasy go?”

“Yes,” Jason cried, nodding into Dylan’s shoulder. “Yes. Oh God, what’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all. You need some time, that’s all.”

He let Dylan pull him down to the floor because Dylan could no longer hold his weight. Dylan held him tight, whispering reassurance, and Jason wallowed in it. He let the undertow pull him out to sea. Sometimes he fought it. Sometimes he didn’t. All the while, he huddled here in the comfort of his friend’s embrace, letting the storm abate. Not too fast, though. Not too soon. It had to run a natural course. He pictured the beach slowly coming closer. He struggled to shore and watched the waves wash out to sea, leaving wreckage behind on the sand.

Yes, this was the role. This was his character’s turning point. The despair and the loss would naturally ease out of the way, but they had to leave something new. He needed now to put those pieces of flotsam together. To build that slow bridge to embarrassment, and then to something that looked like recovery. “I feel like such a fool. I can’t believe—”

“Shh. Don’t, Jase. Don’t punish yourself on top of everything else.”

“I don’t know how it even started. I don’t know how I ever let it get so big.”

“It’s okay. It doesn’t matter how it started. It only matters that it’s ended.”

Jason nodded. “It has,” he choked. “It was hard to admit, but I know now . . . I know it was all a dream.”