Ryan’s face is buried so deep into the pillow now, that all I can see is brown hair, a paddock of dead grass, only, maybe a little softer than that. I’m expecting cows to start munching on the sides.
“Maybe,” he mumbles, and his fingers run races through his hair, his eyes are the finish line as the competitors rub away the sleep.
“It’ll be great, we can…” And, okay, maybe this isn’t such a good idea, coz, I mean, I’m not gay, I’m not, but Ryan is really fucking pretty this morning, and I’ve never been able to talk to someone like this after sex. “We can go as colleagues and I can introduce the script to the press.” That probably sounds a little better.
“No.” Ryan doesn’t hesitate this time.
The ache is back, perhaps a little stronger than before, a little more violent. ”You said maybe before.”
“You reminded me of why it was a bad idea.” He’s rolling over, ripping the waves of powder blue sheets away from his body, pointing the ocean in a different direction - not here, hun, this is gonna be some continent, one built on desert slash barren wasteland. - This is the first time I’ve seen him naked, like, for real. I didn’t see him last night; senses clouded by lust and inexperience and maybe a little bit of something else. Ryan is a street lamp, Ryan is a piece of wool, Ryan is a Japanese lantern, Ryan is a fucking mountain. His body is so pale, skin almost translucent, he’s some sort of ghost maybe, a sexual spirit. A god, for real, a God. Aphrodite. Zeus. Buddha. Ra. Brahman.
Ryan is so fucking fragile, all bone and skin and hair, that I’m pretty sure I could crush him. Does that make me the devil, or does that make me man? I don’t know.
I’ve thrown the sheets off me with nowhere near the same elegance Ryan did, am grasping adamantly at his fingers, at his wrists, at his arms. “Would it…” And I take a deep breath here, rub at my eyes again with my free hand. “…would it make a difference if I said it was a…a, y’know, date?”
Ryan’s face is vanilla ice cream, a bowl of rice, a sheet of paper that some small child had managed to drop two perfectly shaped almonds in the middle of. He’s staring at me with the same intensity that he always has, only maybe this time it’s off a little, intense for a different reason. He’s swaying on his feet, backwards and forwards, and something in me, that thing between my heart and my cock, it’s rupturing, twisting in on itself, strangling the butterflies.
“…yes.”
*
When I was fourteen years old, my dog was hit by a car.
Her name was Sasha. She was an eight-year-old Labrador that my parents had bought from Mary at church for my twelfth birthday.
I would sit in a waiting room for two hours, before a nurse would come out to tell me that Sasha had died on impact with the Ford station wagon.
Bad news comes in a million shapes and forms, a million different voices. It’s a thousand different ideas, different concepts, different circumstances; it’s a hundred different methods of telling. Bad news is eyes slanted in exaggerated sympathy, creased foreheads and lips slightly parted. It’s warm fingers that run down your arms, and try too hard to link with your own fingers, which suddenly feel frostbitten and numb.
Bad news comes from reading the paper, the day after the 9/11 attack.
Bad news comes from that monotonous voice on the 6 o’clock report, telling you that the train crash six hours ago killed your cousin.
Bad news is the nurse’s timid glance, her wide, open eyes, her brow furrowed in faux sympathy. Bad news is this nurse, Lucy, her nametag reads, bad news is her incapability to say anything more than “I’m sorry,” in that tiny, lost, little voice, when Jesus Christ, your dog just fucking died.
Bad news is a virus that can cause symptoms that vary from watery eyes, to full blown hysteria, clenched chest to a heart (you only have one of them) cracking too deep and too quickly, and proceeding to bleed all over the pretty, white tiles in the waiting room at the veterinary clinic.
Jesus Christ, it was just a dog.
*
There are ballrooms in Loretta’s eyes tonight, tiny flecks of dancers in endless brown dresses. I haven’t seen her this happy in a long time, and I’m not sure if it’s because it’s two hours before the premiere of Red Wine (which is a fair bit less shit than the films I normally take on), or if it’s because here, in my deluxe penthouse suite, Ryan is sitting next to her on my fucking sofa. They’re talking too quickly and too eagerly to be talking about anything other than the film.
“I still can’t fucking believe you brought him as a date.”
I turn around too quickly, almost choking as I try to loosen my tie. “Not a date, Jon, we are going as colleagues.”
Jon just grins, this odd little half-smile which implies nothing, but kinda fucking screams that he knows there’s more to it than that. “Yeah, okay, do you want me to go grab the corsage, a bouquet or something? I mean, I’m your PA, it’s sorta my job to make sure you don’t fuck up what could be Hollywood’s freshest couple.”
I flip him off, and when he giggles insanely (he’s been into the marijuana tonight), I throw a conveniently placed shoe at him. Miss.
“At least I’m not taking fucking Loretta. ”
Jon doesn’t take offence. “Loretta’s pretty fucking hot.” He glances over to where she’s seated next to Ryan. “Y’know, in an artsy sorta way.”
“Loretta’s pretty fucking married, Jon,” I say, and cave, I’ll redo the fucking tie. “Why doesn’t her husband ever come to premieres, anyway?”
“Not everyone’s life revolves around you, Brendon. Besides, I’m pretty sure he’s too upmarket-artsy, y’know, something that comes hand-in-hand with like, actual art. If you do a good job of Build God, she’ll probably take him to that.”
She doesn’t though. Loretta doesn’t take her husband to the premieres of any of my films, and when Jon finally settles down, gets married and has 2.5 kids, he’s not gonna take his wife either. Loretta and Jon are friends, and they’ll go with each other till the days that they die, as some unspoken ritual.
“Jon, my love,” Loretta calls, and she’s pulled herself off the couch, latches onto Jon’s arm and doesn’t so much pout at him (which I’m sure was her intention), as she does let loose a grin which spreads from cheekbone-to-cheekbone. “Jon, I believe it is time for us to depart, if you’re not ready, I guess I’ll be forced to beat the shit out of Brendon for holding you up.”
I half-glower at her, half-glower at my tie, which really doesn’t want to work, but suddenly fingers are on mine, over mine, working through the steps of tying a tie with the expertise of someone who has sadly been forced to do them a lot in their life.
“Don’t fuck this up,” Loretta mumbles in my ear, fingers still working the tie, “he’s a keeper.” And really, what do you say to that?
But Loretta doesn’t wait for a response, clutches adamantly again at Jon’s outstretched arm. Some people are afraid or spiders, some of heights, but Loretta will always loathe limos. It’s a thing. She’ll arrive before me at every one of my premieres, decked out in a Mercedes and the silver necklace her grandmother gave her before she died.
By the time the door slams shut, Ryan’s standing in front of me, all pinstriped pants, and thin, dark vest. He looks pretty fucking good, but then again, so do I.
“So,” he says, rocks back on the heels of his feet, (he always takes his shoes off before he enters someone’s home).
“So,” I say, and I grin back at him, coz suddenly this is feeling like one of my dates from highschool, all awkward tension and a brain-dead voice box.
Music’s playing though, Belle and Sebastian, and I really fucking like this song.
“Brendon.”
“Yeah?”
“Phone.”
Ah. I should really stop downloading ringtones. I grasp my mobile, pull it out of my pocket and grin at Ryan from across the kitchen. “’ello?”
It’s a heavy breath that starts it all. An unsteadily deep, heavy breath that sounds like the murderer in one of those 1980’s horror flicks.
“Hello?” And Ryan shoots me a questioning look, props himself up on the countertop. I shrug in response, focus my attention back at the phone in my hand.
“Brendon?” The voice crackles a little over the phone line, pops and fades over the two syllables.
“Yes, who is this?”
The breathing is becoming even more erratic, less stable, and she (I’m sure it’s a she now), I think she’s crying.
“Come get me, Bren, come save me.”
“What?” Ryan’s looking at me again, but I block my other ear, trying to focus on the voice, which is becoming less and less audible. “Who are you?”
“Please, Brendon, I need you. I…I think I OD’d.” Her breath hitches, voice wavers. “I can’t remember, but there’s blood, and I think I passed out sometime, I don’t-I…don’t leave me here, Brendon, please.”
She’s sobbing again, and all I can think to say is, “Who the fuck is this?”
And then it hits me with the impact of a thousand buses and trains and huge transportation vehicles. It hits me so hard and fast that I put my head between my knees and vomit all over the shoes Loretta bought me for the premiere.
“Don’t leave me here.” She’s whispering now, voice catching and fading. “Don’t leave me behind again.”
“Catherine?” I say, and my voice never quivers this much, my tongue is thick in my throat, in my mouth, like I’ve overdosed on peanut butter, overdosed on thick shake, overdosed on Catherine.
Ryan’s staring at me now, his eyes are big and questioning, and he reminds me of those small porcelain dolls you buy as an adult for your little nieces and nephews, only they never want something that fragile, so it sits on the shelf, collects dust, all forgotten beauty.
“Brendon…” Catherine is whimpering, and Ryan’s eyes are still very big, still very inquiring, and I wonder how natural he’d look behind the glass at a museum or art gallery. He’s not just a china doll; he’s one of those antique ones, the one’s worth millions, the one’s hand-painted by old men in the sixteenth century.
“Don’t let me die, Brendon” she says, and really, Ryan isn’t behind glass, maybe never has been behind anything thicker or pricier than the windows in that bohemian apartment. Without the proper protection, I can see dust collect on his cheekbones, in his hair, on his clothes, on his shoes.
“Don’t let me die,” Catherine whispers again, and the phone line, the phone line is dead (and maybe Catherine is too). I’m in the clinic again, but this time it’s Sasha I’m fucking talking to, it’s Sasha telling me that she died two hours ago when she ran into the street and was hit by an overweight guy with too much hair and an ugly car, died two hours ago not quite on impact (but very almost), lived just long enough to wonder where I was. It’s Sasha giving me the bad news, and reminding me that hey, bad news is at its worst when you hear it from someone you love.
There’s so much more to this, so much to do right now, but all I can think, all I can think is how come Ryan’s the porcelain doll, yet I’m the one falling off the shelf, and shattering on the cold tiles of the kitchen.
There are thirteen television screens flickering in front of me.
They’re not new televisions either, none of that Sony-plasma-a-billion-inch-screen-bullshit. No new laser technology, no surround sound, no DVD, or even a fucking VCR. They’re old; ancient, dials instead of remote controls, wooden frames and antenna that stick out of the head like snail eyes.
Flick! goes the television screen, the one in the far right corner. Flick it goes, and suddenly it’s alive.
A sputter of grey haze evolves, and suddenly, suddenly I’m eight years old again, sitting in my grandmother’s living room, watching Alice in Wonderland.
“That’s it, Dinah!” Alice cries. “If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrariwise, what it is, it wouldn’t be, and what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?”
Dinah mews, “Meow,” and Alice might sorta roll her eyes as she picks the cat up.
“In my world,” Alice says, “you wouldn’t say ‘meow’. You’d say ‘Yes, Miss Alice.’”
And, and flick goes the television screen, flick.
“Oh, Dinah.” It’s Alice’s voice again, but the screen is still hazy, Alice is invisible. “It’s just a rabbit with a waistcoat…and a watch.”
The screen lights up, but it isn’t Alice, and there isn’t any fucking rabbit, it’s Catherine on the screen, her giggling and high and in the trashy apartment I left her in.
“Twas brillig,” says a voice. Catherine’s gone and all that’s there is a set of lips on the screen in front of me. “And the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. All mimsy were the borogroves, and the momeraths outgrabe.”
It’s the rhyme that the Cheshire cat says in the film, only it’s not him saying it, isn’t his voice, isn’t his lips.
“ Brendon,” the lips say, “ Brendon. ”
“What?” I ask the lips.
“ Brendon, wake up. ”
The screen blurs together, and so does my grandmother’s living room. The wallpaper and the curtains and the old sofa run together like paint, turn into the brown swirling mass that all colours turn into when mixed, everything is beyond recognition apart from the colour, the shape, the size of Ryan’s lips.
“Brendon,” Ryan says, and I can see his eyes as well now, his nose and his cheeks and his hair. He’s sitting next to me on the floor in the kitchen, and Christ, how long have I been out?
“Brendon,” Ryan says, and his voice is tinged with something I can’t quite place, something between worry and anger and that thing in his tone that makes him Ryan.
“I need to go to Las Vegas,” I say, because it’s all that I can say, even if I can’t quite recall what’s happening. “I need to go right now.”
Ryan stares at me a few seconds longer, places his fingertips to my forehead. “I’ll drive,” he says, and that’s all there is to it.
*
The road to Las Vegas isn’t as quick as I remembered, at least, not with Ryan driving, not with his gentle fingers on the wheel, or his light foot on the accelerator.
“Can we pick up the pace?” I ask, and Ryan doesn’t look at me, just casts me a wayward glance through the mirror.
“I’m already over the speed limit.”
It’s in these hours that I feel most like Alice, most like I’m falling down the rabbit hole. Parachute dress exploding on me, hindering any efforts at speed. I’m Alice, and I’m fucking floating, and I can’t catch up, can’t catch up to Catherine, to the white rabbit whose life-clock is ticktickticking away. “Can’t be late.” The voice says, “Can’t be too late.”
“Brendon,” Ryan says, and his fingers are curving over the steering wheel, tightening enough that bleach pours over his knuckles, makes them ghost-white. “Brendon, we’ll get there, okay?”
I don’t say anything straight away, wrap my fingers tight around the head of my tie, pull it looser still. “Why,” I ask, heart thick in my throat, valves clogging the tissue, “why did your nametag say ‘George’?”
“What?” Ryan asks, and I can see his forehead furrow, his eyelids pull down, straining over light bulb eyes.
“At the diner, your nametag said ‘George’.” And I have no idea why I remember this, why I’m saying it, but maybe it’s a distraction that I’m welcoming with a little too much enthusiasm.
Ryan pauses a little, sighs too long and too deep. “George was my father’s name.”
“Then why were you wearing his nametag?”
“Maybe,” Ryan starts, blinks, “maybe George is my name too.”
“Okay,” I say, but only because my throat is so tight now, so pressed, that I don’t think I’m physically capable of saying anything else.
*
We’re driving in circles, because we may have reached Las Vegas, but I have no fucking idea where Catherine is.
“Where does she live then?” Ryan asks, fingers tapping the wheel at the first set of red traffic lights we come across.
“She won’t be there, I know she won’t be there.”
Ryan sighs, taps his fingers a little harder, a little quicker on the wheel. “Where does she hang out then? Where does she go when she isn’t home?”
And seriously, how long have I been away from Vegas? I’ve never known where Catherine’s gone to hang out, or to fuck around or anything, just…
“She used to work at the Aladdin Resort and Casino.”
“Yeah?” Ryan asks, and “Yeah,” is all I can manage to choke back.
*
“Immogen,” I call, because it’s the first face I recognise, because it’s the first set of fists I know aren’t going to deck me. “Immogen!” I call again, because she’s working, but I need help right now.
“Yeah?” She turns around too quickly, a flurry of yellow hair and fake-tanned skin. “Brendon?”
“Where’s Catherine?”
“Huh, oh, I dunno. She came in last night for work…she shouldn’t get off till eight this morning, but I haven’t seen her.” Immogen scratches her head, evens out the hem of her shirt a little. “But what are you doing back?” she asks, grin too wide to be real. “Thought you were off being famous.”
“I am,” I say. “Extraneous circumstances.”
“Oh.” She says, frowns a little. “I last saw Catherine heading out on her break, but that was like, hours ago.”
“Thanks,” I say, kissing her on the cheek, and heading to the back of the building. I’m out the door before I can stop myself, too fast, too impulsive, following the ticktickticking of bunny’s clock. There’s no one there though, just some half-broken fence and a filthy, concrete slab.
Just loose rays of milky moon, the sparklesparkle of dying stars, the distinct smell of mouldy wood and dirt and trash and…and the metallic smell of old blood.
My fingers scar against the bricks. I’m holding on too tight as I turn the corner of the alley, the ‘outback’ of the casino - that deserted wasteland, the breeding ground of mildew. Turn the corner, turn the page, turn the next fucking chapter.
Watch as I draw breath too quickly, as my eyes haze over with gravity and the reflection of blood. This must be what it’s like to be Alice, chasing after this tiny white rabbit, only to discover that hey, this is fucking hunting season. Bang! And bunny’s guts are on the grass, on the trees, on the teeth of the hounds. White fur is stained with this blood, this red wine. It won’t come out in the wash.
Catherine’s arms and legs and head, it doesn’t belong on this body. She’s not broken beauty here, she’s ugly and she’s dark and she’s bleeding. It’s nothing like the movies. Blood isn’t bright red; it’s brown, nearly black, as it oozes from her head, from her stomach, from her arms and her thighs.
Not broken beauty, but maybe definitely broken.
Ryan’s waiting out in the front with the car, so I rip off my blazer - the one that cost more money than Catherine probably did when she whored herself off for ecstasy - wrap it around her bleeding, wrecked body, and I carry her out of the casino.
*
Tick! goes the clock.
Eternity must pass by sometime in here. Forever must whir on in some sort of fascinating slowness.
Tick! goes the clock.
A thousand nurses have stolen Catherine from me, stolen my white rabbit and left me sitting here with her broken clock. Tick! it goes, and it’s too slow, too desperate and strained in its timing, the second hand is moving in hours. Thing about hospital waiting rooms is that they involve waiting and patience and tears, none of which I’ll ever be any good at.
“Brendon,” Ryan says, and he’s looking at me, all eyes and hair and lips. “Brendon, it’ll be all right.”
I shrug, tighten each fist where they rest at my knees.
“It’ll be okay,” he says, and he’s desperately seeking an eye contact I can’t give him. He wants a lot of things I can’t give him. He wants a lot of things that people have never even expected of me.
“Not many people would do this, y’know,” I say, and I’m still not looking at him properly, not at his face. I can see two bony knees, almost poking through the pinstriped pants.
“What?”
“Not many people I know would sit here with me, wait for my idiot sister to come out of emergency, intensive care, where ever the fuck she is.” Take a deep breath, let my eyelids flutter shut, open. “Not many people I know would do this.”
“Then,” Ryan pauses, inhales deeply too, and it’s nice to know it’s not just me who needs to remember to breathe tonight, “then, I don’t think many of the people you know are very good people.”
“Thank you,” I say, and it slips from my lips before I can think.
I don’t see him move, don’t hear it, but suddenly he’s kneeling in front of me, fingers pulled tight on the plastic armrests. “You’re welcome,” he whispers, looks at me imploringly, and maybe he gives up on eye-contact, and instead wraps his arms around my neck, around my shoulders, kisses me on the cheek. “These things have a way of working themselves out.”
Ryan’s warm and he’s beautiful here, but for once I don’t care.
I just want my sister.
*
“Miss Urie,” the doctor starts, “Miss Urie is in a stable condition.”
Catherine has never been stable, so if she is, then it’s probably a first.
“She has a severe concussion, three broken ribs, and some pretty nasty lacerations to her arms, legs, back, chest and face. She had heroin in her system.”
Catherine’s heart is too broken now, her blood too thin. Her body runs on liquid addictives now, none of that organic bodily fluid bullshit. She runs on heroin, cocaine and vodka.
“Mr. Urie,” the doctor starts, “Mr. Urie, the rape-test has come back positive.”
Tick! goes the clock.
The doctor’s eyes aren’t as big as Ryan’s, and I try to see through the concrete wall to where I know he is waiting outside the office. No such luck, so I pool my breathing, in and out, try to stop the violent clench of my fingers.
“Mr. Urie, the rape-test-“
“I heard you,” I say, dig my gnawed down nails into my thighs.
“Right,” she says. “Would you like some pamphlets or, well, I can give you-“
“When can I take her home?”
The doctor takes off her glasses, rubs at her eyes with blunt, sterile fingers, “Without any hindrances? Two days.”
“Thank you,” I say, and I hold out my hand for her to shake. “I presume I can visit her now?”
“Uh, well, yes.” The doctor sighs, gives me a hesitant smile. “She’s in room 218. Take the elevator up a floor and it should be directly on your left.”
“Thanks,” I say again, and my legs must be made of rotting wood, of ancient stone, because they feel old and stiff and just, just not working. It takes me years to get to the door of the office, to find Ryan on the other side, sitting on a hard, plastic chair that looks too big for him.
“Yeah?” he says, and he stands up quickly, gracelessly.
“Catherine is…” I start.
Catherine is a lot of things. Catherine is slutty and an addict and just, she’s dumb. Catherine doesn’t think things through, Catherine doesn’t understand, Catherine hates herself, Catherine wants to die, right up until the point that hell’s doors are staring at her.
Catherine was raped about seven hours ago.
I saw her there, with her head cracked open on the concrete, and it was awful, because out of the fracture spilt red wine and straight-vodka and martinis, her nose was running, all snot and cocaine and heroin.
And not yet, but later on, the doctor will tell me that her rapist had been dumb enough to leave the condom still inside her, covered in semen and blood and blood and blood.
“…Catherine is fine,” I finish, but she isn’t, she never was, and she never will be. Some people are just fucked up.
“Room 218,” I say, and it takes us four minutes and thirty-two seconds to get there.
Tick! goes the clock.
*
“Hi,” Catherine says, and her pupils are dilated, skin so pale that it scarcely contrasts with the bone-coloured sheets.
I haven’t said anything, can’t say anything, so Ryan takes the lead, wanders a little closer to her bedside. “Hello.”
“I don’t think I know you,” Catherine says, and her head tilts and she looks like she’s twelve years old again, twelve years old and teaching me how to blow bubbles in soda.
“I’m Ryan.”
“I’m Catherine,” she says, and she furrows her brow, her fingers play with the edge of the sheet. “At least I think so, I can’t quite remember right now.”
“I think you’re Catherine too,” Ryan says, and he pulls the stool over from beside the window, pushes it close to her bedside. “You’re Brendon’s sister.”
“I am,” she says, “famous by association.” She fucking winks at Ryan at this point, and she has bandages over her arms and her chest and around her head, she’s all broken and fucked up, and she’s fucking joking around, like nothing’s wrong, like she’s raped everyday.
“What the fuck, Catherine?” I say, and it’s half-whispered, half-yelled, and they’re both staring now, a soap-opera on pause. Both of them, with their big eyes and pretty faces and broken hearts.
“What the fuck?” I say, and it’s louder this time. I’m moving over to her before I can stop myself, over to her bedside, only I don’t kneel or pull up a stool, I loom over her, and I hope I’m fucking threatening.
“You are so fucking stupid,” I state, and it’s hard with the way my jaw’s clenched, with the way my teeth grind together. “I hateyou so fucking much right now, Catherine, what the fuck are you doing? ”
Storm clouds are gathering under her eyelids, thunder erupting in her throat. “Fuck off, Bren,” she chokes out, first hint of rain just visible beneath the black-eye-storm-cloud.
“ No, I won’t fuck off. I don’t know what the hell you’re playing at, but-“
“ Fuck off, Brendon. ” The sound is ripped from her throat, raw and pained and just, just Catherine. “Fuck off,” she whispers, and for once, just today, I’m gonna oblige her.
“ Fine,” I say, “I hope you keel over and fucking die. ”
I want her to say something. I want her to scream at me and yell at me, and tell me what a fucking jackass I am, but she doesn’t, and she won’t, because right now, her heart is too fucking broken, and maybe mine is too.
Maybe that’s why I can’t get out of that room fast enough.
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