by Trisky
He looks surprised to see me, surprise tempered by caution. He closes the comic book he was reading, defensively, and looks around the counter for something more official to be doing, to show me how I've interrupted his life, once again. I don't care that he was reading, I know this place is important to him and I'm intruding, he doesn't have to prove it to me, but maybe he has to prove it to himself.
"Can I help you with something?"
I take a tentative step toward the counter, I don't really know how to go about this. "I came to talk to you about Rage."
"The first edition is almost sold out, we might even break even and not owe the world our asses," he smiles a boyish smile, proud of himself. Proud of us.
"That's good to hear." For some reason, his ability to let things pass over with nothing but a smile bothers me, more than I can rationalize. I can see why Brian has needed him to look the other way, all these years, because it doesn't bother him and that's what bothers me even more. It seems disingenuous somehow. "I guess you can figure out why I'm here though. I brought a list of illustrators you might want to call, to give you a hand." I search my jacket pocket in vein.
"Why would I want another illustrator?" No one could really be as innocent as he looks right now, could they?
"Because I can't work with you on the comic book anymore Mikey."
"Why not?" He looks genuine. I don't actually have an answer to that, that makes any sort of rational sense. I'm mostly just being a coward, and I don't think he wants to know the real reason, because if I start I might not stop.
"It'd be kind of awkward don't you think?"
"Look, Brian is right, we could have something really great here, we can't let our difference of opinion get in the way."
I was wondering which one of us was going to say his name first, and it certainly didn't take long, because Brian is always right in Mikey's world.
"It was a little more than a difference of opinion. You totally sold me out." Maybe my anger wasn't as faraway as I thought.
"I didn't sell you out." And neither is his, apparently. His eye twitches in time with his mouth, like he startles himself at the sound of his own voice. "I was looking out for my best friend, what did you expect me to do?"
I suspect nothing I say to him will really matter, so I don't really have much to lose in the long run. "I expected you to act like you were my friend, too, or didn't I matter? I never really did, did I Michael?"
"That's not true, you were my friend, you still are." I think he really believes that, and I would feel sorry for him, but his total lack of understanding over why he might have possibly been wrong is frustrating as hell.
"Yeah you were a real peach."
"You can't really believe that I wouldn't look out for Brian."
"Of course I can, if there's one thing I would believe it's that, but I guess I thought, stupidly, that you would at least have enough decency to talk to me first. Because believe it or not, you're not the only one invested in looking out for him." I know I shouldn't have said that, but someone has to drag this out of him, one way or the other, and it may as well be me.
"You were looking out for him, by fucking someone else behind his back?" His big doe eyes stretch to seemingly twice their size.
"That's not what I'm saying."Sometimes, okay most of the time you have to spell things out for him. "You know what, I fucked up, bigtime. But I would have liked to have had the chance to tell him myself, instead of the ass backwards way you handled it."
"You had every opportunity to tell him yourself." Point taken. "You would have only been telling him, because I caught you."
"So what? So fucking what? At least it would have been coming from me and I deserved that right."
"I didn't owe you shit Justin. You stopped deserving anything the minute you started fucking around, and I'm not saying that because it's Brian. I'm saying that because it was a totally fucked up thing to do."
"That wasn't your call to make. And no matter how you try to spin it now, it'll always be about Brian." How could it not? He's known him since he had peach fuzz for a bush, only somewhere along the way, he forgot they outgrew that stage.
"What does that mean?" I don't want to do this, I honestly don't, but it kills me, absolutely kills me, how little regard he's had for me, this whole time, and I was too stupid to notice.
"He's not afraid to love you Michael, he already does, you already know it, it's just not enough for you, and I know that has to eat you up." His face falls and I feel like the worlds biggest asshole, but my mouth just has a will of it's own. "So how do you think I feel? Loving someone who's too fucking scared to love me back, and I know it's not because he's incapable. You get the best of him, I get the worst of him. You try living with that, and tell me how to handle it, because I don't know, and sometimes I fuck it all up. I would have at least liked to have had the opportunity to try though, and you took that away from me."
He looks hurt, but I don't regret anything I've said. We all just tiptoe around the entire subject, like it's some dirty little secret, some other thing that I'm just supposed to understand, and I'm just tired of having to keep up the pretense. Because if they're the main attraction, then what does that make me?
"Look I know Brian is a handful, but I warned you about that Justin. I told you from the very beginning and you wouldn't listen to me and no matter how difficult he is, he didn't deserve what you did." His voice is soft and soothing, and right on some level.
"And I did? Because I don't really love him right? Because I hurt him and you don't hurt people you love." He motions, as if it to say something, but just half shakes his head. "When does he start having to make some kind of sacrifice Michael? When do you stop letting him hurt you? Do you love him any less because he does? Everything is not as simple as it seems is it?"
I can see something beginning to sink in, he always gets this tiny look of shame when someone makes a point he hadn't really considered. He's not a stupid guy, but I think he gets embarrassed when people connect the dots before he does. He just crosses his arms and holds his stance. "What do you want from him Justin? A ring? A house? You know he's never gonna be like that. I don't understand what it is you want him to do."
"Then I guess I understand why you don't think I've been trying to look out for him. I want him to be more than he is right now, because this isn't enough, for me or for him. Maybe it's enough for you and everyone else, but I refuse to believe that's all there is. I won't."
I see fear in his brief glance in my direction. Fear that I'm right, fear that I might not be done interrupting his life yet. Fear that the more I push, the further away he's going to land, and the faster I'm going to jolt him out of his peach fuzz fantasies. And I fucking revel in it and desperately want to reassure him, all at once. Tell him that he has nothing to fear because I would never do that to Brian, never treat someone he holds that close to him, as shitty as he took it upon himself to treat me, and because I need his help, if I'm going to do this, but he has to be willing to meet me halfway and neither of us are ready for that.
"I have to think about this Rage thing. I'll get back to you." He looks like he must have looked the first time Brian saw him, sulking and sad and needing someone to lift him up and just fly him above his cartoon world, just take him right out of the pages and bring him to life. And I know, I just know what it is Brian saw there, a way out, a place to escape for a little while.
"You do that, but I wouldn't wait too long if I were you." I wander back to the door, stopped by a customer's entry, and I watch, he doesn't even notice that anyone has come in, doesn't hear the wind chimes or feel the breeze, adrift in his own thoughts, because nothing else matters.
Despite appearances to the contrary, Brian is only a superhero on cheap paper with ink stains and Mikey is no kid in need of a rescue anymore, and every comic book has a last panel, every single one of them.
I leave, just walk out into the fresh air and drown in it, leave him to his fantasy world. I feel the list of illustrators I'd been searching for, deep in the crevice of my pocket, and it hits me, and I can't believe how long it took me to figure this all out. I laugh at my own stupidity, at my own expense, empowered and thrilled, crumble up the list and make litter of it.
He might have been molding Rage all along, hearing all the words, making up a lore to store a million fantasies to tell himself while he waited for a rescue... but I'm the one he saved and it's my hand that brought him to life.