The Depths

[Near]

“Good.”

Part of him was sure the mysterious backpack contained a full change of clothes and god knows what other potential ammunition for Jude to lob.

He punts the second sneaker toward the same general trajectory as the first, deeper into the narrow kitchen. Weird angle. It slides off course, hits a scuffed and barely-hanging-on adhesive cabinet toe-kick, and stops dead.

Would he rather be kicking Jude’s head around like a soccer ball, instead of his shoes? The thought – flippant – and the accompanying mental image – more cartoonish than gory – arise only because they’re obvious. In fact the brief spasms of laughter have shaken Near free of most of the twitchy tension that had been building between his shoulders, and he feels less likely to hurl something back in across the no man’s land of his apartment than he would have two minutes ago. Lucky for Jude, too: it’s been a few years since Near’s high school shortstop stint, but he would still bet good money he can put more power behind a throw than Jude’s capable of without summoning up his goddamn mind-vibes.

“You can have them back when you prove you’re responsible enough to take care of them,” he says in the same voice with which he sometimes confiscates drunks’ keys. No, he doesn’t know quite what this qualification would looks like, but he'll know it if he sees it. Little aftershock of a chuckle: the kid fleeing shoeless across the parking lot in the rain, wet socks, drip-drip-dripping in his car.

“What do you want to do until the food gets here?”

[Jude]

The backpack contains some essentials -- shirt, pants, socks, underwear, passport, wallet -- but it does not contain a second pair of shoes. Throwing clothes at Near would not carry the same threat or impact. Meanwhile, the rest of Jude's possession are in his motel room. That's where the shoes are. Were they on Jude's turf instead of Near's, it's not unlikely Jude would have reloaded.

He doesn't look at Near again. He can imagine Near's facial expression quite clearly just by the tone of his voice. As if Jude couldn't just get up and get his shoes. As if Near could stop him. It literally doesn't occur to Jude that Near would touch him, even after all that baiting about the boyfriend. Near is a mosquito, a buzzing in Jude's ear -- but not a physical presence.

"Put on a movie," he mutters, his voice muffled by his hands but still audible. It is not that Near really wants to watch a movie, but it will create noise and a justification for both of them to be silent. Jude isn't even really hungry anymore. He just wants to stick out this interaction long enough to cool his temper and try to recover some of his pride. Then, he can go.

[Near]

Near waits for another outburst to follow his confiscation of the stupid sneakers, but Jude seems to have burned himself out pretty quickly, more sputtering Roman candle than volcano. He even answers the question of what to do like a reasonable human being might. Netflix and fucking chill, when really, Near was ready for something closer to “shove a couple of these Walmart floor lamps up your ass,” but not exactly because that’s reaching toward an echelon of vulgarity that he can’t quite imagine Jude achieving. What’s the worst he’s done? PG-13 accusations of being a dick and/or an asshole? Look at him, he probably considers himself too much of a sophisticate for real profanity …

The step Near begins to take away from the kitchen sink stops itself short of completion, his muscles refusing to let him abandon the strategic position between Jude and his shoes. Deep in his brain is a droopy-eyed junkyard dog guarding trash nobody – not even Near – really cares about, but whose theft would represent a sort of failure. Just because he feels a little bit less like a rubberband about to snap doesn’t mean he’s ready to lose the idiotic standoff. So he loiters, busying his hands with retrieving his glass and dabbing at its exterior with the corner of an underused kitchen towel.

Outside, a car pulls into the lot. He doesn’t see it, exactly. Doesn’t exactly hear it. Only he’s developed a sense of things shifting on the other side of the wall, of shifts in light and changes in air currents or something. It had better be Doordash, so help him.

Are the important people too important to show you how to turn on a television swims through the shallower waters of his head. He lets it go without reaching for it, tries instead “You don’t seem like a movie guy.” Because he doesn’t. Jude doesn’t seem like an anything guy, like when he is not out on his vague bullshit campaign, he probably just sits there staring at a wall. Maybe drinking tea. Shit, who could forget the tea? Then, “Turn on whatever you want,” waving toward the living room where the relevant accouterments – dusty mid-size flatscreen perched on an entertainment center cluttered by little things that have nowhere else to go, tiny remote control on the coffee table – are gathered.

[Jude]

Jude does consider himself a sophisticate, but not in those self-aware words. Most everything Jude considers himself lumps into the wide bracket of 'different'. His cloistered upbringing -- homeschool, then boarding school, then private college, each of them heavily supervised and surveilled by the Family and their associates -- really only became obvious to him when he was exposed to the inverse: this unfettered freedom in the wider world. A sophisticate knows themselves by encountering their lessers; Jude only encountered himself when he fled the opaque, unmirrored petri-dish of his cult. He was normal to his Family. He was just Jude. Self-consciousness and Jude's resentment towards it have melded with Near's face, Near being one of the first people that Jude encountered on his journey. Ever-so-distinctly rejected by Near, Jude unconsciously attaches Near's face with a bevy of (unfair) cultural criticism.

Darting for the shoes would be undignified, just like throwing the lamp would be. Jude has already suffered the indignity of attempting violence and failing to bring it to fruition. He failed in transferring his feelings of rage and helplessness. Scuffling with Near over his shoes would worsen the situation, doing nothing at all to alleviate the warm flush of embarrassment settling over Jude's body. Nothing he does on purpose seems to have an effect on Near. Jude's influence is purely accidental and incidental -- he annoys Near when he doesn't mean to, and when he tries to be annoying on purpose, he ends pathetically funny.

Jude picks up the remote and turns the television on. (He was only asking permission to be polite.) He surveys the remote to see if it is a cable remote or if it is one of those Smart TVs, the kind that will let him select from a laundry list of streaming services. "Anything you can't stand to watch?" Once again, Jude is driven to being polite, even when he would prefer not to be. Or maybe it's a defense mechanism at this point: he's trying to head off Near's inevitable complaining at the gate. Maybe it won't save him -- has it saved Jude yet? -- but Jude licks his wounds by assuring himself he is trying. He is! It's not his fault Near is terrible. Jude just needs to find some movie where they can eat in silence.

[Near]

You.

Ping pong volley-fast. How could he not? The question begs for it. But he’s good: keeps it confined to his head to maintain the current détente for a bit. One of them will do something that breaks it eventually, and Near would prefer it not be him. How far he already strayed from his original goal of being the adult between them … But if they’re keeping points, he still has the lead, what with his not having hurled anything at Jude’s head.

Yet.

Out loud, he offers a non-committal grunt. With no new insight to be had into Jude’s taste in movies, wall-staring remains the prevailing theory. There is plenty of stuff Near would rather not subject himself to watching. The real question becomes: can he stand watching anything less than having shoes thrown at him? Never was there a better time to find out! (Flashback: The way Isa used to crank up that weird local access channel and pretend it canceled out whatever Near was saying, asking, begging.)

The knock comes a few seconds after. A sharp, serious knuckle-rap. Onetwothree. This combined with an instinctive certainty that Jude will not offer to get off his ass to answer the door is what at last convinces Near to abandon his post and leave Jude’s shoes unguarded. Those he’ll probably get up for.

He’s within spitting distance of the door when Guthrie’s voice slices through the painted steel: “You in there?”

Near is immediately scrambled. He pauses. Glances back at Jude who is like an ill-conceived tattoo that he would rather not have to explain to anyone.

[Jude]

Jude selects the genre 'Action' as he's offered nothing but a grunt. Since Near fancies himself a hero who can take on the bad guys, Jude figures Near's tastes must follow, consciously or subconsciously. He considers 'The Matrix', but does not know if he wants Near framing himself as the Trinity to his Neo. He hovers on the cover image a while, and it begins to play a muted preview: Keanu Reeves with his fist extended like Superman, flying towards the camera.

No, no, that's all wrong. It gives him an idea though. He taps to the sidebar and begins to spell out, 'J-O-H-N'--

He looks up sharply at the door knock. Of course Jude thinks it's for him. How did they find me, he thinks, and slowly he starts to stand, eyes going towards the kitchen. He's scanning the counters for a knife block. Jude can't imagine going looking for a fight, but it's different if the fight comes to him. It's different if he's trapped in this foxhole. Then he will bite.

Instead, a man's voice penetrates the door -- a man's voice he doesn't know. Jude cocks an eyebrow. He meets Near's eyes. He detects apprehension like the faintest smell of smoke. A man's voice. A man Near doesn't want to answer the door for. Not the DoorDash guy.

Jude abruptly sits down. He stretches his legs out across the couch, picks up the remote, and deletes the letters he's typed. He begins again.

'R-O-M-A'--

Romantic comedies? Netflix offers.

Jude clicks on that, not meeting Near's gaze again.

[Near]

Nothing is exchanged through the momentary eye contact. No information at all. Jude’s eyes are the blank wall Near can’t stop imagining him watching for want of actual hobbies and interests. Nothing, and then he’s flopped back on the couch and fiddling with the remote again, defying reasonable predictions like a threat of clouds on the horizon that scatters before it becomes rain, and maybe there was something after all, Jude mind-vibing Near’s assumptions and deciding to buck them to just prove Near doesn’t know shit.

But Guthrie.

He wonders: could he get away with just standing still in pathetic opossumy silence until Guthrie decides no one’s home and fucks off? Immediately he feels bad about that – the fucks off part, which is meaner than it needs to be. He isn’t always mean. Proximity to Jude makes him not just mean but indiscriminately mean, apparently. Anyway pretending not to be home might be bad call: a small window hovers above the couch (one that is painting a glare across the television screen), and on the slim chance that Guthrie is feeling nosy enough to round the corner and peer in, the jig will be up and all the more bizarre for the subterfuge, necessitating two explanations stacked on top of each other instead of one.

It doesn’t need to be weird.

He lies to himself.

It’s already so, so weird. Weird but not bad. He isn’t doing anything wrong. Not like they’re in here fucking. They don’t even like each other. And he is not going to let Jude distort his life into one of those sitcoms that runs on hilarious misunderstandings that could have been avoided if people talked to each other. One of the movies he is (smugly?) scrolling through as he sprawls there uselessly as if he’s waiting for someone to paint his portrait. Dipshit in Repose.

“Hey,” he says when he opens the door, a smile of mild surprise fixed carefully to his face as he greets Guthrie, who is standing on the doorstep in his department store mannequin work clothes holding a Subway bag. “Sorry I canceled. Something kind of weird came up.” There, he has acknowledged the weirdness out loud, and Guthrie gives him A Look.

“Thought I’d bring dinner to you. If you were home. In case you didn’t have time before work.” In his voice is a thread of wariness. Near realizes that he has no idea if Guthrie is a jealous or distrustful person, because no situations have arisen between them that might provoke his jealousy or distrust. Well.

He shoves the door open a little wider, baring the state of his living room. Occupied. “So that’s Jude. He’s … an old friend. Jude, this is Guthrie.”

“Hey, Jude …” Ba-dum-tss.

[Jude]

Proximity to Near makes Jude stupid, helpless, tongue-tied, and petty. Grand aspirations come apart like bricks piled without mortar. Over and over Jude is plagued with irritated shock that he, one of two creatures who can defy the laws of physics, is given so little respect by this snobby trust fund baby. What Jude can do has always earned him admiration and adulation. He still doesn't know if Near is too stupid to understand his capacities or whether Near simply doesn't want to give him the satisfaction of any praise.

So it's a cheap shot, lounging on the couch like they have a relationship, which they decidedly do not. Near and Jude are pulling from the same media, the same tropes. Near is keep them on the road while Jude pulls on the steering wheel. Dipshit in Repose, all-American, still has his bomber jacket on.

Dipshit Jude has opened the 'Romantic Comedy' genre on Netflix, and with worrying speed he has picked the Adam Sandler classic of '50 First Dates'. It seems like something Near would not like, by which Jude can argue that Near does things he doesn't like for Jude. The taste of this cheap revenge is bitter in Jude's mouth. His palms itch and heat blooms across his chest, the rage that was aroused but left unsatisfied by his childish shoe-throws.

With Near, Jude's face has mannequin blankness, like he can't get it to do what he wants it to do because Near is not behaving according to Jude's almanac of how people should react to him. But now Jude puts on a face he has learned. He looks at Guthrie with friendly contempt, the way he looks at dogs. "Oh. Hello."

[Near]

Does Jude know the Beatles? Like The Beatles? Hate them for singing a song with his name in it decades before he was born? Trivia being an unofficial currency of goodwill in even the least rarefied of bars, Near keeps, among a tangled mass of myriad other useless knowledge, the fact that McCartney wrote it to make his son feel better after he left what’s her face for Yoko. Started out Jules, became Jude – saint of lost causes. A pretty sorry offering, really, even it’s a greater show of effort than Near ever got from Courtland for what he did to his family.

Near, the nickname he has thoroughly internalized but that Guthrie finds too embarrassing to use, comes from a song. It probably would have manifested spontaneously at some point, but Celine brought it about early. After years of kids belting “Near Farr, wherever you are” at him in the hallways of whichever elementary (middle?) school he was attending when Titanic came out, he can’t get past the first couple of notes now without a frothy feeling of animosity coming over him.

He peers back toward an unruffled Jude and his choice of viewing material, a movie that he will now have to pretend he hasn’t seen twice and enjoyed both times, then back to Guthrie, whose expression he reads as mostly quizzical but on the verge of tipping toward something else.

“Movie night?”

The question, probing, is clearly directed through the doorframe and toward Jude, but Near intercepts.

“We knew each other in school,” he says, leaning on a thought from earlier, neglecting to specify which school. When. “He was driving through and wanted to meet up.” Lying is so stupid, but at the moment he can see no way to evade details without sounding like an evasive asshole. He says it loudly enough to have no doubt that Jude can hear him. So help him he will murder the smug prick if he contradicts him.

“Oh. Come far, Jude?”

[Jude]

Jude knows The Beatles, likes the song well enough. Like Near he's had it sung at him in the course of his life, but his detachment from various human social currencies means that he's never had a strong reaction to it, thereby dehydrating any potential mockery. Sometimes he has filled in the second line, if he was stared at with enough desperate expectation. On occasion Juliet had hummed the tune to him in bed, stroking his face.

If only Jude knew the origin of Near's nickname. He would never stop humming that song.

Beneath his unruffled affect, Jude is poised like a vulture above Guthrie's nebulous and undefined interpretation. He presses 'Play', lets the first ten seconds of the opening credits elapse, then pauses with weighty expectation. He cranes his neck a little to look at Guthrie around Near, the way Guthrie is looking around Near to look at Jude. The difference is that Jude isn't actually looking, only making a show of looking.

The lie, when it comes, makes Jude utter a laugh that resembles a sneeze. It's just -- he knows he should stick to his lines, pick a character and play to it, and spite is strong encouragement to do both. But to Jude's ears the lie sounds so pathetic. What poor actors they both make. Middle schoolers and their Christmas plays are more convincing.

"I came up from San Francisco. I travel a lot." This is true. He's smiling as he says it, the smile leaking into his tone and warming it, the laugh of someone amused with their own joke. He leans back so that Near is blocking a clear view of him again, and he looks away, straight ahead, smirking in profile, Smug Dipshit #27.