The Reaches

[Near]

What he was getting at was that he had practice in the steps of this dance.  Between ornery drunks and paranoid vets and suspicious lovers and jittery late-night muggers, he had, in fact, been threatened from across a bar before -- on enough distinct occasions that he would have been hard-pressed to pin a number to them because the less stand-out confrontations got jumbled up in the timeline.  So, to some extent, his response to the turn of events was muscle memory: stay calm, don’t antagonize, give them what they want, strike back only if you’re positive you have the upper hand.  Reflex with an edge of nihilism, since one of the orders was for him to be quiet.  But it was harder to talk someone out of doing something stupid without talking.

The impression that Jude wasn’t really out to slash throats (he would have just done it, not used the weapon to shore up demands -- demands intimated a goal other than bloodshed) proved accurate, as Near made it through his response without having to dodge the business end of the bottle.  Still in one piece, he thought he might be able to get a handle on things, right up until the scene turned on its head and the kid sliced himself instead.  Something about meaning crossed Near’s mind: the display held that he didn’t know how to interpret.  But he had been there before, too.  Sometimes you didn’t need to know why, what mattered was bearing witness.  And if it ended in the kid offing himself to prove some kind of point … well, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

Except there was no bridge.

Something else happened.  A noise, a moment of death.  An abstraction.  The kid hit rewind.

Shit, he was drunker than he thought.

No … but it was clear as soon as it was over how it would be easier to decide that what had happened was an exaggeration of too much wine than to try to file it into the stacks of reality.  So: sleight of hand.  Trick of the light.  A quarter pulled from behind a kid’s ear.  Was he supposed to be impressed by the show?  Scared?  He was both, probably, but he chose just then to be neither, even though, with the bottle in front him, what he wanted to do from the bottom of his heart was pick it up and drop it on the floor, allow it to return to its prior shattered state like a mercy killing.  He didn't.  No good escalating.

Mention of his father muffled the dissonance, made it easier to hold.  Of course this had something to do with his father.  What didn't lately?  Ever?

“Are we playing Courtland trivia?”  Defiant stare at the illusionist.  The question, too, could have been combative, but he tamed his delivery into something careful, weighed down by a hint of exhaustion at the topic.  “Here’s one: once, My Father broke my mother’s eye socket when he threw an illustrated first edition of Constantinople and The Scenery of The Seven Churches of Asia Minor at her head.  And the last time we were here he raped my au pair.  Whatever he knew, I don’t want any.  Thanks.”

[Jude]

What would you do, if, as quick as a flash, reality as you knew it cleaved apart, revealing a bloody mess of muscle and tendon? What if the air opened up like a cut hand, and there was something behind it, writhing, screaming, trying to reach through to touch you? Would you want to look at it, touch it? Would you want to go to it? Or would you turn around, flatten your hands over your ears, and march into the first available building or vehicle? How superfluous, how unnecessary, to believe everything you saw with your own eyes. What was the point of cognition and discernment, if one could not choose one's own reality? How pathetic, to be only a passive receiver of the great unknown, and not the conqueror of it, either through explanation or flat-out rejection.

He listened with that same humble patience, the expression identical to when Near had explained gin to him. Jude had not known Courtland the way Near had, had not been his actual child. Whatever filial loyalty he felt towards the dead man paled in comparison to Near's passions. It was good and right that Jude cede to Near's experiences and opinions. It was just. He imagined the incidents Near spoke of, and his mind wandered through the rooms in smoky tendrils. Here, in the reading room, Courtland hefted that heavy volume. There, in the study, he beckoned the au pair with two fingers, his robe artfully arranged across his lap. He saw these things like he saw the winery down below, when, one night, the bottles had been moved aside, chairs had been arranged in a circle, and Jude had sat down with his sister, and looked up at Courtland Farr, and learned who he was.

"Alright. That's your choice." There was no fighting it. Near could only know what he was capable of knowing, and he was only capable of knowing what he wanted to know. Jude emerged from the other side of the bar, examining his oozing palm, and rounded Near like the rock of Gibraltar. "I'll wait until the rain stops, then I'll go." Tomorrow, this could all be a bad dream. Just a bad dream, on a dark and stormy night, with a mysterious stranger, and a bottle where blood was pressed into the glass.

[Near]

Your choice, said the person who had, minutes ago, obliterated any impression of this exercise being voluntary by means of shattered glass approaching a too-close acquaintanceship with Near’s jugular. So, while some relief did spring from the backing down, it was only the physical kind, an all-at-once unclenching of capillaries that left his ears ringing from his own heartbeat; his lungs noticing that they had been starving for air. Deeper layers of tension the whole inexplicable series of events had caused remained unaffected and even exacerbated by Jude’s change in attitude, which was too abrupt to feel trustworthy. Why go to the trouble of that degree of violence and then shrug off the audience’s willful rejection of the show? It didn’t make sense.

None of it made any sense, least of all whatever it was he had just declared he wanted nothing to do with. That wasn’t posturing. He had made the decision long before tonight, not long after he had grown into a genuine appreciation of his father’s behavior, that he would make every effort to ensure the lives of Courtland Farr, Jr. and Courtland Farr, III contained as few correlations as possible. Thus perennially broke, itinerant, even-tempered Near, who chose methods like grand theft canine to express discontent, instead of assault. (Noted in passing: the dog was gone.) If the rending of reality that he had just been forced to suffer through was a Courtland interest, he was philosophically conditioned to distance himself -- which did nothing to prevent the less principled parts of him from reeling in mingled shock and incredulity over the display.

He hated the idea of granting Jude, whose status had shifted from ‘curiosity’ to ‘assailant,’ the satisfaction of his interest, but he knew himself well enough to realize that letting it go at that would end in him hating himself more once the dust had settled.

“What the fuck, kid?” To all of it: to the intrusion, to the lack of explanation, to the threat on his life, to that thing.

[Jude]

The question being posed was involuntary - it had to be asked. On the other hand, the answer itself was entirely voluntary. The trick with the bottle was simply a way to shake Near from his complacence, and, very briefly, his denial. Denial was like the surface of a calm lake: apt to resume, once no longer disturbed. Why go to the trouble to ask? Because it was an important question. Jude had come all the way here to ask it. Now, it had been asked. Now, it had all been done.

(What had the question been, anyway?)

There was no forcing Near to do the things that Jude needed him to do. He could not be forced to believe; he could not be forced to assist. Well, maybe for a little while, he could - but things just didn't work like that, not for Jude, not for his particular unpleasant situation. Had Near's own will been secondary, there would never have been a conversation on the lawn, no half-hearted scheme to lure him to the bar. Jude would have done some other mind-numbing magic trick and been done with it. As it was, Jude had a headache, and the only mind he wanted to numb was his own.

"You said you didn't want to know." Jude stopped partway to the door and rubbed his face with his whole, uncut hand. He finally looked somewhat more human, his cool, aloof expression melting with the heat of his throbbing temples. So Courtland was a jackass and Near wanted to confine his knowledge to craft liquors - fine, fine. Jude's other hand was still bleeding. Red ran down his fingertips as he let his hand dangle. He figured he'd grab the towel from the other room, retrieve his backpack, and go hide in some dark corner until morning. Unless his luck was exceptionally poor, the family wouldn't have found him by then.

Some people, when rejected, clung to hope in the face of it. Jude was no such optimist.

[Near]

“I don’t.”

A blush of vehemence infused the confirmation -- not just because the answer was true to the point that he was upset with himself for caving to the base compulsion to ask; but because the kid’s decision to respond with evasiveness now, after putting on a whole damn show, after compelling cooperation from his audience of one, verged on infuriating.  If he didn't want to explain, what had it all been about?  But that you said you ... felt like nothing as much as a taunt, as if he didn’t understand the overlap between not wanting and needing, and Near was wary of the feeling it stirred up, an outward-pointing anger that seeped into sinew.  And he was wary of Jude, too: of the possibility of provoking another scene by saying the wrong thing or using the wrong tone to say the right thing.

All his sense of foreboding, all indignation at how his attempt at hospitality had backfired couldn’t negate a pang of empathy at the sight of the blood tracing its way down Jude’s hand, an inkblack trail in the murky light.  Damn it.  He took a few steps backward, not wanting to turn his back, yanked one of the dust covers from a cluster of chairs, and lobbed it underhand in Jude’s direction with a muttered, “Jesus.  Here.”

[Jude]

To explain the entirety of the truth to Near was equivalent to wounding him, and whether that wound was surgical or a mangling depended on Near's own receptivity. Jude assessed the present injury to be superficial; he'd given Near a shove, and Near had fallen and scraped his knee. No broken bones, no severed arteries. The only one bleeding here was Jude. There was no taunt in Jude's face or in his tone - just tiredness, both from the magic itself and from the pretense leading to it. What was a need? When was its necessity genuine, and when was it an irrational craving? Was there anything rational about this entire situation?

He caught the dust cover with his good hand and stared at it, initially not sure what it was for. He started to say, No, I don't want to ruin it, but reconsidered that maybe Near didn't want him bleeding all over the floor. He wrapped one edge around his palm, but the remainder of the dust cover hung and dragged on the floor, giving Jude the look of a sleepy child with his blanket, wanting to be put back to bed after a bad dream.

"Then don't," he said simply. "It's bad enough with people who do want to know. And it's a long story," he added, as an afterthought, guessing that the promise of boredom would help mollify Near. Why be curious now? Pride? Fear of missing out? Jude didn't move from his spot. He was suddenly anxious that, if he turned, Near would rush up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder in some misguided gesture of camaraderie, or he'd hit Jude over the head with the same bloody bottle, or some other wild, unpredictable move outside of Jude's narrow tolerance. Jude was left standing in the rubble of his own destruction, alone for the first time with the aftermath, and he was realizing how little he'd ever had to think about these things. Just the look on Near's face was oppressive.

[Near]

Captured dust billowed at the cloth's disturbance.  The resulting cloud sparked against shreds of moonlight as it drifted through the center of the standoff, both men unwilling to back down, Near not able to figure a solid why for either side.

“A long story?” he echoed, his incredulity measured but audible within a still carefully-moderated tone.  “You keep saying there’s a long story, some long conversation, but I’m the only one who’s talking.  All you’ve done is elbow your way in here and threaten to cut my throat.”  It might have been an ill-advised move to remind the kid of his homicidal aspirations, but there was something bolstering in the lost, weary look that had settled across his features as the dust settled across the parquet.  Hell if he was going to get the upper hand again: he’d only gotten away with it the first time because it had been unexpected.  Now expectations were myriad.

“So you’re going to fuck off because, what, I didn’t crack up at your trick?”  This while a suspicion endured that he might, in fact, be cracking up.  Sort of.  Quietly.  Background cracking.  Because he could tell himself with an internal voice practiced in the art of denial that it had been smoke-and-mirror bullshit, that daydrinking had inflated his sense of evening significance; and he could reshape each loop of the playback continuing in his head into something more consistent with reality; but it wasn’t as if he could just stop knowing that the unvarnished version had happened.  

“I told you, if Courtland had a thing for special effects, whatever that was, I don’t.  Here’s what I do want to know: Why.  Are.  You.  Here?”  Not upset, just slow, emphatic.  He had been accused, more than once, of pretending at the whole unflappable Near thing; of wearing composure like a costume.  And maybe it was true, and maybe it made donning an extra layer now less of a challenge than it should have been.

[Jude]

Jude was not trained to handle Near's questions, or his angst. During these periods of adjustment, Jude and his sister would be shuffled off to some other room, their performance complete, and their handlers would shield them from the audience's turmoil. Now there were all these questions, questions that Near posed as small and simple, but whose answers were large and complicated and, worst of all, ugly. "I did not threaten to cut your throat," he argued, now openly exasperated. "I told you not to move." Which was only so that Near would not try to run away, so that he would pay attention.

He flinched at Near's accusation: it was true. What had Jude wanted? Breathless humility, admiration, bubbly curiosity? Something other than the wrath he was faced with, this poisonous need to know blended with bitterness at the need itself. Jude was trying to fuck off because, yes, he hadn't gotten the answer he was looking for, and like a child who would rather ask the other parent than plead with the original miser, he was trying to slither away into more generous arms. There was something additionally wounding in their closeness in age, in how they were not so far apart, and here Near was, chiding him.

"I came to ask you for help," he finally admitted, dropping his gaze from Near's face to his feet, and then, after further consideration, settling somewhere in the middle, at his chest. He almost went on to say, But you don't seem particularly helpful,, but when he imagined the sound of his own voice, and the sound of his words, they were too pathetic to tolerate. "And you wouldn't understand what I'm asking of you unless I -- showed you something. So I did, and you hate it, and that's fine, just--" Just what? This was terrible.

"You don't believe in magic, and you don't want to." There it was, one of the words the family had virtually banned, had aimed to avoid using at all costs: 'magic'. Hokey-sounding, they told Jude, flashy, unscientific pablum. But science past a certain point became undiscernable from magic, and Jude, who was scrambling for an explanation, broke the rules. Magic. All magic, and no tricks.

[Near]

Not all people, but most, had tells when they started talking crazy shit -- the government bugging their cornflakes or their eleven year-old daughter seducing their man.  Even when they believed, absolutely believed what they were saying, there was a shift in tone, a quirk of an eyebrow, that suggested a more rational part of them, somewhere, knew better and was rebelling as best it could.  Near wasn’t getting that with Jude.  He wasn’t raving.  Not exactly.  He didn’t seem strung out, either, just awkward.  What he recalled more than anything else was one of those hypersensitive geeks from school, the ones who expounded to anyone who would listen on how The Lord of the Rings or whatever was the greatest of mankind’s achievements and then got breathless and upset when their audience didn’t agree.  You’re just not smart enough to get it.  And it would have been easy enough to shrug the whole thing off as a tantrum if not for the unavoidable reality of the demonstration Near was now trying not to reflect on too carefully.  However disjointed their interaction had been so far, there was a lot to be said for the show first, talk later strategy.

You just don’t believe in magic and you don’t want to, the kid sulked.  So he couldn’t take assumptions, but he could dish them out.  “How do you know what it is I really want?” rippled through Near’s memory, because, really, how the hell could he know what Near believed when he hadn’t bothered to ask, and who the hell didn’t want to believe in magic, but it lacked the exact structure it required to repeat it effectively and it was petty, anyway.  He didn’t want to be petty.

“So.  Ask.”

The words sounded harsher on his tongue than they had in his head.  A challenge.  A demand.  But they felt right, too, and he didn’t try to soften anything after.

[Jude]

Belief was an aspect of faith, and faith was a leap between the seen and the unseen, the known and the imagined. Jude did not believe in very many things, but he knew things, with the same foot-shuffling self-consciousness of the aforementioned high school nerd. He had never been forced to account for someone who didn't believe him. Since the day he came into the world, other people handled the logistics. What was Near, if not a very tangled pile of logistics?

"I told you," he said, his irritation not yet dissipating, "I've never had to talk about this. Someone else always did it for me." There was something of a tantrum blended into this, a child's helplessness at the unfair complexity of the world and human emotions. For a moment, doubt crept in - perhaps this was why the family wanted to see the end of this world. He shook it off. Jude finally took the time to take a deep breath, and with it, he unwound the dust sheet from his hand. The bleeding had stopped.

He was tired now, but not from the exertion of his show. He was preemptively tired, tired because he felt like a parrot in a cage, whereas before, his cage had been large and decorated enough to seem like a jungle. "I'll ask you again. Have you ever had a dream so real, that when you woke up, you weren't sure you were awake?" He unfolded the dust sheet in his hands, opening it until the long stain of his blood was visible. "But a bad dream. A really bad dream. And when you realized you were awake, you were grateful." Curiously, when he got to talking - as long as he didn't look at Near - Jude felt more relaxed. He relaxed into his own certainty, the soft bed of terrible truth. Jude had never dreamed.