Page 178 of Two Marlboros

He waited a moment and took a deep breath. “I think Harvey is not just connected to the cell phone.”

“Meaning?”

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a matter of seconds, so much so that I thought the line had gone dead. But then he sighed, and sighed again, and I knew it was something big.

“Can you swear to me that right now you’re being a friend and not a cop?”

I tried in a second to put the pieces together, but I couldn’t. “I swear to you.”

“And you really care about me?”

“Really.”

I frowned, curious but also puzzled about what he was about to tell me.

“That’s it...” and his breaths became gradually louder and more frequent. “...Fuck.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

The sound of his breaths quieted little by little, and I longed even more to hold him in my arms, maybe snuggle him on the bed, caress him....

“No,” he quickly replied, interfering with my imagination, “I’ll try again.”

“Alright.”

He gave a cough, and I heard him take a deep breath. “So, as you know the last time I saw Harvey was a month or so ago,” he sputtered in one breath, his voice trembling in places. “It’s not like we had sex,” and hearing that word in the same sentence with him and Harvey I felt a gasp, “let’s just say he had fun playing with me, like he always does.”

“Okay,” I replied, even though it wasn’t ok at all.

“That’s it, he...” he continued with his voice shaking, then pulled up with his nose and exhaled. “At one point to offend me he called me a certain name. The same as the six guys who attacked us.”

“Hmm.”

“You don’t need to be reminded what they called me, do you? Tell me you don’t need to.”

He pulled up with his nose again, but he wasn’t crying. Not yet, at least.

“No need, don’t worry.”

And it really didn’t help because I remembered it very well. I had several freeze-images of that evening printed in my mind.

“I mean, I know that maybe it’s not such a strange word and that anyone could have said it to me,” he continued, his voice gradually regaining confidence. “It was shortly after I dropped him off, though, and I thought the two events were connected.”

When Ash and I had gone to ask him a few questions about the attack, he had not mentioned this incident, and in fact had brought up Ryan. I didn’t consider this an entirely strange choice, however, both because it may have occurred to him later and because it went to some strings he most likely didn’t want to uncover with Ash.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, with a certain urgency in his voice.

“I’m trying to figure out if and how this information might fit in with everything else,” I replied, with the first sentence that had come to mind. It was not untrue, but my thoughts had made me focus more on the hurt expression I had seen on him immediately after the attack. At least that look found an explanation, and the desire to hug him tightly, as if to protect him, grew in me with a power rather unheard of for the person I had been in those months.

“Right,” he chuckled, perhaps from embarrassment. “I should have guessed that. Thank you for listening to me. I didn’t think I would be able to talk about it.”

“I guess. And actually, since that day, I’ve often wondered if you were okay.”

On the other end of the phone, I could only hear him breathing, but he said nothing. Perhaps I had made him uncomfortable.

“However,” I continued, “if I get Harvey in my hands, know that I may not be accountable for my actions.”

He laughed, and I realized that I had spoken in the grip of that protective instinct that I did not know where it came from. In my mind’s eye I saw Nathan and Harvey, naked on the bed, Harvey playing with his body and me pummeling him until he decided to leave.

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