Page 56 of Two Marlboros

He let out a giggle that was far too loud for that hour, but as soon as he fell silent, we returned to being enveloped by the incessant song of the cicadas. I couldn’t think that a moment earlier the idea of getting intimate with him had flashed through my mind. I opened my lips in a circle and let small rings of smoke leave them, carried away by that light breeze that made them blend in with everything else.

“Who got you started?”

“Harvey.”

A not-too-stunned groan from him prevented me from continuing the sentence.

“Ah, Harvey. Your cross and delight.”

At that moment I thought I might have said the same thing to him. He loathed Harvey, perhaps he was annoyed even by the name itself, but I didn’t understand why he had been so hard on him.

“You don’t like him, do you?” I asked.

“You, like everyone else, need someone to love you, not someone to delude you into thinking you’re important to him by sticking a cigarette in your mouth. That’s mean.”

“That was many years ago. It’s water under the bridge now.”

He turned his back to me, then laid his gaze toward the horizon, toward the first light of dawn peeping through. The city was preparing for its awakening, with that play of light and shadow, of wakefulness and sleep.

“There are other ways to connect with people, too, Nathan.”

I wasn’t sure I understood the meaning of that sentence. I knew how to bond with someone; it wasn’t like I was a 13-year-old boy. Yet I realized that there was a truth behind those words that I couldn’t grasp, but I didn’t want to explain.

Talking about bonding reminded me of Ryan and his so distant and cold attitude toward me, which hurt me every time.

“What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking...,” and my mind went back to those snorts on the wall, to Ryan rubbing his nose in it, “...about a friend.”

“An important friend?”

The headlights of a passing car fleetingly illuminated the building in front of us, to leave us again plunged into darkness. By then the sound of the engine was far away.

I didn’t feel like revealing to Alan who I was talking about, perhaps precisely because he had known him and, in all likelihood, had also noticed on his own that there was something strange about Ryan.

“He used to help me study a lot, we had decided together to take the Plastics seminar I’m taking. Then I don’t know what happened, he went on vacation and he was never the same. We hardly talk to each other anymore.”

“I’m sorry, really.”

I felt anger mounting in my chest, but it was quickly dismantled by a surge of sadness, perhaps because I had the knowledge that nothing would ever be the same again. Ryan now had a constant presence in his life that he would not easily get rid of, and it was eating him away in small bites, making him more and more dissimilar to the boy I had known.

“I wish I knew who did this to him. I’ll never find out, I guess.”

I sank into my deepest thoughts, searching for a way to confront Ryan and help him. I thought back to what I had seen, to the look in his eyes.

And there my heart stopped.

His eyes.

Green like mine, but clearer and icier, I had told the police.

That look, that hesitation when we had collided.

My heart began to burst.

Fuck, Ryan.

He had such peculiar eyes, too peculiar to not the ones on the thief’s face.

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