Don’t Let Me Down

By Simon Jimenez

Chapter Four

“Dolph Howls”

*

Friday

It was all my fault that the pocket watch was dead, shattered glass surrounding its warped body like a pool of blood, its hands broken and clipped. Brody fumbled with it, not trying to fix it, just touching it, as if savoring the last moments of the watch’s life. But it was too late.

Time was broken.

3:00 am

The bedroom door opened and closed. I listened as Brody tiptoed across the floor, careful not to wake me. The bed tilted towards his side as he climbed in. He fell asleep almost immediately.

I stared at the digital clock shimmering green on the nightstand: Three in the morning. Brody was coming back from ‘work’ later and later each night.

Half awake, my hand drifted up and down the riveted scars on Brody’s back, wondering how long they’d been there, more importantly how they got there. He murmured in his sleep, and rolled over until we were face to face. A few inches above his left temple, I saw a pimple, ready to burst. I debated the odds of popping it while not waking him up angry.

I went back to sleep.

11:30 am

Mr. Rover stood in front of the class with a nervous looking girl. She had her hair tied back with chopsticks. I liked that.

“I’d like you all to welcome a new student to our photo family, Ms. Alice Stevens. Or is it Mrs.?” Mr. Rover’s marshmallow body burst out in wheezing laughter. “I’m just kidding. Of course you’re not married. Now let’s see, who isn’t already sharing an enlarger?” I raised my hand along with three others in the room, and of course the teacher looks right at me. “Ah, Mr. Ryan, I’m going to give you a present. You get to share your camera with this beautiful girl, free of charge!” He started laughing again, and dismissed the class to go off and do their work.

Alice waved at me as she walked forward. “Howdy. Ryan, is it?”

“Harbor,” I corrected. “Ryan’s my last name.”

She put out her hand with a gentle smirk. “My last name is Stevens. It’s nice to meet you, Ryan.”

3:00 pm

The mall’s incredible fluorescence always made me queasy, one of the many reasons I hated going there, but Gwyn needed help buying an anniversary present for her boyfriend, Jack, so I went anyway. We walked down the endless halls, stopping occasionally so she could window shop. When it was time to move on, I let her lead the way. She didn’t like me or anyone else pushing her wheelchair.

“If you were going to get something for Brody, what would you buy?” she asked out of the blue.

I stopped walking. “I... I don’t know.” I flipped through my muscle memory of all things Brody, and I still had no idea what he’d like as a gift. “Fuck me, I really don’t know.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Gwyn said. “I don’t think anyone would know what to get Brody.”   

We took a break at the center square, with plastic benches encircling an elaborate pentagon water fountain. Gwyn started talking about these girls at school she hated, but I was more interested in a woman standing near the fountain’s sprays, holding her very pregnant belly. A lilac printed dress hung over her shoulders and glided against the floor, as if she was floating. Her eyes kept moving through the crowds of people, her mouth slightly ajar, ready to call out a name.

Who was she looking for? Her husband? Her child? A lover, maybe?

“Harbor, are you even listening?”

I shook my head. Gwyn scoffed.

“Men.”

We spent another hour wandering around, until Gwyn decided on a pair of soccer cleats. As we left the mall, the pregnant woman I saw earlier was alone, gliding down the parking lot sidewalk. My eyes trailed her until she turned a corner and was gone. 

6:50 am

I slapped the radio in Brody’s truck when it started going fuzzy. The dial kept going from 17.8 to 27.6 in random order. Frustrated, I turned the radio off and faced my window, watching skyscrapers and countless pedestrians pass by at twenty miles an hour.

“We still on for the party tonight?” Brody asked, hopeful.

His track buddy, Greg Morgan, had invited him to a kegger, and Brody wanted me to go with him. Again. This was the third time this week Brody wanted to go partying. I wasn’t sure if my liver could take anymore of it, but I still felt guilty about what happened earlier that morning, so I said, “Yeah, we‘re still on.”

Brody leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.   

 12:00 pm

A crow pecked at scraps around the football field bleachers a few yards away. Its eyes were dark, darker than its black leather fur. I focused the camera just as the crow squawked mournfully. I readied the trigger.   

“Please, don’t move...” I muttered.

9:00 pm

“Will you stop worrying?” Brody said in response to my constant shifting in the passenger seat. “My friends won’t bite. You might actually like them, if you don’t act like a complete hermit.”

“Maybe,” I muttered, not really listening. 

“Trust me,” he said, “you’re going to have fun.”

We parked across the street from a small, one story suburban house with a good dozen cars squeezed onto its front lawn. The calm, starry night betrayed the constant ant farm movement from within the house. My stomach tied itself in a sailor’s knot at the sight. Brody, noticing my anxiety, slung his arm over my shoulder and walked me to the front door.

He rang the singsong bell. Gregory Morgan, a mess of white blonde hair, appeared from behind the door with a surprised smile.

“Dude, glad you could make it. Welcome to my humble abode.” Greg slapped Brody’s back as the two walked inside. Pot smoke wafted out of the street door in lazy clouds. I was still standing outside, alone, when Greg poked his head back out the door and nodded at me in vague recognition.

“Harbor, right?” he said with a furrowed brow. “You coming in?”

I darted in quickly without a word, much to his amusement. Squeezing through the masses of people with beer cups in hand, I made it to Brody’s side, who was pouring himself a drink from a keg tap with a Cheshire grin.

“You sure you should be drinking?” I said, staring at his overflowing red cup. “You did drive us here.”

He shrugged off my comment. “It’ll be fine. I’m only having a little.”

*

“I’m the fucking king of the world, bitches!” Brody screamed shirtless from the top of Greg’s dinner table. The people in the room raised their glasses and cheered. They chanted the words “Dance, dance”. Brody accepted the challenge.

He started with what vaguely resembled the Russian jig, with a hint of hip thrusting. Everyone laughed, which encouraged him to move more flamboyantly. He started to howl. “Harbor,” he yelled, looking right at me, “get the fuck up here!”

I shrunk into the crowd, watching from a distance.

Brody was still dancing, kicking his legs higher and farther out, until finally, he struck a large guy in the back of the head with his heel. The man was down in two seconds, and Brody jumped off the table to see if he was okay. The man got up, and shoved Brody away drunkenly.

“Get the fuck away from me,” he slurred. “Don’t touch me.”

Brody raised up his hands. “Whatever, man. You alright?”

People gathered around.

“Of course I’m alright,” the man spat back. He shoved Brody against his chest harder than before, knocking him against a chair. “Watch where you step, faggot.”

Brody smiled. Then he swung his fist.

11:55 am

Snap.

The crow flew away right as I took the picture. With no other subjects to film, I wandered around the school with the bulky camera dangling around my neck. When I returned to class and developed my negatives, half my roll was of a squirrel furiously banging an acorn against a knotted tree. Alice came by and gave her thumbs of approval, and then showed me her negatives.

“I think I messed up,” she said, dangling her empty roll of film.

“Oh, that sucks, man,” I said. “I don’t think the winch in the camera caught onto your film. You were shooting blanks.”

Alice shrugged with a smile. “Guess I’ll have to start from the beginning.”

6:30 am

My favorite part of breakfast was listening to the pouring of the cereal. When I was little, I’d wake up to the sound of my Dad’s cereal falling into a bowl, a light shower of dry clinks. Yeah, I hated the man, but for some reason, the sound still made me smile.

Brody’s milk smelt sour, but I used it anyway, never picky about what I ate. As I waited for my cereal to get soggy, Brody walked back into the kitchen, fully dressed in a black sweater and dirty jeans, opening and closing the same cabinets he scrounged through minutes ago.

“Are you looking for something?” I asked, even though the answer was obvious.

“Have you seen my keys?”

I shook my head. “You look in your coat pocket?”

“It’s not in my coat pocket, or my pants pocket, or anywhere. Can you help me look for it?”

“But, I’m eating.” I said in a way that suggested the cereal would explode if I walked away from it for a second. “I bet your keys are in your coat pocket. They always are.”

“For the last time,” he said, now in the living room, “my keys aren’t in my fucking coat. Forget the coat, and help me look for them before we’re late for class.” Then he muttered, “Goddamit, man.”

I emptied the last remains of cereal into the sink and searched Brody’s bedroom for the coveted car keys as he scoured under the couches. I opened the folding doors to his closet, and almost laughed at how many of my clothes were now here in his apartment. Ever since he started asking me to spend the night, almost every night, my wardrobe had slowly migrated from my bedroom to his.

I searched the pockets of all his sweaters and coats, pushing them aside once frisked. Halfway down the line, something caught my eye on the upper shelf of the closet; a small brown, ornate chest crammed underneath boxes and piles of letters. Curious, I slid the chest out of its resting place, and sneezed from all the dust that had gathered around it. I flipped up the small gold lock and lifted the cover. A golden light shimmered from inside.

Inside, squished in-between two dark velvet cushions, was a gold pocket watch the size of my palm, an intricate carving of a Chinese dragon spiraling around its face and rear. The thing easily weighed the same as a solid paperweight. I pressed in the small dial on the top of the watch, flipping open the face, revealing still-operating second, minute, and hour hands, clicking away to a circumference of roman numerals.

There was an inscription on the inside cover of the watch. It read:

For M. E. G.

We’ll Fight to the End

“Hey, Brody!” I called out, eyes still glued to the watch. “Come and see this.” When he didn’t answer, I headed for the living room to find him. One thing I forgot that day: Brody was wearing socks, which made his footsteps completely silent. I didn’t hear him walk into the bedroom as I was walking out.

The inevitable happened: we collided, head first, and I lost grip of the chain, sending the watch flying. I hit the floor back first, and heard something crack on the other side of the room, by the nightstand. Pain flickered up and down my spine as the world tumbled before my eyes.

I shook my head straight. Brody, still getting his bearings from the crash, rubbed his forehead with a laugh. “That hurt,” he said with a smile that soon transformed into a frown. “Hey, are you alright?”

Then he realized what I was gaping at.

10:22 pm

Blood ran rivers from Brody’s nose. Each cotton ball I pressed against his face became a hard red nugget in a matter of seconds. Greg’s bathroom trashcan was filled to the lip with bloody tissues and cotton balls. I switched to paper towels.

“Stop moving,” I chided, pressing my foot against his to keep it from fidgeting. “Hard to clean you up if you keep moving.”

“Shut up,” he said, still incredibly drunk. “I’ll do what I want.”

I rolled my eyes, knowing very well that Brody wasn’t the easiest drunk to deal with. “That guy really tore into you,” I muttered, holding a damp towel to his temple. “Still, you weren’t the one who ran away in the end.”

Brody laughed red in the face. “Did you see his face when I smacked his teeth? What a little bitch.”

“How you learned to fight like that, I’ll never know.” I got a fresh paper towel and held it under cold water. Just as I brought it to his forehead, Brody looked at me with red eyes, about to cry. “What is it?” I said. “What’s wrong?”

He sniffed. “Why did you leave me?”

My brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m so lonely,” he said, finally breaking down. He suddenly squeezed my body to his with enormous strength. His tears dampened my shirt. “Mom, I want to go home, I don’t like it here.” I could barely hear him his voice was so clouded by my chest and his tears. “I want- I want to... go...home...”

He fell asleep against me.

I prodded him. “Brody?”

Brody was a lot heavier than he looked, even with Greg helping me shoulder him through the house. Onlookers either wore faces of concern or amusement when we passed. A couple people even clapped, with someone cheering “Dude, Brody got wasted!” from across the living room.

Once through the front door, a cold, sobering wind fluttered against my face, causing my nose to start running.

“My car’s over there,” Greg said, nodding towards the small garage near the rear of the house.

Thirty minutes later, we were in the elevator to Brody’s apartment, propping him up with our shoulders, silent as each floor beeped by. The only time we made eye contact was once he left; a simple nod before he returned to his car.

I tiptoed across the bedroom floor, and crawled next to Brody’s sleeping carcass. I rested my head against his shoulder, and closed my eyes, listening to the rain outside, wondering what he was dreaming about, if anything. Do half-wolves even dream?

There were a lot of things Brody and I needed to talk about.

6:40 am

“Brody, I’m so sorry. I found that thing in the closet, and I just wanted to look at it, and I should’ve looked where I was going, and I-- I’m so sorry, really, I am. I can pay, pay to have it fixed, or if you want, have it--”

“No,” he said. He picked up a shard of glass and threw it across the room. “It’s fine. Can you get a broom?”

We swept up the mess in silence. Brody placed the body of the watch back in its chest and slid the chest back into its place in the closet. I emptied the last bits of glass into the garbage can underneath the kitchen sink. He found the car keys behind one of the couch cushions, so we put on our coats.

“Brody,” I said as I began to zip up, “I just want to say--”

“Forget it,” he said a little louder than he intended. He shut his eyes, and his voice dialed down to a cold whisper. “I’m fine.”

*

Saturday

Orange afternoon light scattered its way across Brody’s bedroom until it hit him in the face. He yawned, and opened his eyes the best he could under what was probably a massive hangover.

“Bwuh?” he said weakly.

I looked up from my book and mimicked his rumpled face. “Bwuh?”

He curled back under his covers with a grimace. “God, what time is it?”

“It’s two thirty-two in the afternoon, you drunk,” I answered. “How’s your head?”

I could see his head shake under the blanket. “Not good…. Can’t remember anything from last night…. Was the party any good?”

“It had its moments.”

Brody stayed silent for a bit, as if thinking something over. Before I could ask what about, he read my mind and told me. “I was just wondering, do you want to go out tonight?”

*

The city seen from cliff-top at night was a sight to admire. A web of lights strewn in a pseudo-circle across the land, busy reds and whites pulsating down the curving streets, while up above, a completely calm surface of moon, stars, and clouds, watching over the city in silence.

“What a view,” I whispered, sitting next to Brody on the hood of his truck. He nodded in agreement. We passed a tightly wrapped blunt between us, blowing steady smoke over the edge of the precipice. “Where’d you hear of this place?”

Brody took a hit before answering. “My mom used to bring me here. We’d bring Chinese takeout, look at constellations.”

“That sounds nice.” My stomach knotted as I wondered if I should ask what I was about to ask. I went for it anyway. “The initials on the pocket watch that I... I was wondering, were they your mother’s?”

“Miranda Elliot Gallagher.” He spoke her name with pride. “My uncle gave her that watch, before he left for the war.”

“You have an uncle?” I asked in surprise, trying not to feel even guiltier for breaking a beloved antique of his mother’s.

“I’ve never met him, but yeah, I have an uncle.” Brody said nonchalantly. “And if you’re going to ask me why I’ve never called him, it’s because I don’t know where he is.” He paused for a moment. “I don’t want to know.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m fine as I am.”

For a while, we smoked in silence, letting the lazy feeling of clouds and marshmallows well up in our minds. With each pass, I felt lighter, as if at any moment I could fly off the cliff and to the yellow moon. I rested my head against Brody’s shoulder and played with his hand.

Then I said, “I want to see your world.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not fine, Brody, and neither am I.” I searched the air for words, trying to find a way to articulate my jumbled thoughts into coherent sentences. “I want to know you. I want to know everything about you, because I’m afraid that if I don’t, then we’re going to drift apart. I don’t want to live like that, I don’t think I can. I want to know everything, because I love you too much to let you go.” I quickly took another hit. For a minute, he said nothing, just smiled at the words ‘I love you too much’. A blush crept up my cheeks.

“Are you sure you want to know?” he asked, staring right into my eyes.

“Yes.”

“Okay. I’ll tell you everything.”

*

I lay next to Brody in the back of his truck, naked under the thick comforter and the diamond stars. My hand fell against his shoulder, tracing the deep scars etched on his back, and I thought, this is my boyfriend.

This is Brody.