The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

any one of us. Greg left earlier alone, and Mike and Jessica had already headed out. I think they took a cab. Leon, you, me, and Carmen all got in first. That’s it. We all live north of that place. It was raining. Probably we all would have taken that subway line. And the email from his mother. That hit me. Harder than . . . than I would have thought. Did you respond to it?”

“No. I didn’t know what to say.”

“Me neither. I’ve been spooked, and sad, unbelieving, everything. And now guilty.”

“Do you remember what happened after the cab ride?”

“Actually I don’t. I pretty much remember saying goodbye to Atif and getting into the car with you and Carmen. Didn’t you pee in an alley?”

“Yes. Here’s a question: how is it possible that neither you, nor Carmen, nor I, remember anything beyond getting in the cab?”

“We drank a lot,” Alex says, shaking his head. “Which probably was the reason why Atif . . .”

“Hey, Atif was the one ordering all those drinks anyways. We did shots but he participated in them of his own free will.”

“So you don’t feel responsible.”

“I feel responsible in that his death was counterfactually dependent on us but that’s irrelevant for freak accidents. There’s no mens rea.”

“That’s really how you feel?”

“Sure. Back to the memory thing. Have you talked to Leon?”

“Apparently he remembers leaving but basically nothing afterward until his wife was yelling at him the next morning.”

“Leon’s married?”

“So when other people talk, what is it that you hear?”

“Did he get married today?”

“Ha. Alright, despite how totally un-depressing this conversation has been, I’ve gotta run to a meeting.”

But Alex never gets to the meeting. Rather he ends up lying on a couch in one of the break rooms, staring at the ceiling. He’s back into the cycle of mind he’s been trapped in since he heard, like some crucial border had been staved in between loss and death, death and loss . . .

Three years ago, when Alex was still in the middle of getting his PhD at Caltech under Christof Koch, Alex had taken dance classes in LA at a place called Millennium Dance, where he had ended up in class with a young agile instructor with a mop of crow-black hair named Jason. After some flirting Jason had invited Alex out to West Hollywood that Saturday night to this club called The Abbey, which Alex had never been to but Jason definitely had, because as soon as they were in and had done some shots (free because all the bartenders knew Jason), Jason was immediately up on the poles, up on the bar, up on basically everything, and Alex had felt like he was being carried along by the strong current of a river, the white rapids of music and bodies and exposed flesh and Jason, ahead of him always, smiling and beckoning, swaying to the rhythm as one hand reached back and dragged Alex through the crowd, and Alex, nervous, amazed, excited, seduced, following behind, at first unsure but then, later, it became all marmalade make-outs and fog-machine gropings, Jason pressing him against the wall, pinning his arms above his head. Then the rush of Jason dragging him out into the night streets to find a little spot in the shadows up against a brick wall, which Alex had been shoved against, breathing hard. And Jason had smiled at him and then kissed downward, Alex laughing out loud at what was happening, looking around furtively, thinking about how ridiculous it would be if they were caught, and then he wasn’t thinking anymore but was looking up between the buildings to the breaking black liquid expanse of the universe with its magnetic fields and neutron stars and solar nurseries all pouring like radio down on him now, his hands feeling for purchase against the pebbly surface of the brick behind him as Jason undid his belt and sucked him off as the world spun and the galaxy rotated, wheels within wheels all the way down to a tongue circling.

Four months later they had moved in together because Jason needed a place and Alex’s apartment was subsidized by Caltech. Jason had just begun to get everything together to apply to graduate schools to study dance professionally, but at the time he merely taught a few times a week or moonlighted as a dancer at various clubs as he completed his on-again, off-again undergraduate degree at UCLA. Neither Jason nor Alex had ever actually lived with someone they were in a relationship with before, nor even really had a relationship of any seriousness. At first it was like they didn’t know what to do with each other in the small rooms: they listened to their respective music with headphones on, they were very careful and calculating about using the toilet only when the other was out of the apartment, and for a while Jason didn’t let on how much he actually smoked pot (which turned out to be a thrice daily habit). But soon enough everything began to blend—for instance the pot habit quickly became a shared ritual of morning, after work, and deep at night under the blue glow of two open laptops before they had sex. In a fast flowering, they began to enjoy the humorous freedom of living together. Near continuous nudity became the norm. Nude smoking a bowl, nude cooking, nude eating, nude movies, nude toast in the morning, nude watering of the plants. There was even nude painting, laying out the plastic sheets everywhere, shopping together and looking at color swatches, then giving their bedroom an undercoat of white, which culminated in both of them running after each other with paintbrush splotches on their butt cheeks, backs and legs, streaks on their faces, getting paint everywhere around the room, Jason laughing and defending himself with two paintbrushes until Alex had taken him down with a Judo throw, then squirmed on top, madly kissing with lips tribal white. Alex loved that