I Need to Know You

         The decision to move to Canada is honest-to-God the best one he's ever made, right up there next to pulling out of grad school and actually cutting his hair when he was seventeen. There was a moment where he calculated and 1800 miles seemed the best distance to be from everyone he used to know, and that landed him in British Columbia. He packed and lived in a one-bedroom apartment. He waited tables and was a library clerk and kind-of-sort-of had a fellowship at the college there, kind-of-sort-of. He jogged. He owned one cell phone and one television and that was enough, but John keeps calling him and that's too much.

         Robin's always listened to John. John's voice is a melodic one, kingly or some shit, and Robin takes the bits and pieces of it and lines the insides of his coats with them to keep warm in fall. John talks for hours about things he's doing, women and little bits of drugs and cardio-aerobic workouts and occasional huge-ish heaps of coursework, and all the while Robin stretches - it's nighttime and they're 1800 miles apart but Robin knows he's a phonecall between a date and a work schedule, maybe while John's driving, because that's how John is. When the other man asks about him Robin tells him he's doing well and John says, that's great, listen, why don't you come down here for a week, and Robin's bone-weary and he's answering yeah okay without really thinking about it and that's how he ends up in Las Vegas.

         It really isn't that bad.

         John lives in a nice place. It's the place he's always lived in but it's noteworthy, the kind of house which looks like all of the others when you're far enough out into construction zones. The walls are white and sturdy and stuccoed, adobe-kind-of, southwestern-kind-of, and John insists, "It's predecorated and prefabricated, that's the way they're doing it these days." Robin stays in a game room sleeping in the new age lighting while John calls all of their old friends to come meet them later for drinks and cards, dropping in to say, hey, it's really great to have you back, buddy, before walking out again to affix sushi and hookah to the kitchen counter.

robin doesn't know what it is
he can't put his finger on it
but

         it's an awkward dull thing, being home. you would think the walkways and street signs would be so inherently different and refreshing after abandoning them, something you can trace over with your eyes and remember it sepia-style, but it's not like that at all. robin drives the road to his mother's house on auto-pilot, and it's like stretching out old clothing or something. he doesn't know. his friends are the same as when he left them and they talk and move their hands in the same way as he's known them to. one of them is married and three of them are not but have on-and-off girlfriends; they tease sammy about being the married one and whipped and all that, especially john. john smiles and they all smile because he's the coolest one of them. robin's the one who defected but hey, it's all welcome back robin everywhere so he thinks it's probably okay to camp out in john's game room for a week just to see if he'd ever want to come back to this.

         on sunday they go to the strip. it's just bar-hopping, one to the next to the next; some of the guys know people and get discounts, some of them are regulars and some people recognize robin which is strange. he likes it, though. he grins hugely and bellies down shots and every inch of him is this alive-feeling thing like undersea animals, clean vodka excitement, sharp. he's so grateful. he looks at them under the billion flashing lights and thinks, how could i have left this? here, where i fit in so perfectly? they part so amicably, so drowsily, promising tomorrow will be even better and robin just collapses in the game room on the mattress on the floor without even thinking about anything, a luxury he guesses he hasn't had in a year.

         thursday night they bring the beer out to redrock but somehow the drinking's not the same when the desert is all planetary black around him. the fire's good and warm and everybody everywhere else can ignore it, this lonely human feeling, but he can't help but think parts of him are just being dragged out and taken off of him, sucked into the out-there, which is when he starts thinking about the floor of his apartment and a couple other things, spaced out, like sunrises and the place where he gets his coffee on wednesdays, after being surrounded by mountains of paper work for hours. but maybe he just isn't responding well to the alcohol.

         John's really kind of bright, like the sun. Slight hangovers and six-o-clock in the morning make it worse. He can't look at him directly. When Robin's sitting there with them John says things like, Rob, y'sure you're doing okay up there in timbuktu? and when Robin's about to leave him at the airport John says things like, hey, Rob, sorry we couldn't do more stuff with everybody. Only so many hours in the day, you know. I hope that's okay? And Robin knows and it's okay and he's okay but the plane ride back is interminable, vomit-like recycled air, and yeah he lives 1800 miles to the north and he's pretty fucking grateful or something. He doesn't know. He gets back to his apartment and lays on the floor for five hours just staring at the ceiling and listening to his next door neighbors wash the dishes and use the disposal, and he thinks tomorrow he'll probably go to the laundromat but maybe for right now he'll just call John back and thank him for letting him stay, just in case he ever wants to again.


he's eye-ring grim-reaper tired but he's got his phone voice ready when it's ringing.
is john there?
it's this girl saying, no, you have the wrong number, with little titters of laughter and questioning conversation in the background, but it's warm and he huddles to it.
where are you? is what he says. and she tells him.
the misdial is the key here
it's like the actual vacation, a green kind of thing - a recycling kind of thing -
it's just enough. he tells her she has a nice voice
- she says thank you - surprised -
- cordial -
and he hangs up and never calls her again. sometimes god saves him.
he doesn't know. he wants to live in trees
or a hole in the desert, curled up in the sand night like a fox.
robin's quiet.
his voice always betrays him somehow