Before and Afterlives by Christopher Barzak Page B

But this is not true. A more accurate description is possible.
    He was like a book left behind by some weary traveler, in a country where no one knows how to read.
    Take my hand, I want to tell him. Even though I’m blind on my own, I can see your path clearly.
     
    Where are you going? Where have you been? These questions were our constant conversation. The first time we met, we were both at The Blue Note, one of the bars where the band I wrote songs for sometimes played. They still have an ongoing gig there, but I don’t stop very often. They leave messages, various members of Winterlong, the lead singer, the bass guitarist, the piano player, Harry, who always says they’re going downhill and need an injection of something new and different. “Give me a call, Marcus,” he says. “Let’s get together on something.”
    Neil was standing at the bar, in front of an empty stool, drinking from a pony-necked bottle. I sat three stools down. Finally, after the band took a break, he walked over, sat b eside me, and, without looking at me, said, “The songs are good, but they need a new singer.” I laughed involuntarily, almost spitting out a mouthful of beer.
    “Really?” I said, grinning.
    “Most definitely.”
    “And the songs? What makes them more deserving?”
    “They’re full of raw emotion. The lead singer doesn’t know how to get that across.”
    It was something I’d heard other people say about someone else’s music. Something you might read in a review, or hear on a college campus amongst earnest but not so humble st udents. But Neil was flattering. This quality is a necessary attractor. I was attracted, I cannot lie.
    We went home that night together, after the band stopped playing, after closing down the Blue Note, and when we woke in the morning, him lying on his stomach, me flat on my back, his arm flung over my chest, I told him that I was the song writer.
    “I knew that,” he said.
    “Why didn’t you tell me?”
    “Because you knew I knew. Really, don’t act so innocent.”
     
    Neil works irregularly, odd jobs, temp work when he’s desperate, and sometimes he’ll tend bar. He did university for a few years, but he quit a semester before graduating. “It wasn’t fun anymore,” he explained. He’d been a Psychology major, a Philosophy major, an English major, as well as dabbling in Anthropology until it became too concrete, too biological, for his tastes. He switched majors every few semesters, and would then travel through the previous departments again, a phantom of academia.
    “I’ve an insatiable mind,” he told me, after we’d been se eing each other regularly for several weeks.
    “I believe that,” I said. And I did believe it. I believed him as much as is possible when you’re beginning to know som eone. It’s a sweet period of discovery, and you can only take what the other person says as reality. Or not. Skepticism is possible. But then, why would you be there, listening, taking in another person, only to disbelieve them?
    “You’re a fool if you believe me, Marco,” he said.
    “I’ve been called worse.”
    “I’m sure,” he said. “But isn’t being called a fool somehow more hurtful?”
    “Hmm.” I thought for a moment. We were eating dinner at my apartment, drinking merlot and lapping up spaghetti. I wiped a napkin against my mouth, then looked at him and said, “It depends.”
    “On what?”
    “On who calls you a fool.”
    He grinned, then frowned quickly, looking down into his glass of wine.
    “What’s the matter?” I asked, concerned, ready to soothe him. I was very ready to do that then. I still want to do that sometimes, soothe him, but I refrain from doing so. I might expect something in return. I might think Neil letting me care for him means something.
    “Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “That’s the problem. Not hing is the matter. With me. There’s no me to have a matter about.”
    “That’s not true,” I said, swallowing the last