Listening to Dust (6 page)

He led Dustin into the flat slowly, making sure that their eyes never left one another; that their touch was never more than the weight of a feather. Dustin became pliable in his hands, tender; the faintest whiff of innocence as Stephen led him to the bedroom and moved around his body with his mouth and his hands and his penis.
 

He did not let Dustin go even for a second. He didn’t make love to Dustin, he stepped into him; reached down and caressed that lost, untouchable part of his own empty being, which he saw so plainly visible in Dustin, and gave it to him as an offering.
 

He thought he recognized the ache in Dustin’s eyes; thought he felt it as he moved across Dustin’s body. But he had mistaken that taste and texture as something outside himself, and instead felt the reflection of his own desire. He did not know a hunger like Dustin’s.
 

He had known desperate loneliness in his thirty-six years; known the torments of a cramped heart; known the sharp bite of solitude. But this was different, deeper and much more complex. Had he looked beyond Dustin’s passive acceptance; past his greedy taking, he would have noticed that there was something that Dustin held back, something he did not allow Stephen to see. It was that same something that Stephen sensed under the confines of their skin as they moved; something dark and secret and chilling. Something flavored and spicy that tantalized him without respite.
 

Dustin said nothing when Stephen began moving across his body. He was silent the entire night and only stopped Stephen’s hands once when he tried to remove his t-shirt. He absorbed every grace Stephen laid upon his body; shivered and moved with Stephen as if they had been lovers for decades instead of mere minutes. He was still drunk, but his passion burned; burned like a white hot sun that sucked Stephen into a realm of ardor which he did not know existed.
 

Stephen found Dustin’s sober face staring at him in the morning; a face frozen by fear, a face whose eyes were electrified with anger and rage and shame.
 

Stephen understood too well that passion wasn’t love; he had learned long ago that it was simply a paper flower among damp gravestones. But Dustin hammered him with a flurry of accusations about feeling molested and abused; he pulled Stephen’s tenderness out and wove it into a noose to be used to hang them both with in his own haunted guilt.
 

He crushed Stephen under that weight; broke him with vile accusations that tore through his chest and made him slip on the blood of his own heart.
 

That was the face that Stephen would watch for; the face he was worried about each time they came together afterward.
 

Chapter 10

The Diner
 

Robbie looked at Stephen silently. Blinked once, twice, and then... “He liked balloons,” Robbie said. “Always did. Said they were free to go wherever they wanted to and only had to ride the wind to get there.”
 

“The wind isn’t always kind,” Stephen answered him sharply, much harsher than he’d meant to.
 

“Mmm, ‘spect he knew that too,” Robbie replied. “He weren’t no fool. Well, in most ways anyway.”
 

“I... I’m sorry, Robbie. I didn’t mean to bark at you like that,” Stephen told him.
 

“Don’t expect you did,” Robbie said. “Most folks don’t never mean what comes out of their mouth in hurtin’ times. It’s the loving times that really speak the truth.”
 

Stephen thought the opposite to be true, but he said nothing. All the hurting times he had ever been through had always revolved around one truth or another, but it was usually one that had never been voiced and thereby caused the pain, intentional or otherwise. Or was it a fear of some truth that caused it? He wasn’t sure and it wasn’t really the time to be considering it.
 

Robbie looked at him and smirked as Stephen raised his eyebrows in inquiry.
 

“Dustin didn’t believe me either, at first,” he chuckled. “For all the learning you smart folks got you sure do make things complicated.” He laughed a little more and shook his head.
 

Dustin had that same mannerism, and watching it on Robbie made Stephen want to retreat into himself a little further until he could find a temporary sanctuary from all his immediate memories. Of all the dread he had dreamed up on his flight over here, Dustin’s death had never been among the possibilities.
 

“You live in France now?” Robbie shot out at him.
 

“Yes, but how did you..?”
 

“...the letters,” they said together.
 

“Jinx!” Robbie called out. “Can’t say nothing ‘till I say your name,” he added with a smirk and a bob of his head. “I used to get Dusty on this all the time,” he said with a childish clap of his hands.
 

His face got suddenly somber as he looked at Stephen. “Don’t mind me none. I get to foolishness now and again. Dusty said I was made like this to help people pull the black from their heart. He said that’s why God reached down and touched me like he did, to make the world a better place.”
 

Stephen reached his hand up and made a twisting motion in front of his face, locking his lips closed, and Robbie’s face broke into a wide grin.
 

“He really did say that. I wasn’t trying to get you to lose or nothing. You think he was right?” Robbie asked, his brow tinged with seriousness.
 

Stephen nodded and then waved a finger back and forth.
 

Robbie grinned again. “You’re pretty good; Dusty would’ve lost by now. He was pretty good at keeping his heart hushed, but never his mouth. Well, that ain’t really true neither, I guess. He was pretty good at keeping everything inside until he got riled enough.”
 

Suddenly Robbie scrunched his face up and knuckle-rapped the side of his head with his fist. “See what I mean, this noggin don’t always act right. We was talking about your new house, but I don’t know how to say that town,” Robbie said, looking at him expectantly.
 

Stephen couldn’t help but chuckle as he crossed his arms with a small shake of his head. Robbie had already spoken the name quite clearly in reciting one of Stephen’s letters, so this was just a playful ruse. But now Stephen was starting to understand Dustin’s adamant need to return to his brother. You couldn’t help but love him, and thinking that someone like Stewart might beat on him just because he allowed it and wouldn’t strike back was completely repulsive.
 

Robbie let out a boom of laughter that turned all eyes in the diner to them again. “I like you, Mr. Stephen.” He immediately slapped his hands over his mouth and hid another grin behind it.
 

“I like you too, Robbie,” Stephen answered. “And Dustin was right; you do make the world a better place.”
 

Robbie smiled and picked up his fork again. “Why do you call him Dustin all the time? We always called him Dusty.”
 

Stephen shrugged, feeling oddly defensive about it. “That’s how I knew him. He... liked that I called him by his Christian name.”
 

Robbie’s fork halted halfway to his mouth while he was lost in thought. “Expect he would, now that I think on it. Bet it made him feel a little less like he was from here,” he said as he waved his fork around. “Don’t suppose Dusty would fit him when he weren’t here. He was stormy, you know? All gritty like.” He cocked his head at Stephen again. “Think you saw that before though,” he added before he began another recitation.
 

“’...
and if we could capture it, put it under glass, keep dampness from tamping its restless tranquility. What then? Every storm has brilliance, Dustin; has beauty when you look at it from a distance. It blurs all those incessant imperfections we seek to hollow out with each of our hopes. But when you step into its still center, when you see its fury and its power, you also see its beauty; its grace.
 

Five thousand miles away and I can still feel your turbulence on my skin, Dustin; your grit stuck in the chambers of my heart… and all the silence that has followed it.
 

Please write me back.’”
 

“Not one of my best,” Stephen said, knowing how needy and fragile he had been when he wrote those words; how close he had come to losing his conjured English reserve. The same reserve he was holding on to so desperately at that very moment.
 

Robbie dropped his chin a little as if considering what Stephen said. “Maybe not, but whispering from your heart ain’t always easy; and Dusty knew that real well, probably more than either of us.”
 

“Was he angry?” Stephen asked suddenly.
 

Robbie looked at him curiously.
 

“About the letters, was he mad?” Stephen asked him again.
 

“No, your letters never made him mad, Mr. Stephen, not that I saw. If anything they made him sad, but sad thinking and not sad aching, if you understand my meaning. He would go to getting real quiet, like you do. So I’d ask him if you sent him one of them biscuit letters again, and we’d get to laughing about it.”
 

“Biscuit letters?” Stephen asked.
 

“Yeah, Dusty said y’all didn’t know what biscuits was. Said you thought he was making you cookies for breakfast one day. That true? Y’all eat cookies for breakfast?”
 

Stephen remembered that morning conversation. They were about a month and a half into something much, much deeper than either he or Dustin had expected, and Dustin had sprung from the bed wanting to make breakfast before he ran off on one of his train spotting jaunts. He spent his time and money running around Europe as a foamer, but it seemed to Stephen more like an excuse to remain in London more than anything else, particularly in light of the fact that he detested the foul nature of some of the men in the train yards who reminded him of his father. But Stephen hadn’t complained. He would have gone to every train yard in Europe and Asia if that’s what it would have taken to keep Dustin with him.
 

“Most of the yard hates Stewart as much as I do,” Dustin had explained. “They can’t get rid of him because it’s union. But I don’t want to talk about him, let’s talk biscuits....” he said and began to instruct Stephen in ‘proper’ culinary terminology. And then, of course, Stephen had been obligated to show him what a proper English breakfast was. They ended up spending two days in front of the cooker and under the sheets; the trains never had a chance.
 

“No, we don’t eat cookies for breakfast,” Stephen told Robbie. “But how does that relate my letters to biscuits?”
 

“Well, like I told Dusty, ya’ll must be some pretty darn sad folks with no real biscuits for breakfast in the mornings. Man’s gotta have biscuits,” Robbie stated with the seriousness that a small boy would have on such a subject. “So, sad folks write sad letters and get sad thinking, but not the achy kind. See how that works?”
 

“Uh, not really,” Stephen answered him.
 

Robbie shrugged his big shoulders. “Smart folks,” he said and went back to his omelet.
 

Chapter 11

Dustin,
 

I dreamt of you again last night; dreamt of your lean, hard body pressed against me in bed; dreamt about how you woke me Christmas morning by nuzzling on the back of my neck; how you murmured to me, telling me how much you loved me without actually saying those words.
 

I thought I was still dreaming while you were talking to me. I thought all the things you said without saying was just my own longing; my own hunger hammering at my subconscious, pulling me back into the barbarity of the real world. But once I heard your voice, once I listened to the whisper of the thoughts you held so close, I knew I was awake and I just laid there so that I could consider what you would not say plainly or in waking hours.
 

Your words filled my sleep and pulled me from it, Dustin. I felt them reach in and touch that space that had ached in my chest for so long. And yet, as I awoke that morning I so clearly recalled the conversation we had about how you thought all words were just fiction, and how action was the only true reality. But isn’t putting voice to words an action in itself? Isn’t speaking the most treasured parts of your heart aloud the industry of movement; of change and courage; of engagement, and ultimately, the industry of victory?
 

Looking back I consider that you may have been right about words and action, but only in part. And I say in part because I still know your caress on my skin. I can still feel your stubble on the back of my neck. I can still taste the salt of your body. Those are your actions that spoke to me, Dustin.
 

But you are also wrong because it is your words that cling to me most. It is your words that hold my heart in place; that keep my hope fresh; that last and gather together when silence threatens to plunge me back into the black misery I knew when you left.
 

I realize that it is quite likely that you assume that it’s just because I’m a writer and a romantic at heart that my thinking runs along these lines. And that may be so. But I sense that it’s so much more than that.
 

And maybe I hold onto this because I know how familiar you are with that feeling too; that vacant ache of deep loneliness; that throbbing in our chest that we think no one knows but us.
 

I never told you this, Dustin, but that morning was the first time, the very first time since my parents died, that any words filled the vacant space that was inside of me. Of all the vast numbers of words that I have put on paper, or the vaster number that I have consumed in my existence, none has ever touched that spot as your words did that morning. None.
 

I don’t know where that vacancy came from. Maybe it came from the fact that I was so young when my parents died that I just held anger in my heart and let it burn a hole there. I know I hated Colette, hated that they sent me to live with her, hated France, the terrorists who took their lives; and I hated the all the rest of world because it was so unfair. And even though Colette helped me outgrow that childish rage, she could never quite fill the space that was left behind.
 

As I consider all this I wonder if I also feigned sleep that morning because I was so afraid that you were still angry about the comment I made about that boy at the chippy. Do you remember him? I said he was cute and asked your opinion. Do you remember?
 

I really thought I lost you then, Dustin. When I turned around and saw your face I thought I had pushed you away. It made me realize how much I had hurt you with what I thought was an innocent comment.
 

You got so quiet, so distant. I honestly didn’t believe that you would come with me to the arts quarter, and it was the only place that I could think of at that moment to show you that I meant no harm.
 

I was so desperate that I was on the verge of suggesting we run off to Paris for the weekend, even though I knew you had just come back from your Parisian train spotting for Robbie. I don’t think I told you that before.
 

The only thing I understood at that moment was that if I had tried to defend my comment with an argument about how beauty could be admired without being possessed, you would never have believed me. But in showing you, in walking the galleries which held pieces I admired, in that
action
you spoke of, you understood, and I will never forget how you turned with a whispered thank you before you kissed me there in the public eye.
 

So I guess we were both right, and both wrong about actions and words.
 

Like the two of us, one is empty without the other.
 

I love you,
 

Stephen