“WHEN ARE YOU GOING to do something with your life?” Damian asks, but it isn’t so much a question as a declaration of frustration.

               The scene is the Red Lantern, the local pub popular with the students and faculty from the nearby community

college.  Music streams across the large room from the speakers in each corner, music so loud that the lyrics are practically incomprehensible—and having a conversation with the people at your table means shouting overtop the blaring music. 

              Damian picks up his glass and sips his Harvey Wallbanger.

              “I’m doing something,” Wesley says, and gulps half of what remains of his fourth Heineken.

              Damian frowns. “Hanging out at the Red Lantern every night …”

               “This was a mistake,” Wesley says, slamming his beer bottle down on the counter.  “You should go.”

               “Have you thought about going back to school?” Damian asks, cautiously.

               Wesley’s fingers curl into a fist.  “I didn’t ask for this—”

               “Didn’t ask for what?”

              “Another one of your self-important lectures.  God, you should be wearing a dog collar.”  There’s a silence. 

              “Why don’t you—just leave—!”

              Damian and Wesley drop their gazes, and sitting on wooden backless stools at the bar, both of them slouched

forward, their arms resting on the bar-counter, they say nothing for a long time.  Damian, the older of the two

"The scene is the Red Lantern, the local pub popular with the students and faculty from the nearby community college."

               Through a discreet sidelong glance, Damian contemplates Wesley in his worn blue jeans, wrinkled long-sleeved grey T-shirt, and the new matted beard he has grown since their last meeting in February.  It’s now May. Damian feels nothing but hopelessness as he takes in Wesley’s cubist face that seems to take possession of that same hopelessness. Damian’s narrow dark brown eyes sparkle with discernible angst because his brother’s summonses are unspoken appeals for money, which Damian resents.  He knows the cheques are only biding his brother time, that’s why he’s desperate to save Wesley, rescue him—offer salvation—from the black knight of misery stalking him.  This is, of course, a natural pursuit for someone like Damian, who’s used to being a leader and whose existence depends on him supporting others, yet he feels utterly useless when it comes to his brother.

              Damian turns to Wesley, and touching his hand to his brother’s arm, asks pointedly, “Are you all right?”

              Wesley lifts the near-empty beer bottle to his round comical mouth and slurps the last mouthful.  “I’m fine.” 

He sets the bottle back down on the bar with a loud thud and signals for another when the bartender turns to look at him.  “If you can’t help me—”

              “I want to help, Wes—”

               “I just need some time to sort things out.”

               “How much time?”

               “I don’t know.”

              “This—”  Damian points at the full bottle of beer the bartender has just placed in front of Wesley.  “This can’t be

helping.”

              “Fuck you!”

              Damian stands.  He contemplates Wesley, who gazes abstractly at the beer bottle now clasped in his hands.

Damian shakes his head and then makes his way to the exit.  He stands outside on the damp sidewalk, his hands shoved in his pockets, part of him wanting to run back into the pub and drag Wesley back to his home, lock him up there until he’s ‘sorted things out.’  The other part of him wants to walk away, and not look back.  He takes a deep breath, holds onto the in-drawn drawn breath as long as he can, and pushes it out forcefully through his nose.  As he’s about to make his way to his car, he’s startled by the sudden tightening grip on his arm.  It’s Wesley.

              “I’m sorry …”

              Damian twists himself free of Wesley’s grasp, and looking intently into his brother’s round, wide-apart brown

eyes, says urgently, “You say you need some time to sort things out?  Fine.  Come live with me.  You can have the sparebedroom.”

              Wesley laughs. “Me—live —with you?”  Still laughing and considerably drunk, he lowers himself slowly and sits down on the cement steps leading up to the Red Lantern’s main entrance.  “Have you gone mad?  What would he think?”

              Damian sucks his teeth noisily.  “It doesn’t matter—”

              “Doesn’t matter?”

              “He’ll understand.  Look, Wes—I can’t do this much longer.”

               Wesley purses his lips, and looking away, says, defeated, “No, I suppose not.”

Damian unlocks the door and enters the silent house.  He removes his shoes and makes his way to the living

room, where he sits down on the black leather sofa.  He wonders if Ethan is home but does not call out for him.  What am I supposed to do? he asks himself as if the house is expecting something of him, waiting on him.  He surveys the living room—the two matching black leather club chairs separated from the sofa by a square mahogany coffee table with a glass center, the mahogany bookshelves lining the walls on both sides of the fireplace, the crown mouldings that they had had restored last summer.  Damian moves off the sofa and turns around to examine the painting on the wall, one of Wesley’s, a Christmas gift from a few years ago.  A checkerboard of medium size squares painted alternately black and white, oil on canvas, with broad discernible brush strokes.  Damian, who is not altogether an art aficionado, prefers the post-impressionists like Gauguin and Cézanne.  "It’s different," Damian said, gently, when Wesley asked if he liked the painting.  "I’ll paint you another," was Wesley’s wounded reply.  "No.  I like it,’"Ethan said, an economist with a minor in art history, intrigued by what he called a Titian-inspired work.  That had pleased Wesley.

              Damian goes into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of orange juice, which he then carries into the dining

room.  He sets the glass on the buffet while he unscrews the cap from the vodka bottle, and with the cap off, he adds a

generous splash of vodka to his orange juice.  It’s a few minutes past four o’clock in the afternoon, and of course Ethan is home, but sometimes, working from his third floor office of their old Victorian home, he cannot hear the front door open and close. Damian returns to the kitchen, staring abstractly about the room, leaning against the counter in front of the microwave.  He cannot shake the image of his brother, whom he had not heard from in the two weeks that have passed since their last meeting at the Red Lantern.  He’s still troubled by the awkwardness with which they spoke, and how detached Wesley had seemed to him.  And to laugh like that—did he not realize that I was serious? Damian wonders.  Of course he must be faithful to his own path, but he has no path.  He’s not serious about anything.  He’s a drunk, and to think that I’m supporting that habit!  If only he would’ve talked to me.  And then the phone call, his mother’s cacophonous sobbing, her words slurred and unintelligible, followed by the loud clank of the phone being slammed down.  His eyes are moist again, like they’ve been most of the day.  He’s breathing slowly and deeply, wiping the tears away from his eyes, when Ethan appears in the kitchen.

            

1	2	3