Still Holding by Bruce Wagner

Author:Bruce Wagner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Synchronicity

HIS SON LAUGHS wildly at something on TV. Burke makes sure the only fare is DVDs like Shrek or Sound of Music or Chariots of Fire. Nothing violent or sexual. And no channel surfing: he guards against Kit mistakenly stumbling across one of his own films, or news reports about his injuries. Doesn’t want him watching Viv Wembley cavort on that idiotic series either.

Lately, Kit erupts into hysterical outbursts in the middle of the night. (The sanghanistas like to say he’s finally getting in touch with the cosmic joke of it all.) Sometimes he sings himself to sleep like a child, but that’s the only time he comprehensibly strings more than a few words together, albeit slurred. He possesses an amazing surplus of energy—the sanghanistas call it ch’i—and Burke makes certain that energy is properly channeled, that his son is occupied by some form of therapy each waking hour.

His father wants him out of there.

His father wants him home in Riverside, where he belongs.

He speaks in monosyllabic plosives. He says fuck a lot, eerily reminiscent of the patient with whom Kit and Darren Aronofsky visited months ago. One day, an inspired Tyrone brings Roy Rogers to the private wing for a summit. Seeing the two together—trepanned superstar and blastomaed McDonald’s franchiser—watching the Blown-Mind Twins sniff each other like tentative street dogs was a rocky horror show for sure—more like one Special Olympiad passing the torch to another, because it just so happened that Roy was at the stuttering tail end burnout of “I fuck fuck fuck” just as Kit was coming into his full-throated, full-chorus own. Like that summer Tyrone went to New York and John Stamos replaced Matthew Broderick in “How to Succeed” . . . but try as he might, Ty couldn’t get a dysfunctional duet goin. Connie Chung enjoyed the impromptu reunion, though Ty didn’t think she fully dug the interaction. She wasn’t twisted enough; it was a cultural thing. But he thought the way Nurse Connie kept wrangling the veggies so they’d be face-to-face like sexy toy soldiers was beyond dope. Tyrone shook his head and smiled. It was so messed up.

• • •

HE ASSIDUOUSLY LIFTS himself a few inches on the parallel bars. He grins madly, wily and rabid, flashing the erotically mischievous Kit Lightfoot of old. (A bad haircut ruins the effect. Fearful of “anecdotal” leaks to the press, his father shot down Kit’s stylist’s request to come give a trim.) His body glistens, the layer of posttraumatic fat belying its good bones; Portrait of a Bruce Weber almost-ran, with bad breath.

• • •

WITH MOUTH CLOSED, unspeaking, only the wobbly, jerky gait betrays him. After all, he was in perfect shape at the time of the assault; not so many months have passed. He never stopped moving—Burke forbade that—not even in coma. Therapists and sanghanistas threw his limbs around more than Christopher Reeve. Tyrone said, We the A-Team. Put Mr. Reeve to motherfuckin shame.

• • •

“HELLO, PIRATE!” said Tyrone.

Kit wore an eye patch because the left lid drooped.

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