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The sun was just starting to set over the endless expanse of the High Plains as Eli pulled the rental car over next to a stretch of scrubby brush that looked, to Chas, just like every mile of scrubby brush they had been driving by for the past hour and a half. “Beinvenido a Montana, amigo,” Eli said as he killed the engine.
Chas looked out the window in disbelief. “This is your friend’s farm?”
“Well, part of it. He’s got acres and acres, he doesn’t use all of it. Which is why he said we could camp out back here.”
“Nope,” Chas said, with conviction. He flipped open his cell phone just to confirm; no bars. “I am not staying here.”
“Aw, come on, Chazzie,” Eli said. Chas glowered at him, but he didn’t seem deterred. “You agreed you had to get away. This is as ‘away’ as it gets.”
“I thought we were going to be somewhere in the vicinity of civilization, not the literal middle of nowhere, with no cell service and no hospital for God knows how many miles. What if something happens to one of the kids and Mom can’t get in touch with me?”
“Then you wouldn’t be able to get back to New York for a day anyway, so what’s it matter?” Eli said.
“Not helping,” Chas said. He was breathing hard now, useless phone squeezed tight in his hand.
“Hey,” Eli said, more gently. “You having a panic attack or something?”
“No,” Chas said. He knew firsthand what a panic attack felt like. This was just garden-variety, and perfectly reasonable, worry.
“You remember why we’re out here,” Eli said after a minute. “To get you to take a step out of your comfort zone, remember?”
Chas’ therapist had encouraged that, and Chas had agreed it was probably a good idea. “I’m already out of my comfort zone,” he said. “I left my kids with my mom and then got on a goddamn airplane to get here, and you’ll forgive me if that’s just about as far out of ‘the zone’ as I can handle right now.”
“Okay.” Eli sighed, but started the engine again. “It’s gonna take ages to find a motel, you realize.”
“That’s fine.”
“And we’re gonna miss a damn good view of the stars.”
“Also fine.”
---
It wasn’t quite true. The stars had come out before they found a motel, and a lopsided gibbous moon meandered through them, growing smaller and whiter as it rose. The tiny motel reminded Chas of Janet Leigh’s shower stabbing, but his phone showed nearly-full bars and it was right next to the interstate, so he swallowed his unease and booked them a double. The room smelled vaguely musty and the décor looked like it hadn’t been changed since the ‘70s, all burnt sienna bedspreads and dark faux wood paneling, but it was clean enough.
He could tell Eli was disappointed in him as they got their bags out of the car, digging them out from under the unused tent, sleeping bags, and cooking gear. He had no reason to care about what Eli thought, and was a little annoyed at himself for feeling a twinge of guilt. But Eli had been so earnest about this trip, and whatever he’d been doing at rehab for the past year seemed to have been working; he seemed bright and happy and, well, coherent, every time they’d spoken since the disastrous wedding. Maybe Chas had hoped a little of that would rub off on him.
He looked at his phone. No messages, no texts. Maybe this hadn’t been a good idea at all. Even with cell reception, Chas was suddenly all too aware that his kids were 2,000 miles away. He thought of gas leaks, drunk drivers, appendicitis, just how easy it was to fall down those stupid narrow stairs in the Archer Avenue house where his family was staying. He took another deep breath, counting to ten as he did so, and set the phone down on the nightstand.
“Well,” Eli said , pulling the nightstand drawer open and fishing out the phone book. “This is kinda putting a damper on my plans. We were supposed to cook dinner over a campfire and then meditate out under the stars until we felt at one with the universe. Now I guess it’s, what, watch one of the three local TV channels and order pizza? Unless you want to pay to rent some porn--”
“What, no,” Chas said, horrified. “Pizza is okay. Look, maybe we can try the camping under the stars thing again tomorrow. I just gotta take this one step at a time, okay?”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” Eli said, flipping through the Yellow Pages. “You good with pepperoni?”
Chas tried to remember the last time he’d had a pepperoni pizza, and failed. He’d always tried to put a little effort into keeping himself healthy, and to tell the truth, he’d never really understood the appeal of junk food, even as a kid. But there weren’t a lot of options out here in the middle of nowhere, and, he reminded himself, it wouldn’t hurt if it was just an occasional thing.
Eli fiddled with the TV remote while they waited for the delivery, and Chas, restless after spending the day traveling, sat on the floor, stretching and then doing some crunches. It turned out the TV got multiple channels of snow, one of snow moving in vaguely person-shaped patterns while a garbled announcer occasionally managed to say a few words that sounded like they may have been explaining what inning they were in, and a local public access station airing a poorly filmed elementary school production of Cinderella. Eli watched Cinderella for about five minutes before giving up and turning the set off.
“Guess we’ll just have to do our meditating here and not under the stars,” he said. “After we eat, obviously.”
When the pizza came it was so greasy it turned the paper plates translucent in a matter of seconds. The pepperoni had curled upward, forming tiny cups of grease with crisp burned rims, and Chas felt it running through his fingers as he lifted the slice.
It was the best thing he had ever tasted.
“Times like this I miss beer,” Eli sighed, sprawled across his bed and wiping his face with a napkin.
“Huh,” Chas said, distracted from the perfect grease-cheese-meat-bread harmony of his last pizza slice. “You cut out beer, even?”
“No booze, no drugs, nothing. Well, except on New Year’s Eve. But you know, that was New Year’s Eve, it doesn’t count.”
Chas wasn’t sure about that, but he still said “Congratulations,” and meant it.
He went to the bathroom to wash off his hands and splash some water on his face. One of the lights above the sink sputtered, and as he stood there looking at himself in the flickering light, he suddenly felt very, very tired. Maybe he shouldn’t have eaten that pizza after all, or at least gotten some vegetable toppings. He dug a bottle of multi-vitamins out of his toiletry bag and swallowed one.
When he came back out Eli was messing with the lights, wandering around flipping switches and seeing what they were connected to. Chas flopped down on one of the beds and pulled out his phone. No texts, no voicemails, it still insisted he had service; maybe he should call his mom, just to double check that things were going fine? He’d called once when the flight had first gotten in, but that had been hours ago now.
He was distracted by Eli jamming a clunky portable stereo onto the nightstand between them, and hitting “play”. Soft, rhythmic chanting issued from the speakers. Eli looked around the room, nodding in satisfaction; apparently he’d gotten the lights to his liking. The one in the closet was on, and a floor lamp near the door was on but turned to its lowest setting, leaving the room dim and shadowy but not fully dark. “All right,” he said, tossing his hat on the TV stand and then sitting on the bed opposite Eli, cross-legged. “Let’s do this.”
Chas was suddenly nervous, though he couldn’t explain why. This shouldn’t be much different than talking to his therapist, really, which was something he’d gotten a little better at doing in the past year. When she had suggested he take a vacation away from the kids for a while, it had seemed like a reasonable idea; and if Chas was going to talk to someone outside of therapy about his feelings, he’d really rather it be Eli than a family member.
Eli’s hair was shorter than Chas remembered, spiking up a little in the front when he removed his hat. His gaze, half-shadowed, was piercing, and Chas clambered into the center of his own bed, crossing his legs in imitation, feeling ridiculous about this whole enterprise. “Now what?” he said. It came out gruffer than he’d intended.
“Close your eyes,” Eli said. “And just let your mind go. Feel the vastness of the universe above us… I mean, above the ceiling and the second floor. It’s still up there. You’re part of it, and it’s part of you. Everything you are, everything you feel, everyone you love, you’re all part of the same vast universe.”
Chas wondered what kind of weird New Age books Eli had been reading lately, but did his best. He thought of the billions, trillions of miles of empty space above them, stars and planets that would never even be glimpsed by humanity before the eventual extinction of the solar system.
“Oh,” Eli said. “I didn’t even get to the letting all your emotions part yet.”
Chas blinked, and realized that there were tears on his cheeks. He wiped his eyes and muttered, “Sorry.”
“No, compadre, don’t be sorry, opening up to your emotions is the whole point. You wanna talk about what you’re feeling?”
He didn’t, not really, but despite himself, Chas blurted, “My kids are gonna die.”
Eli blinked, and then sighed. “C’mon, you know your mom and Henry are taking good care of them.”
“I didn’t mean right now,” Chas said. “But they are, eventually. All I can do is try to make it so that they don’t die before I do.”
“Okay,” Eli said. “I guess I can’t really argue with that one.”
He seemed at a loss, and Chas suddenly felt a little guilty for throwing something huge like that at someone who seemed to genuinely want to help him. So he followed it up with something a little easier. “Also my siblings are fucking and I feel really weird about it.”
“Right?” Eli said, almost relieved. “I mean, I know they’re not blood siblings, but they grew up together their whole lives, it’s pretty messed up.”
“I mean,” Chas said. “They seem happy. And I want them to be happy. I just don’t get it.”
“They were always kind of creepy close, when you think about it,” Eli continued. “Like when we were kids and they ran away together and wouldn’t even let me go with them.”
“You’re still upset about that?”
“I’m not upset, exactly. I just wanted to be included is all.”
“Yeah, I get it.” Chas didn’t have any interest in living in a museum, even for a weekend, but still, he’d always sometimes felt like a bit of a third wheel where Richie and Margot were concerned. Which, when you thought about it, should have made Eli a fourth wheel. But Eli had always been Richie’s best friend, not his, so that hadn’t smoothed things over at all. Until now, maybe. Chas suddenly remembered sitting in the hospital waiting room after Richie’s suicide attempt, listening to Margot and Raleigh discuss her affair, and how he had almost felt like he was watching someone else’s family drama, like it was a soap opera he’d left going on the TV.
“Eli, you, uh...” He wasn’t sure he should be bringing this up at all. “Are you jealous?”
“What? No. Not any more.” But the words were accompanied by a sigh that was both long-suffering and slightly theatrical.
“You wanna talk about it?” Chas prodded.
“This was supposed to be your big cathartic moment,” Eli pointed out.
“I think I had enough catharsis for one night.”
Eli tipped backwards on the mattress, sprawling across it lengthwise, and sighed again. “I dunno if you really want to deal with all the stuff I could unpack at you.”
“I offered, didn’t I?”
“I guess I never really knew which sibling I was in love with,” Eli said.
“Oh.” To tell the truth, Chas wasn’t all that shocked. Maybe it had been easier for Eli to act on his attraction to Margot, but he’d always been a little obsessed with both of them. But saying that out loud felt a little callous, so instead what he said was, “I remember when I read Wildcat, there were parts that felt a little, uh, homoerotic? But none of the reviewers seemed to pick up on that, so I thought maybe I was imagining it.”
“Don’t think I wrote it that way on purpose,” Eli said, and then, “Wait, you read Wildcat?”
“Yeah,” Chas said. “I mean, you sent all of us copies, didn’t you? I liked it. It was kind of raw and unpolished but I thought that actually worked in its favor.”
“You could’ve told me that before now,” Eli said.
“Well, it never came up, before, I guess. Sorry.”
“Well, thanks. You know, you’re a lot calmer about this than I thought you might be.”
Chas shrugged and flung himself back onto his own bed. “I guess maybe I sorta suspected it? Honestly, I’m surprised that you’re not more upset that the two people you love are with each other.”
Eli rolled over, propping himself up on one elbow, frowning. “Two people?”
“...Richie and Margot?” Chas said, wondering where they’d manage to lose the conversation thread. "That’s what you just told me, isn’t it?”
“Chas,” Eli said. “I just told you I didn’t know which Tenenbaum sibling I was more in love with.”
“Yeah, I know,” Chas said, and then it hit him. His brain latched onto the realization, but it was like it was stuck on the surface and he couldn’t fully process it. “Oh. Fuck, Eli.”
“I shouldn’t have dragged you out here,” Eli said, rolling over. Chas watched the embroidered vines on the back of his shirt bunch together as his shoulders tightened. “I guess I was lonely.”
The stereo was still chanting between them. The space between the beds seemed unbearably huge. Chas stood up, flipped off the closet light, then the floor lamp. Eli didn’t look at him, and tensed in surprise when Chas slid onto the mattress behind him.
“I’m lonely too,” he said softly. “I miss Rachel, and I miss my dad, and...” His voice broke, and he wasn’t sure where he was going with this anyway. The whole thing seemed incredibly stupid all of a sudden, that they could both be here together but both be so alone. This is a bad idea, he thought to himself even as Eli rolled over and their eyes met. This is not the start of a healthy relationship, he thought as Eli leaned in to kiss him. We are both messed up and leaning on each other is not going to help either of us stand on our own, he thought as he kissed him back.
For a moment Chas thought it had started raining, but it was just the sound of a rain stick on the cassette tape. Eli tasted vaguely like cigarettes; Chas wasn’t sure why he liked that.
Tomorrow they would lie under the stars and watch the Milky Way spread its arms over the High Plains, and maybe Chas would forget about the lack of cell service the whole time while they made out in the tent. Later he’d have to talk to his therapist about this, try to untangle wanting someone specific from wanting anyone at all. But as he undid the buttons of Eli’s shirt, one by one, and Eli put his mouth on the junction of Chas’ neck and shoulder and bit, gently, Chas thought that he could probably handle that.