The Vibe
by Hth

	I'd been seeing him out of the corner of my eye for so long that I almost didn't 
recognize him when we were face to face. Some part of me had been figuring
Ray Kowalski for gone since the day I'd come down off the pain meds long enough to 
understand that he was in Canada, chasing down the man who shot me.
	I was in a lot of pain, a *fucking* lot of pain. I remember puking my guts out 
from it, Franny screaming like an extremely pissed-off slasher flick victim for
a nurse and another IV, and in the back of my mind, thinking, My fucking heroes, off 
to hell and gone on some crusade to avenge me, and thinking, also, Christ,
they'll never be back until they've righted all the world's wrongs. I'll never see 
either of them again.
	So the phone call didn't surprise me. It was just like letting your breath out 
after you'd been underwater for a long, long time. You feel like you've been turned 
inside-out for the first second or two, but it's a relief. You're in the clear again.
	Goodbyes suck. But I like them better than surprises, most of the time.
	It was a surprise to see him in every forward-hunched shoulder, every grey 
t-shirt, every flash of silver dogtags. It caught me totally flat-footed, totally
unprepared. I always thought goodbye was goodbye, but when it came to Ray Kowalski 
-- well, with him, nothing has ever been just what it is.
	I saw him everywhere, like an afterimage. Like when you look at a bright light, 
then close your eyes and see it blue and red inside your eyelids, hovering
there, stubborn. Refusing to let you step back into your own personal darkness.
	Twice a week, like clockwork, I saw my shrink, and I never told her. Why open 
that can of worms? I was never psychologically healthy when it came to Ray; I
kind of liked that about myself -- about him -- or us.  Whichever, I didn't want her 
to tighten that particular loose screw. My irritation at him, well-grooved from 
constant use, and his ghost on the streets of Chicago were familiar things, 
touchstones. 
	A flash of Ray, just at the edge of my vision, could almost cure my split 
personality. Who else knew us both, L'Angoustini and Vecchio? Nobody. Not a damn
soul.
	But getting used to the mirage of him meant that I didn't think anything of 
it as I passed through the doorway he was sheltering under, flattened into the
thin, late-morning shadow, the proverbial ninety-degrees-in-the-shade patch of 
shade. 
I figured him for a bum or a college student -- somebody with nowhere to go, just 
hanging outside the doughnut shop, trying to decide if it was too hot to be hungry.
	"Vecchio," he said, and I almost pulled the door open straight into my own face.
A hundred hallucinations in the last three months, but none of them ever talked. His 
eyes, the tilt of his head, his stride, that would have been so graceful
if he hadn't always been pushing faster and faster.
	He didn't look like the ghosts, either. He'd changed. His face and hands were 
tanned, but his arms where they were uncovered by the faded Calgary Olympics t-shirt 
were white. The effect would've been laughable, but I was more caught by the corded 
muscles lying just under his skin.
	Once in Colorado, I'd had him up against a wall, his legs crossed around my 
waist, the bones in his arms digging agonizingly into my shoulders. I remembered
turning my head to the side, tucking my face almost into his armpit, smelling his 
sweat and sharpness, and I remembered how the muscles quivered against my cheek
as he worked to hold himself in place. I wondered if he'd have any trouble with it 
now. He looked stronger.
	I wanted to ask him a thousand questions, or just to spit in his face. I wanted 
to kiss him the way I knew he liked it -- or maybe just turn around, break our
eye contact, and walk away from him the way I knew he hated.
	Never just what it is. Whatever it is. If I'd had a half dozen Ray Kowalskis, 
I could have been each piece of myself, one for each of him, and I think all twelve
of us could've been happy. It was harder, here in the real world.
	"Say something," I finally said out loud, to him and me both. He squinted, 
confused, and I let go of the door and stepped closer to him, too close in the
summer humidity. "Say something," I clarified for him, "to make me a little more angry 
at you, or a little less. Right now, I don't honestly care which."
	He seemed to get my drift right away, and he gave me that slow, subtle smile, 
the *gotcha* smile. "I'm so fucking horny for you right now."
	Another thing you just don't get from ghosts. And I'd thought that in all this 
time I'd never forgotten what it was like to be Ray Kowalski's lover, but turns
out that wasn't remembering at all -- *this* was remembering, the jolt running through 
me, the sudden urge to have him underneath me again, naked and open in every 
conceivable way.
	Less angry, then. Definitely less. For all the times that Kowalski's a moron, 
I give him this: when he does say the right thing, it's always the really *right* 
thing.
	I took my keyring out of my pocket and tossed it lightly, straight up into the 
air between us. He reached for it, caught it on the fall. He didn't have his old 
bracelet; the new one was made of wood, or maybe bones. "I've got errands. You can 
wait for me."
	"At your house?" He seemed strangely nervous about that, tucking in on himself 
very slightly, so that only someone who was tearing him apart with their eyes
could've seen the shift at all. It occurred to me that we'd both been in my house 
many times, but never both of us, never together.
	"It's empty," I said shortly. It was empty all the time now -- now that Tony 
had a damn job of his own, and Ma preferred a house without stairs, and with
grandchildren, to the one that I'd lived in all my life, and gotten as a gift from 
my father. Easier on her hip after the surgery, she said. Easier on all of
her, maybe. Franny, too, living in the twentieth century at last, thinking she was 
Holly Golightly in her apartment with a fire escape and a view of the car
wash across the street where half-dressed guys worked in soap and water. There was 
just me living in the house now, and that was another loose screw I wanted
to leave like it was. There's such a thing as a little necessary clinging to the past.
	He pocketed the keys, and picked up his backpack from the ground, and he walked 
away without another word.
	I'd been figuring him for gone so long that I had absolutely no plan for him 
not being gone -- well, maybe the outline of a plan. Sex. Arguing. Throwing
him out. Getting smashed and calling him up in the middle of the night, saying things 
drunk and in the dark that I'd never been man enough to say to him before. It was 
a stupid plan, but I was resigned to it. It sounded like the kind of thing I'd do, 
but on the brighter side, it sounded like the kind of thing he would go for. Probably 
his skewered idea of romance.
	Mine, too, really. We tended to skew in the same direction, Kowalski and I.
	Out of stubbornness, I finished all my errands, just like meeting Ray again 
in the doorway of a yuppie Starbucks-rip off coffee shop had never happened at
all, except out of the corner of my eye. Bank and post office, picking up my watch 
from the repair place and buying a plastic truck for my nephew's birthday.  All the 
mindless little things I used to fill up my days, never quite able to shake the feeling 
that I should be getting back to work -- or that I should be watching over my shoulder.
	It took an hour or so, on foot; my physical therapy was technically over, but 
I was always conscious of the lingering weakness and pain in my chest, and I walked 
everywhere I could back then, hoping to hammer it out of me. When I couldn't feel 
the places where the bullet had torn through skin and muscle, I figured I wouldn't 
be able to feel any of it. Clean bill of health and clean slate, and I would forget 
about Las Vegas forever and go on to the next stage of my life, the cushy retirement 
stage.
	My golden bullet. Just another example of my famous luck, that after a lifetime 
of perfectly comfortable laziness, I'd get my ticket out just when I needed,
more than anything, something to occupy my mind. I missed the job -- not the *job,* 
but having a job, having new things come across my desk, five and six and ten at a 
time, instead of the same old open files in my brain, day after day.
	I stood on my front steps, digging stupidly through my pockets for my keys, 
until I remembered I would have to ring the bell. I rang twice, really leaning
on it the second time so he could be sure to hear me over Bruce Springsteen's voice, 
which even sounded loud to me with a wall between me and the stereo.
	The music dropped off abruptly, and a minute later he was opening the door. 
Still dressed in that ragged t-shirt and cargo pants, but barefoot now, and shining
damply. He was tugging at his hair from the crown as he moved aside and let me in, 
shaping it into wet spikes that I knew wouldn't hold as his hair dried.  They would 
wilt into a flat, soft mess of blonde and brown, and he would snort his horsey little 
laugh as I nibbled at it and whorled it around with my tongue, and shake when the 
flat of it drug just for a moment across his scalp.
	I slung one arm over his shoulder, and I could feel his t-shirt sticking to 
his back, and I felt stuck to him, too, lax and indecisive like water without a
container, my body just there, like a motionless puddle soaking gradually through 
to his skin. "When did--?"
	"Shut up," he said, in a tone that was almost like flattery or endearments. 
He grabbed hold of my shirt at the shoulder and tugged me even closer, and I
closed my eyes and took his lower lip into my mouth, sucking it between my teeth. 
That made him sway bonelessly, just like I remembered. "Shut up," he said again, 
grinning this time, pulled back just far enough to unzip my pants. I could feel the 
pressure of his hand and the perfect glide of silk boxers against my not at all lax 
or indecisive cock, which jumped like an overjoyed puppy dog when his fingers
closed tight around it. "Fuck me *blind,*" he growled into my ear, and then, a little 
more hollowly, as though he were saying something sad, "Fuck me like you mean it."
	A strange comment, bringing up more than its fair share of questions, but pretty 
well ensuring that I wouldn't be asking any questions for awhile, too.  "Stairs," 
I managed, shoving him backward, but he stayed planted.
	"Couch," he corrected, shoving back, and I folded, and I let him move me where 
he wanted me.
	Somewhere along the line, this affair had gotten way out of my control. I 
couldn't remember when, or even decide if I liked it or not.
	He'd obviously been making himself at home in my living room, CD cases lying 
open on the floor where he'd rifled through them without putting them back, and a 
book that wasn't mine open and face-down on the coffee table, bending its paper spine 
irreparably in half. *Into Thin Air.* "Everest?" I snapped, finding a way to shove 
it off onto the floor as we went down in a tangle on the couch within reach of it. 
"Is that where you're off to next, Kowalski?"
	He had the grace to look away from me for a second before saying, "Naw. I think 
I'm gonna cool it for a while on the adventures."
	We didn't kiss for long enough, not nearly long enough, before he was pressing 
a tube of slick into my hand and kicking me in the kneecap as he wriggled out
of his pants and rolled underneath me until his arms were folded and braced sturdily 
on the arm of the couch, his ass pushed up snugly against my hips so that my 
silk-wrapped hard-on nestled between his legs, up against his balls. "Don't you 
wanna--" I had to stop and breathe as my fingernails raking down the back of his shirt 
made his back arch sensuously.  "Don't you wanna do this for real?" I finally managed.
"Go upstairs -- take our clothes off, at least?" I wanted him *fast,* yes, but I also 
wanted all of him, full access and plenty of room to move around.
	"Next time," he said throatily, and there it was again -- a million question 
flaring up at the same time all chance of questions and conversation got crushed like 
a bug under a boot.
	Even just a single finger fit uneasily into him, he was that tight. Had Kowalski 
ever been so tight? The first time, maybe -- or maybe not. He'd been drinking, his 
breath smelling like something girly, rum tikis maybe. That first time, his eyes 
flitting over to me and away, one hand lightly stroking the dashboard of the Riv, 
that too-certain, almost defensive way he said, *You can fuck me if you want; I
don't care.* He might as well have had "Hi! I'm a Virgin, and I Don't Want to Talk 
About It!" stapled to his forehead.
	That first time, I pulled him over to me across the front seat until our chests 
were brushing together, and I grinned a little recklessly at him and let my fingers 
dance through the minefield of his hair and said, "We'll see." I could feel his 
heartbeat speed up. I was leaving for Vegas in nineteen hours, where it would probably 
be as much as my life was worth for Armando L'Angoustini to get caught with a 
spontaneous gay side, and I didn't know Kowalski very well, except that he was a 
detective himself, and his ring finger had that shiny white mark on it that meant 
he was looking for either a rebound guy or a slightly more complicated midlife crisis 
than most. I thought I was having one last meal before the execution, and I
thought he was working out some kind of personal thing that was none of my business.
	The truth is, I didn't die in Las Vegas, and I wasn't a practicing straight 
guy like L'Angoustini, either.  It wasn't my last meal, although in a way I guess 
I'd called it right: there was no one else after Ray.  More Ray -- but no one else.
And the truth is, he was definitely working out some kind of personal thing, except 
that it was very much my fucking business. His personal thing was my fucking *life,* 
which I had to find out a year later, in some anonymous hotel room with my best friend 
on one side of me and my bodyguards on the other side, and not one split second to 
think about it, or even acknowledge it. I just had to push forward, jump from
one act to the next, and be everybody under the sun except the guy that had kissed 
Ray Kowalski, and popped his cherry, and sort of fallen for his rough-edged, 
wounded-bird, sweet-and-sour charisma.  
	I never did have time to talk to Fraser about it. I wondered if he knew yet. 
If Ray ever told him, while they were out there looking for adventure like some
low-budget buddy road movie, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in the Northwest 
Passage. I wondered if my name ever came up at all -- if Fraser ever figured
out that while he was looking for his Canadian Holy Grail, Kowalski was running away 
from home and didn't care where he ended up, as long as he didn't have to face me.
	I kind of forced the second finger in, but the grunt of pain made me feel guilty, 
and I quit twisting my hand right away, just stayed still and gently stroked
him from the inside until he was groaning in a way that made me think of anything 
but pain. I leaned over him, and set my teeth around the knob of bone at the base 
of his spine, worrying at it lightly, the hem of his shirt scratching my cheek. "You're 
beautiful," I said against his skin, feeling him writhe against me from the outside, 
and feeling the muscles that rippled subtly within when I pressed against his sweet 
spot and made circles there with my longest finger. What I wanted to say was *I missed 
you,* but it would've sounded too reproachful. It wasn't like he didn't have a right 
to travel -- didn't have a right to leave me if he felt like it. We were free agents, 
both of us, always had been. If I'd passed up other opportunities, if maybe I'd done 
it because I was afraid of seeing him out of the corner of my eye... 
	If I'd missed him...then it was my fault, not his. I knew that; I must have 
told myself that a hundred and ten times since I came back to Chicago and found
myself further away from him than before.
	He was talking, half-muffled against his arm; I didn't notice right away because 
I wasn't expecting it. He never had beforre, not much. But I could hear more than 
just moans and groans in his throaty mutterings, and I leaned closer over him, sprawled
across his back to hear him better. *Fuck me, fuck me, c'mon, do it, just do it, hard, 
fuck me, do it.*
	Not like him. Not like Ray at all -- Ray Kowalski, who was always tense and 
wound up to the snapping point, until I pushed him down and held him by the shoulders. 
Then he would sigh like it came all the way up from a past life, and become heavy 
and hot-eyed, his fingers splayed out loose and relaxed as I kissed up his neck. It 
was almost the only time I ever saw him look relaxed -- when he'd just been
fucked, or knew he was about to be fucked.
	I tried using my free hand to rub at his shoulder, surprised by how balled-up 
the muscles there were, but he shrugged my hand away. It stung, a little. You
wouldn't think you could feel rejected by a guy who was mindlessly begging you to 
fuck him more, deeper -- but I did. I felt like some kind of two-dollar whore
who could fuck, but couldn't be allowed to stand too near the silverware.
	The closer we got, the sharper we seemed to ricochet off each other, and every 
time we seemed to be flung further apart. Even goodbye, even when I'd figured it
for forever, didn't feel like it put as much distance between us as this totally alien 
version of Ray Kowalski half naked in my arms, making me wonder if there had *ever* 
been a guy who used to eat cold pizza in bed for breakfast, who would lie next to 
me with just our foreheads touching and talk in a quick, throaty patter about cars 
and Hong Kong action movies and reminded me with his accent of my home, who liked
it when I sat on the edge of the sink and brushed my fingers across his nipples while 
he shaved, even though he pretended to bitch me out for being in his way.
	I tried to remember the last easy moment we'd shared together -- back in 
Colorado. 
Nothing stood out; I wouldn't have recognized it at the time as the last.  It probably 
hadn't seemed interesting or memorable at all when it happened, and I let it fade 
into a comfortable blur, Kowalski white noise.
	But the last time...it hadn't been Colorado at all.  It had been in Chicago, 
right there in the bullpen of the 2-7. Before the bullet, before Canada, when I had
a hope in hell of restoring my life to what it had been. I remembered sitting by him, 
shoulder to shoulder, the sounds of our exhausted chuckling blending quietly together. 
	After, of course, he'd tried to punch me in the face.  I would have let him 
-- I would have punched him *back,* of course, but I was resigned to the fact that
he was going to clock me at least once; it had been written all over his face all 
day, and it didn't seem like it would be such a bad thing. Blow off a little
steam, for both of us.  Would have let him.... No. I *wanted* him to. I'd
pushed him toward it, even down to laughing at his name in front of Welsh, although 
I knew his name already, and how he looked up to his lieutenant; he'd
never said it in so many words, but I'd picked it up from the way he talked about 
"the Lieu." I wanted him to hit me, because it would've made him an asshole,
the bad guy, someone I didn't have any responsibility to go to and say something like, 
*So, you don't seem real happy to see me -- are you, or aren't you?* or *You didn't 
think I'd ever really come back either, did you?* or, God forbid, *What now?*
	If he'd beaten the shit out of me, or even if I'd beaten the shit out of him, 
or both, it would've made us enemies. I understood that; one thing I've learned
in life is that the people who hit you are your enemies, whether they try to bullshit 
you about it or not, feed you some line about for your own good or no hard feelings. 
Thanks, Dad; taught me something after all, didn't you? It's the thing I don't forgive 
-- well, top of the list of things I don't forgive. It would have made things simple, 
if Kowalski was a guy who'd busted me one once. Awful, but simple.
	And it didn't happen. Should've, almost did, but it didn't, and we were left 
like we were, confused and strained and pissed off and scared, but not enemies.
So many different things we could've been to each other. Instead, we scuttle a few 
options, put a few on the back burner, overshoot one and forget about another, and 
we end up screwing dirty and fast and still confused on my couch.
	Incredibly glad for my own sake that we'd only gotten as far as fingers, I pulled 
my hand out slowly, sitting back crouched on the balls of my feet at the far end of 
the couch. His head whipped around hard, and his eyes were glassy and furious, and 
something else, something like despairing. "What the *fuck?*"
	"I'm not doing this."
	"What the *fuck!*" he said again, more of a curse and less of a question this time.
	"This isn't you."
	He pushed himself up and turned around, facing off across from me, with that 
handsome face set into something that looked painful to wear. "You think you
know me so well? You think you fucking *know* me, Vecchio?"
	I held up my hands, exasperation, but also honest surrender. "You're right. 
You're right, I don't know shit, and I never did. You could have *told* me --
okay, but you didn't, and what's done is done."
	"Maybe I just liked *not* being you for the weekend, every now and then," he 
muttered, and I remembered his voice, strong and soft at the same time, saying,
*That it is,* offering up our loneliness as one of the many things we suddenly had 
in common. "Maybe I didn't want to answer a bunch of questions."
	"Fine," I said shortly. It was fine. I'd stopped being angry about that months 
ago. "But this is still -- this isn't you. I don't know what you're after, here, and 
*this* time, I want to be told! If I'm gonna be involved in this, I want to know what 
I'm doing here."
	"Getting me off, I *thought,*" he grumbled, sullenly.  
	It wasn't funny, but I laughed anyway, a startled barking sound. "Yeah, because 
you had to come halfway across the North American continent to get *laid,* Kowalski."
	He met my eyes, finally, and he should have looked absurd, balancing on the 
arm of my couch in nothing but a t-shirt and a hard-on with his hair wilting on
his forehead, but he didn't look absurd at all. He looked fierce and intent and 
expectant. He looked great. "You. I wanted you."
	"Then maybe you shouldn't have gone halfway across the North American continent 
to break up with me." It was a terrible thing to say, the kind of mean and
sniping thing that had been getting me into trouble my whole life, and I knew better, 
and I couldn't help it.
	Forgiving -- I work on it, but I don't always win.   And he hurt me -- and 
surprised me with how much it hurt, which to be honest, is usually the thing that
pisses me off the worst. I really hate surprises.
	"I'm going to go," he announced, unfolding one leg and putting his foot on the 
floor to demonstrate that this was not an idle threat.
	I wanted to reach out and grab the leg, but I couldn't quite bring myself to. 
"So, you're just not going to tell me what this was all about?"
	"I just *wanted* you, okay?" he shot at the floor, staring doggedly away from 
me. "I missed you, are you happy?"
	"You're lying!" I don't yell much -- not by my standards, anyway. I get *loud,* 
sure, but then, I'm Italian. Any little thing sends us up a decibel or two, just for 
emphasis, but at some point talking loud and pulling people's attention onto yourself 
turns into yelling, using your voice like a shove instead of a pull, and that's rare 
for me, and it means I'm almost out of options. It happens right before rock
bottom, when I have to either hit or beg. Depending.   "This isn't about you missing 
me! This isn't even us!"
	"Stop saying that!" Ray yells on a whim; I'd heard it before, more than once. 
"You don't know who somebody *is* just from *weekends* and *hotels* and lying and 
fucking! How the hell was I gonna break up with you? We were never even together! 
It was all just -- it wasn't real. It wasn't real-life real."
	Fast, before I could take a guided tour through all the reasons it didn't feel 
exactly right or safe, I threw myself forward, reaching out for him and pulling
him roughly into my arms. He fought. He squirmed, and threw his weight around, and 
dug his knuckles into my back, and I held on, so hard there were bruises later, few 
and faint, but still bruises. "What do you want?" I challenged, low in his ear. "You 
want a list, all the things I know about you, the things you know about me? You want 
a *reason* to trust this?"
	He choked a little on an answer that didn't work out, and he got very still 
in my arms. His fists unclenched, becoming sweaty palms pressed flat to my back, and 
his cheek was against mine, faintly rough with almost invisible stubble. "The devil 
you know, get it?" he finally croaked, and I didn't, not exactly, but I didn't think 
it mattered, because it was probably a stupid idea to begin with, knowing Ray.
	"Well, bad luck for you," I told him, carding my fingers into his damp hair 
and squeezing them shut, holding on. "I don't have your reasons. I don't have
to know the devil to know you don't invite him over to Sunday dinner, and I don't 
have to know you to know -- that you should be here instead of in Canada."
	"Don't be stupid," he said, trying for tough, but sounding like he was pleading 
instead. Maybe it was himself he was talking to. "What if we have -- all these nutty 
expectations, and things aren't like they were, and it's not-- It's not like it's 
gonna be some kind of 24/7 *vacation,* you know, room service and sex all the time."
	And we did have that before -- room service, and a lot of sex. But a lot of 
places in Chicago deliver, and I'd just *had* him try to give me sex, and it
wasn't good, it wasn't what I remembered it being. 
	What I remembered about Ray was the way his eyes lit up when he laughed, and 
the way he blustered when I teased him, and the way he let me play with his hair
without making cracks about my lack of same, and his connoisseur's passion for pizza, 
and the tattoo that reminds him of cars he used to work on with his dad but that he 
actually found in an art book, and the way he yelled without it meaning much, and 
the hours of Monty Python he knew from memory, and his vulnerability to the power 
of suggestion in the form of lame infomercials on late-night tv.
	"The last thing I need right now is a goddamn vacation." I kissed him, roughly, 
but not the roughness of wild and breathless screwing, but rough like I was scared 
to death because he walks away like he means it, and maybe next time he'd learn to 
get over me, because he sure as hell seemed to want to. 
	I, on the other hand, seemed doomed to have him following me around the city 
in flashes and glances for the rest of my natural life, whether I wanted to
be over it or not. "I don't think," I said a little primly, in between kisses, "that 
I should have to write some kind of dissertation on you before you let me date you. 
I *will* know you -- if you give me enough time --"
	"How do you know you want to?" he asked, mournfully, but he returned each of 
my hard kisses with a hesitant and hungry one of his own.
	"I got a feeling," I said tersely, just hoping it would shut him up.
	Instead, it made him jerk back, looking at me wide-eyed and flushed and out 
of breath. My whole body twitched to pull him back against me and grind our mouths 
together. "A feeling?"
	"Yeah, *feeling.* You know, like a general sense, an impression, a vibe."
	"Like a hunch."
	"Yes, a hunch, an intuitive feeling of positivity, an inex-fucking-plicable 
vibe of rightness and us being good for each other, okay? Capisce?"
	He kissed me.
	He still kisses me.