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The rich man had all of this and more than I have space to write. Anything you have ever possessed, know that he had this, too. And if he did not, he could have paid you whatever your price was in order to obtain it.
In the camper, he slept at rest stops and campgrounds, and as he traveled, he posted updates to Facebook and then checked, over and over again, to see if his father had liked them.
(Had he felt this way before? Yes. Hasn’t everyone? Couldn’t this be the explanation for how we find ourselves trapped? Unable to make changes for the better? Separated from everything we desire by an unyielding barrier?)
“It’s like we’re enacting a reality show for him,” the oldest brother said as they were being driven to the airport. He added, in an aside to the middle brother, “Although harder for you.” “What is he talking about?” the youngest son said. “Why is it harder for you?” The middle son said, “He means because I’m gay.” “Oh,” the youngest brother said, realizing he didn’t know his brothers at all.
don’t know how I feel about this,” she said. The rich man got down carefully to his knees. “Who hasn’t wanted to cut off their spouse’s head at some point in their marriage?”
When Gary gets home, sodden pancakes in their hopeful box, Prince Hat isn’t there, either. But there is the smell of a smoky perfume, and Prince Hat’s smallest piece of luggage is gone. So is the dove-gray suit from Barneys, purchased just before they closed their doors for good, Gary’s extravagant gift to Prince Hat only last Christmas. Over the course of the next four weeks the pancakes turn to marble in the refrigerator while Gary grows ever more frantic. Prince Hat has vanished from the face of the earth.
One of the drunks down the bar calls for the bartender and he goes to take their order. When he comes back, he types into Gary’s phone, then hands it back. “Fairy?” Gary says. “Great. You’re a homophobe.” “Huldufólk,” the bartender says. Gary looks that up on his phone. “Okay, fine, not a homophobe. But, come on. Fairies stole my husband?”
Desperation has been Gary’s only companion in these last few weeks. Desperation means you will take advice from rats, a snake, allow yourself to be led into the endless dark where there is no door. You will pick up a white squirming thing, take it into your mouth like a Communion wafer, give it your own voice in case it speaks the name of the one you love, Prince Hat, Prince Hat, Prince Hat.
“This is Hell?” Gary says. He sucks the drop of blood from his fingertip. “Don’t sound so disappointed,” the cat says.
All of this happened a very long time ago and so, I suppose, it has taken on the shape of a story, a made-up thing, rather than true things that happened to me and to those around me. Things I did and that others did. And so I will write it down that way. As a story.
