The Round People - a Novel - 7. VIII. Three o'clock

VIII. Three o'clock

From the steps, Jonathan could survey the whole of the dance floor. His table, that once had been full, now only held Patricia. As she glanced at her watch, and eyed the direction of the slashed curtain, he sat down next to her.

"Where'd everybody go? It’s not that late, is it? Hell, I think I'll start a new round of drinking." His head was aching from sobriety.

"Well, there you go, Thirsty." Pat listlessly pointed to a flat glass of beer. "Nobuko left that, said it was for you."

"Where'd she go?" He took the unappealing liquor and slid half of it down his throat without caring that it burned him.

"She went to the bathroom."

"Is she coming back? Did she say she wanted to go home?"

"No, just that she was going to pee. What'd you do with Emmy? I thought you were going to take her away or something."

"I took her upstairs." He drained the glass and slammed it down with a dull thud.

"Where is she now…"

"Upstairs. And as far as I can give a damn, that's where the bitch can stay."

Patricia slowly shook her head. She hadn't heard Jon use such language when talking about a person, but she never doubted for a moment that he would. Nevertheless, disappointment is always something that has the power to affect a person, no matter how expected it is. She decided to give some advice about the female heart.

"Jon," she said as forcefully as the tired hour of the morning would permit. "Don't you know how to talk about a lady?"

"Don't give me that – "

She held up her hand as a warning, calmly iterating, "Shut up and listen. You guys are so fucking stupid. You think it's some big mystery about what women really want, that what we say is not how we feel. That's how date rapes are 'supposed' to happen. But it's your fault, if you guys can think of only one thing when you're talking to a girl, or should I say, you let your pricks think for you. No wonder you don’t hear what we're saying: you're not thinking yourself, so that's why women don’t make any sense.

"But what women want is a man, one who'll look after them, who'll talk to them. Not talk to some pretty face, to some potential lay – I mean talk to them, look at them, the individual they think they see. A Woman wants to find – in fact all women want to find – a man who'll never look at her and see anything but her. Do you understand that?" She frowned her dark eyebrows intensely at him. Her lips parted and showed teeth not in a smile, but in an extreme pulling up of the sides of her eyes. Her sharp blond hair hid the point where the corners of her sight ended. "We want someone who will look and see us, not their own image of a lover, one who when he's making love to us, is making love not to a nameless, faultless body – not to the general idea of 'getting off' – but that when he looks, when he touches, he sees, and he feels an individual woman."

"Now just hold on a minute, I don’t know how I got into the position of defending manhood against its abuses of women, but you can't expect me to believe that females don't have desires, that they don't have lusts – you know – needs."

"That women don’t need what? The dick? Hell, if that were true, what do you think we'd be doing wasting our time on men? We've got vegetables, and you better believe any seventeen-year-old girl can find more pleasure in five minutes alone than a whole night her boyfriend can show her, the only difference is, that she gets more pleasure out of pleasing him than herself. If you're listening, I'm telling you, we don’t need the sex. We need the touching and connection that comes before it; and in the sad time after, we need to know there will still be someone holding onto us."

Jonathan looked around feeling very uncomfortable. He wanted to go home, or at least leave this table. "OK. I've listened. But, isn't what you're telling me is that women don’t want men at all, only the comfort they can give? That when you're making love to him, all you're thinking about is the solace and self-worth he symbolizes? Meaning you're the ones who can’t see the man as an individual, not the other way around."

Patricia gradually shook her head, her teacher's patience showing worn with care and use. She opened up in full disclosure, not caring if anyone understood. "When we make love to a man, it's him we want, it's him we want to please, and love."

Jon stared back, too weary to see anything but the truth, but he had to ask, "Someone once told me that women want to hear men tell them they are loved. That that's what they want the most from their lovers."

Pat closed the lesson to Jon pertly with, "Men do too, they just can't let themselves admit it's important to them. You see, we're all afraid to ask or expect what's not true. We're all afraid that we're not loved. Women just have the guts to ask."

This comment pierced Jonathan straight through. "Pat," he almost felt tears were coming. "You just don’t understand. It's all a mistake, a misunderstanding. I'm the last one you should be telling what a woman wants." He grinned through a pained, half-snorted laugh. "The very last one."

˚˚˚˚˚

In most places a Saturday night will wind down very slowly, but in The Round People, it wound down so slowly that a time warp happened. One minute it was Saturday night with all the promise of fun and forgetting in full bloom, and the next it was Sunday morning with all the hangovers and disgrace; a swift down-gearing from the content of life, to vows of never letting it happen again. Things began to be done in slow, languorous ways, while running under the whole, seemed to be a current of dread. Time was running out, running down on the night and its possibilities, running out of the opportunities that were all but guaranteed in the earlier hours. And most of all, the dread was carried sure and stately by the internal and ever-precise clock of the body. Morning was coming, it said; morning was coming. What chances untaken in the innocuous dark hours will die in the light of day; if ever there was a time to accomplish something, by three in the morning, that time feels to be slipping away into oblivion.

˚˚˚˚˚

Seth rounded the corner of the landing. "What are you doing up here all by yourself?"

Emmy had watched him come up the last few steps. Her tone was cold. "Seth, what are you guys really looking for?"

He came up to stand next to her. He peered down. "By 'you guys,' I guess you mean men?"

"Yeah. Tell me, what the hell do men want or expect from women!"

"Sex."

"I know," she bobbed her head in growing vehemence. "That's what I always thought, but it's not true, is it? Because you guys can handle yourselves, if you know what I mean, or screw sheep, or something, but what do you want in women?"

Seth's heartbreaking eyes fell on Emmy as little smoky centers of his smile. The night had been too much hard work, and too little thought. He gave up the bullshit and told her honestly.

"Men want women. We don't want all your nagging, your 'you can't do this,' your 'you can't do that.' We don’t need that kind of shit dumped on us all the time. We want you to be there when we need you, without the nagging. We need you there to support us."

"But why? Then what's all the macho stuff for?"

"Cuz that's how chicks make us act when we're around other guys. When we're hangin', we can't be talking about what's worrying us, and shit, like what we're scared about, or what we need from other people – about our feelings – you know, we have to hide all of it and act strong, like we don’t need anybody else in the world, and that's why we need women."

Emmy made a sour face, not following.

Seth sat down by her side. "Because if we find a good one, we can relax and tell her that we're as scared as little boys in trouble, but if she's a bitch – always complaining, or nitpicking or something – then a guy's never gonna tell her anything, and eventually dump her, because she never meant anything to him in the first place. If he finds a good woman, he can find a place in himself to be comfortable with her, and all the macho crap that he's worn on the outside gets taken off little-by-little, until he comes to understand what a real man is. He comes to understand only because he loves this girl, and feels helpless when she suffers, that he knows the answer is in himself. Do you understand? That's the pride that finally makes the little-boy-sacredness in him dry up, and not act out in stupid, and hurtful ways."

Emmy looked miserable, but she understood.

Seth leaned back on the seat, lacing his fingers behind his head. "But, if a guy gets a girl who he starts to have feelings about, and she starts in with the 'Is that how you treat a lady?', or worse when they're out in public 'You gonna let a wimp like him talk that way to me? Hell no, I gots to get me a Real Man.' That's the kind of shit that gets a woman dumped real quick. That's the kind of pressure that makes guys turn inward and mean, and if I were a girl, I’d be real careful, cuz there aren’t many guys who ever found a good woman that makes them feel good." He leaned over and lowered his tone, drawing slowly out, "So, yeah. Most guys I know just want sex from women, because they don’t expect them to offer what they really need – love and understanding."

˚˚˚˚˚

At this late hour, the patrons of the bar continued to bob weary heads with the music, but even the boys on the stairs have come down and sat. They will hang on, make no doubt about that, but their feet are tired.

Other people have made their way beneath Dean's new portrait of The Round People, which hangs above their departing glances like an invisible guillotine blade. On one side is the inevitable future; one day at a time, maybe within seven of those days, the same people will be back, but maybe not. Every time we pass over a threshold there is no guarantee we will ever be this way again, and the fondest farewells are those given by a waving hand that never doubts there will be time to return, even when they will never see the same place twice.

The unions made tonight stagger home, or to Love Hotels, to see if further solidification is possible, and that after all, is the best any two people can attempt to do; to try and find each other.

˚˚˚˚˚

Pat glanced up. Through the smoky air she caught sight of Seth coming down the stairs. His footsteps fell hard, his gate was slow, like a man wanting attention. She peeked down to her watch, and momentarily up into his descending gaze.

"Jon, I think I'm…" Pat made up an excuse. "I think I'd better see what's happened to our Nobu-chan."

As Patricia walked across the dance floor, she watched Seth's strong arm swing several paces ahead of her. She couldn't help noticing the bow of his apron bobbing in a rhythmic back-and-forth atop his backside. She smiled a little to herself. In her own image, far away from her consciousness, she made herself beautiful in the way Seth moved; in the way that bow made her want Seth, and in the way she wanted Seth to desire her too.

The bartender ducked under the slashed curtain to the back bar. Pat waited in front of the bathroom door, silently praying no one would come out and make her go in. No, it was as if she was waiting for herself to come out.

She heard Seth's voice calling 'Good Night' to Dean and Mark. She moved a little closer to the cash register area. When Seth appeared in the doorway, she 'accidentally' bumped into him. Seth had his blue stocking cap pulled over the top and back of his head.

"Did you have a nice night?" Seth asked Patricia.

"Nah, kinda boring."

Seth snorted in an ironic laugh: "Yeah. Not much interesting happened, did it?"

"Nope. Heading home? Coffee?" She drew out the vowels of the last word.

"Yeah, it's over for me. Too tired for any more."

Patricia looked at him coyly, playing at hiding how serious she felt. "You live over by the park, right?"

"I do." He smiled a bit, the tiredness on his face cracking with it.

"I live that way too. Do you want any company walking over?" Her heart was racing in her temples.

Seth finished the game. "That would be real nice" He gently took her hand, and laughed softly: "I may even have a donut or two in my cupboard."

She slapped his arm playfully.

"Go get your stuff," he told her. "I'll wait for you by the elevator. But hurry," he pleaded. "It's cold out there."

He put his other hand on top of hers and held it there for a moment. The compact was sealed; they both knew what they wanted.

˚˚˚˚˚

Benedict was anxious. He set the first CD down, letting it slide into the changer that held as many as twelve different discs, and on top of that, he slid in another, and another. He set the whole carriage on the lip of the player, pushed it slightly in, and watched it sink mechanically into the black mouth of the machine. He pushed in the programmed tracks, their numbers registering momentarily across a little screen begging for confirmation, then his work was taken care of for awhile the second he pushed 'play,' but Benedict was still anxious.

He climbed the stairs very slowly, each step a long drifting pause of raising and lowering, of standing and pushing his tall frame up to the balcony. Regrets were all he could think about, and some little quote he had heard somewhere. It raced itself again and again in his mind, but like anything that has gained enough momentum, it seemed to linger in slow motion. 'Regrets,' it said, 'are the easiest thing in the world to avoid, but the hardest to live with.' He knew his time with Emmy was running out. That knowledge pounded in his chest, pounded as a numb longing in his head. 'Regrets,' he thought, 'regrets are what make old men mean, what makes mothers abort; what makes fathers never see their sons.'

'Regrets,' he thought, 'too easy to avoid, too painful to live a lifetime with.'

When he was eye-level with the floor, he could see Emmy's legs. A few steps later, he called out quietly, like the air would break under the weight of his breath; as if his words could shatter the gauze-like atmosphere with the intensity of his aching heart.

"How come you're sitting up here by yourself?" The sound of his own voice frightened him. It revealed too much, asked too much in too few words. He knew she would hear that which he had to hide for his own good. Emmy would laugh at his love, he didn't hope for more, but little prospects are mountains when seen from the flanks of love.

She didn't respond. He slowly drew next to her, squatting on his heels, arms braced on his legs, his head went down to her level. He tried to control the content of his voice, "Everybody's worried about you."

She didn’t respond. She didn't even seem to have heard him, but Benedict was irrevocably drawing nearer to her. 'Regrets,' he thought; now it was like a sweet song he had known in his childhood, a little sad comfort for the man he had become. Choking down the possibility that he was coming to a desperate point of honesty, a point of uttering something regrettable and unretractable, he leaned closer to Emmy who was staring blankly half away from him. And yet, he wanted to comfort her for the same reason, if at least to comfort himself.

He picked up her hand, and watched her eyes drift slightly to where he held her. "What's wrong?" he asked tenderly. "Are you sick?" He wanted her so badly. He wanted her to open up to him, he wanted her to let him in, he wanted her to simply look at him. Benedict's ponytail, the color and texture of black incarnate, slipped off the side of his strong neck. His white corduroy shirt made him look angelic as he slipped his eyes closed to a powerful lost world of thought. Like all the nights before the TV when he had concentrated on the voices, not daring to see the truth of them, he knew he was truly alone. All those lonely years of being but an unseen one in a world of groups were with him, and the opportunities were slipping by, the chances were passing by without his involvement. The truth of his love of Emmy opened below him like the wide plateau of the world itself, and he stood on the pinnacle of living in it or not. He stood on the ledge of truth and looked down. Over the edge was honesty; behind him, misery. All he had to do was say the truth and he would fall, he would lose the old life of pretending he had something to lie about for his own good, for his own protection. If he could tell Emmy just one true thing about himself, he would be over the brink and lost in the world, possibly alone forever.

He inhaled a deep breath. His eyes opened and saw the girl still lost dreamily somewhere. Benedict bent in even closer to her, his hand enveloping hers. He teetered on the edge, but instead of plummeting, as he thought he would, he spread his wings, and jumped.

His breath no more than a whisper on the side of Emmy's cheek, he sighed: "I love you."

"Emmy, I love you." And in his heart, he flew.

˚˚˚˚˚

Emmy sat very still. She had heard Benedict's first question of what was wrong, but hadn't listened after that. She grew annoyed at the increasingly tender tone of Benedict's solace, and syllable-by-syllable grew hard as protection against it. Every compassionate sound that she heard, but did not let in, produced a flinch of repulsion in her; she only wished he'd go away. Nothing had penetrated her consciousness, except 'what's wrong,' and to that, after Benedict told her he loved her, she replied:

"I think I'm falling love with Jonathan."

Benedict was silent, almost dead with emotion.

"But," she continued. "He must really hate me, because he brought me up here just to tell me a terrible lie." She looked at him with moist eyes. "He must really hate me to be that cruel."

Benedict, never loving her more than in her moment of hurt and need, asked, "Why, what did he do?"

"He told me he was gay, can you believe it?" She almost cried. "Can you believe he'd say that when I know he likes Nobuko – why did he have to tell me such a horrible lie!"

He soothed her tenderly, more than a little bewildered himself, "I don’t know."

Emmy blubbered: "He should tell me he likes her, he didn't have to humiliate me." She whipped herself into rage, Benedict's arm becoming her head support. She grew angry in that easy way a maddening heart finds relief in another emotion. "Why," she demanded wildly. "Why did he have to do that? I would have done whatever he asked me to do. He – I know I acted crazy, but I thought I couldn't control how I felt. I thought I should do what I did. Do you know what I mean?" As she looked straight into Benedict's rich eyes, she had a vague pang that he knew the answer to her question, and she was a bit put-off and annoyed by it. He was holding her gaze passionately, his lips loose and moving in some sort of soundless tremor; every degree of her pain was etched into the lines of the face she saw before her.

"I know..." Benedict's tone dripped in shared sympathy. "I know."

Like a physical blow it hit her. She 'heard' what he had said about being in love with her. She jolted up like a shock ran through her body, forcing it involuntarily to stand upright and tense. Benedict rose graceful from his knees and locked his arms around her in a slow motion embrace of support. His touch was like another shock; tender and warm, it engulfed and surrounded her with another's emotion, one she did not need nor want. It was all too much, what was she to do? In her mind's eyes, a part of her saw her lift her arms and encourage the boy who clung onto her, but another part of her, the larger part, rejected him outright. But slowly, degree-by-degree, that old and comfortably fitting ire towards the one that she did love settled on her heart as a black and malicious thought. Unseen by Benedict, the corners of her mouth raised in hateful delight. Her arms slowly did raise, they did embrace Benedict, and she fancied she could feel the thrill of his heart beating wildly with her touch as she laid her ear on his chest. The instrument of her vengeance lay right under her fingertips.

"If only there were something I could do." Her low voice twisted manically around Benedict's protestation of love, like Lucifer around the Tree of Knowledge. She picked up his strong and large hand and forced her fingers between his digits. They were warm and receiving, and soon responded with shaking reciprocity. "If, there were some way, that I could get back at him. Do something, to make him admit he lied to me, tried to humiliate me." She nestled her beautiful face deeper into the angelic white of the boy's shirt and chest. Little feigned waves of sorrow radiated through her body, which she felt Benedict's body react to with ever increasing vehemence.

Benedict lifted her head off his heart, and used a gentle finger to bring her eyes up to his. To him Emmy looked frightened and on the verge of something momentous, something life-changing. He took hope like the manna of old, which fell from the sky as if it were the proof of a love from a God who otherwise is remote and uncaring.

He, desperate, helpless, and less able to control the tremble in his limbs, lifted her hand to his lips. He felt he was about to cry. His free fingers came up and caressed the nape of her neck, brushing aside the silky hair pooled there. He guided her head back onto his chest, hugged her harder and began to rock. His lips made little shushing sounds, first over the tips of her fingers, and then continued as they came to rest and kiss the side of her head and hair. In a low lullaby he crooned: "It will be all right. I'll take care of you, and I'll take care of him."

Emmy squeezed his biceps, thrilled to hear and feel the means of Jonathan's humiliation so near.

Benedict, as he continued to rock the girl in his arms, choked out in slow comfort, "I'm here, and everything's gonna be all right. I'll take care of everything."

˚˚˚˚˚

Jonathan and Nobuko were alone at their table. After Pat had gotten her things and bid 'Good Night,' Nobuko leaned over to Jon.

"What went on up there?"

Jon sucked in a long draught of air. "First, I tried to humble her by showing my brush, but the girl is shameless; she laughed in my face. She made me mad, but I didn't want to hurt her, just get her off my back."

"Did you do it?"

"I think so."

"Did you tell her we are lovers?"

"No."

"What did you tell her?"

"I told her I could never love any woman."

Nobuko patted the top of Jonathan's hands, silently commending him for telling the truth to Emmy. She wanted to ask, 'But did she believe you,' when the two were suddenly aware that someone was standing in front of their table. They looked up into the ominous face of Mark.

"Nobuko," he bit off coldly. "Can I see you a moment, over there." He didn't bother to point to anyplace.

"For what?" Nobuko partly squinted at the Australian; she didn't like his demanding tone.

"I want to talk to you."

She feigned incurious ignorance. "About what."

Mark pressed his thin lips together in a smirk of irritation. "It's between me and you." That smirk transformed into a frown as it fell on Jonathan.

"Then sit down," Nobuko commanded; she wasn't going to play his game.

Mark blinked hard once to keep from shouting. "I don't want to talk about us in front of him."

The American stole questioning glances between the two of them, wondering exactly what he was in the middle of. "I can go over there," he offered sheepishly, even bothering to point, though neither of them were looking.

Nobuko impulsively grabbed onto the arm of Jonathan, who was just rising from his seat to get away. She grabbed it with both hands and pulled it to down by the elbow to firmly nestle in her bosom. "I don’t have anything to keep from my brother. What you can say in front of me, you can say to him too."

Jon regarded her like he was scared, then he turned that apprehensive look to the still-standing Mark.

The Australian drew in a breath, and sighed in a tense, open-mouthed way. He sat down opposite them. Mark started slowly, hurt, "You know, you really should be nicer to people around you."

"What does that mean?"

"Don’t tease. You damn well know what I mean."

"I do not know what you mean," she said calmly. "And I do not tease." She finished with an extra air of dignity, "Because I haven't been a high school girl for quite a long time."

The moment of quiet that followed was unnerving to Jonathan, who finger-by-finger was able to loosen Nobuko's iron clutch.

"And besides," she suddenly snapped. "You're the one who shouldn't be telling people what they should do!"

After a moment of silence that crackled in the air like a static charge, Mark groaned and dropped his elbows hard on the table. His forehead followed and fell roughly into his open palms. His hands rubbed out an excruciating strain there, and drifted back to run through his hair, which he suddenly began to pull in all-out frustration. "Do you like him, or what?" He sounded drained, like he simply wanted to know.

Despite the plaintive timbre that Nobuko clearly heard, she spoke to agitate. "How many times do I have to tell everybody, he's like my brother. I love him like that."

Jonathan tried to speak, but Nobuko softened and snapped into Mark with a new affection. "Can't you see? You're different."

Mark flared back in his seat, almost yelling: "Then why were you over here feeling his cock all night long? Tell me that!"

"It wasn't all night – " Nobuko started to shout back, but stopped. She was stopped by the lost-little-boy look of confusion and hurt on Mark's whole being. All her anger left her. She saw in him a wound that she hadn't caused, but one that she had meanly irritated when Mark could have been healed by knowing the truth. She felt guilt, guilt in the sad way his eyes begged her to comfort him anyway she could. Nobuko had lived too many sorrows in her lifetime not to feel shame for festering it in another; festering it in a person she cared for, and in one she knew cared for her too.

In the waiting pause, as Jonathan's attention darted between these two, some backburner part of his brain acknowledged that the music of the club was fading down, and soon it trailed off into silence. Though not present in his conscious thoughts, it nevertheless ushered in the meditative state The Round People was prone to in the stillness of quiet.

"Mark," she sweetly crooned. "Give me your hand." Behind her glinting and owl-like glasses, her eyes fell on him with the weight of her life experience; it fell like snow, soft and silent, beautiful, and heavy enough to crush houses.

All of this surprised Mark, who was thinking that 'they' were over. He saw her reach out her hand to take his, but remained suspicious. He resisted.

Nobuko took what she had asked for, making Mark partially rise. "What are you doing?" he wanted to know.

"I want you to feel what I was feeling."

"What!! I ain't gonna touch him!" He pulled back and sat with a plop.

Jonathan laughed: "Wait, wait, he doesn't have to do that. I'll take it out for him."

"What!!!"

Jon dug in his pocket, finding and holding up his yellow brush.

The Australian blinked unintelligibly at it. In the back of his mind he heard Jon saying that this thing is what Emmy had felt, and what Nobuko was testing through his pocket. Harmless. As he blinked and swallowed at Nobuko's half-kind, half-spiteful face, it suddenly hit him what was important. He scootched over to her. He placed his arm around her shoulder, and spoke as if from a dream, because it was what he truly felt, "I want you to know, I'm sticking around. If you want me to, I'm staying in Japan so we can be together. All right?"

Nobuko felt tired. It was as if all the weight of her recent sleepless nights came crashing in on her all at once. But instead of feeling overwhelmed or stressed, she felt relief. Tonight she was going to be able to sleep, sleep peacefully with Mark's soft chest hair for her pillow.

As she opened her mouth to thank him, all were distracted by the unaccountable feeling of being watched. Nobuko turned, and there at the head of the table stood Benedict; to his side and mostly hidden by him was the shadow of Emmy. Jon and Mark followed her gaze, but Benedict's was only glaring at Jonathan.

The club's profound silence now entered everybody's concrete perception. Jonathan, like a fool, still held his brush in the air, still had a playful expression on his countenance, but in the static noiselessness, his expression changed. Behind Benedict his look lingered on Emmy, and he had an odd thought of Eve cowering behind Adam like that as they were expelled from the Garden. She looked sadly triumphant.

Benedict's voice boomed. His strategy was a simple one, make Jon admit and apologize for lying to Emmy.

"Get out." There was no doubt to whom he was speaking. "This ain't no Fag bar."

Jonathan was shocked; he felt a burning hot wave of heat escaping his collar. He could sense the remaining customers of The Round People turn to see whom Benedict was addressing. They, he could feel, were slowly gathering around to see who the queer was.

"Did you hear me?!" Benedict demanded.

Jon shot sideway glances, grinning very uncomfortably. "Everybody heard you."

"Well? You a Faggot or not – that's what I want to know right now – you a Cock-sucking, AIDS-carryin' Queer, or what!?!"

Jon slowly stood up; he knew all eyes were definitely upon him now, but his own he never removed from his attacker. In his head he played out the options. What could he do? What he felt like doing, that which he was fighting back, was the impulse to reach over and punch the sneer off of Benedict's scowling mug. He could deny it, but what could he do afterwards; could he escape? Not likely. But then, all of a sudden, the idea of denial made him angry, and then the sickness in his stomach made him angry; he wondered what he had to be afraid of, he wondered why he even had to consider a lie.

Jonathan's eyes narrowed menacingly, but his voice was clear, unclogged by emotion and full of the steel of vindication.

"Last year at this time I would have denied it, even to a scrawny wimp like you, but know what, Asshole? Not today, not now. If you think you have something to fear in Gays, you do, because it means you have something to fear in yourself." He glowed self-absolving power as he glanced to the people crowded around him. The glow quickly drained as he saw the shock and horror on the faces surrounding him. The strangers he didn’t care about, but Nobuko next to him, looked the same.

Benedict was repeating as if from far away, "This ain't no Fag bar, why'd you come here?"

"Because," Jonathan slowly brought his sight back up to Benedict's leer again. "I thought I had friends here." He looked, but nobody would meet his eyes, nobody knew what to say, only Benedict held unflinchingly at the end of Jon's conceit. He said deflatedly, "I thought I had friends here – but – I guess I was wrong." He sightlessly grabbed his coat from the booth behind him, and began to walk away; every step seemed an eternity as the bar re-achieved that pensive, overwhelming feeling every holy place gains by being emptied.

Hand on the door handle, the last face he looked into was Dean's. The boy's eyes faltered under the weight of Jon's unspeakable sorrow. But the door opened, and Jonathan alone, went out into the cold, dark winter's morning.