Double Your Age - 3. Chapter 1.3 - The Fog over Lake Marron

The January air blew a cruel chill on Rich’s face. Reaching in to his jacket pocket, he retrieved a pack of cigarettes. As he inhaled the first drag like his life depended on it, his face flushed thinking about what Philip had said. He wanted the words to pass through him like the fog, never to be seen again, but they left a mark, like a sodden, persistent patch on his clothes. Being alone with his self-pity, his grief, was a drug; he realized that now. There was never too much of it he could have. ‘Surround yourself with people’, they had said, and that had only made him withdraw further. ‘Take it one day at a time’ and yet days pass and nothing changes. What does it mean to take things a day at a time when a lifetime is compressed into every waking second?

He teetered at the edge of the lake, looking at the murky surface of the water. Everything was perfectly still; the fog suspending life around him in its dense, grey cloak. I shouldn’t have come here, he though. He can’t help me. Nobody can. I don’t need anyone anyway. I just need – I just…

A lump so large formed in his throat that he thought he might choke; his breath grew rapid and tears flowed down his face as he screamed silently, not wanting to make a sound. His pain was an firebomb in a coalmine; imploding ruthlessly inside, with no external hint of destruction , just a slow, inner death, a lonely death; nothing else existed in the world, nobody could save him, nothing could make the darkness light again.

As he squatted down by the water, he heard a voice pierce through the fog. “Rich?” He turned his head, and then quickly turned back, not wanting to betray his emotions. Taking a large drag of the cigarette, he steeled himself and came to his feet.

“Yes?” he croaked. Then, clearing his throat, he repeated, this time with feigned composure. Out of the fog emerged the lithe figure of a teenage boy. Rich threw the stub of his cigarette onto the ground and stamped it out with his loafer.

“Rich?” Adrian spoke softly, humbly. “My dad asks if you want a hot chocolate.”

Rich looked around, as though looking for the answer, then re-trained his eyes on the boy. He was dressed only in a hoodie and navy shorts, and Rich thought he must be far too cold. Indeed, he noticed Adrian shivering, his thin arms tucked against his torso, his hands pocketed inside his hoodie.

Afer a moment’s hesitation, Rich replied. “Yes, yes that sounds nice.” In truth, he had not had much of a desire to drink or eat anything, but he knew that it was coming into the late afternoon, and that he had not eaten since the previous day. “Aren’t you cold?”

Adrian shrugged. “Kinda. It’s okay though.” He had grown taller since Rich last saw him, yet he still stood only around five foot seven. None of his family had been particularly blessed with height, but he retained his mother Evelyn’s soft features, her petite nose and her rosy cheeks, and his father’s dark hair. Rich sighed and nodded, a faint outline of a smile pencilled across his face, the first one in a long time. “Do you want to come inside?” the boy asked.

“Oh, I’d rather not,” replied Rich, looking down.

“Why not?”

Rich did not respond. Instead, he looked at the boy for a few seconds, until the boy spoke again. “OK then. But you can go into the workshop if you want. It’s probably warmer there.” Adrian pointed across the short edge of the lake into the fog, where Rich could just about make out a wooden shack that jutted out from an annex of the house.

“Thanks Adrian.” This had been the most words they’d exchanged in months. There was a distance between Rich and his uncle’s boys that felt like a rift to Rich; not only was it the age difference, but this, their life, their home, their circumstances, it all felt detached from Rich’s life. And so the relationship between them had been cordial at best and non-existent at worst.

Adrian faded into the fog, back through the kitchen doors. Rich thought about how the boys must have reacted to the news. They had barely known Quentin; he’d been to their house once, and had met them only briefly. He wasn’t introduced as Rich’s partner, but Rich was sure that they had been told at some time after the visit. How would they have reacted to that information? Not that they were discovering that somebody close to them was gay, but rather that they discovered that someone they knew, in some way shape or form, was, and would it have made any difference had they been closer? People didn’t care as much as he thought, as they rarely do about other people’s business, at least not nearly as much as Rich thought they did, and that was something he’d learnt over time, but that came undone every now and then when he’d confirmed that some relationship or another had frayed simply by the very fact of his sexuality. And so how would they react to this more recent news? Rich was sure they would rather have had nothing to do with him, this man who occasionally stepped in to their lives, only to step out immediately, not to be be seen for again for an indefinite amount of time.

Rich was sick of the introspection, the overthinking, the poring over details. What he wanted more than anything was a clear mind, but it was so hard to come by, and he didn’t know how to achieve it. The grass padded soft and damp under his feet as he approached what was ostensibly the workshop. It looked out of place at the villa, although it was tucked away in a corner of the grounds that made it invisible to guests entering from either the front door or the side-gate. Its wooden exterior was weathered and moss had begun to accumulate around the sides. There was something about the rickety thing that said, I want to teach you kids a lesson about making something out of nothing, although Rich didn’t yet know if this was the kids’ exclusive residence, or just Adrian’s, or neither. Stepping inside, he got a hint of an answer. The place smelled of teenage boy. It was, essentially, a mechanic’s garage. In the middle was a bicycle suspended on a stand, and the place was littered with tools of various sorts; not just those required for bike repairs. Rich didn’t know much about the inner workings of vehicles, but it didn’t look like there was anything with a motor that couldn’t be fixed in this place. Against the wall hung the usual tools; a saw, hammer, an electric drill, wrenches. Several toolboxes were stacked in the far right corner and biker gear adorned a wooden chair on the worktable at the back near the door into the house. The whole place smelled of wood-dust, damp, and adolescence.

Rich heard a rustling of leaves behind him. Startled, he turned around. Through the open door he saw Jonathan, peering into the shed. How he had appeared there so quickly was beyond Rich. Maybe the fog was that thick; so much so that people could slip through undiscovered. Maybe he’d been nearby all along.

Jonathan didn’t react to Rich spotting him. Instead, he looked past him at the bicycle, and then simply walked in without saying a word. Rich had expected a shy ‘hello’ from him at least, or for him to slink away upon his discovery, but all that showed was how poorly he knew him. The boy made his way around Rich and towards the worktable, where he picked up a multi-tool. He was quite different to Adrian in many ways; the most obvious of which being his demeanor, but also in physical appearance. He was the younger sibling – by one and a half or two years; Rich couldn’t remember – but was the same height as his brother. They both had dark hair, but Jonathan’s complexion was softer than his brother’s, and this formed a stark contrast between his skin and hair, which Rich found to be quite unique. And when the boy turned his face towards him, he took a good look, and felt a pang of nostalgia, like a thorn stabbing at his side. At first, he couldn’t place it. But as he watched the boy kneel down and unscrew the bike’s front derailleur, he knew what it was. He could see Quentin’s face in that boy; the shape of his eyes, the structure of his jawbone, the smallness of his ears. The similarities were subtle, yet powerful. Rich shook his head and rubbed his eyes. Surely he was just seeing Quentin in everyone? His breathing started to quicken. If there really was a resemblance, he would’ve seen it before, surely.

“Rich?”

The voice was Adrian’s. He was standing at the inside door holding two mugs, a look of confusion on his face. This was a strange scene to be sure. One teenage boy, silently repairing a bicycle, and his distant relative, standing in a state of grief, rubbing his eyes wordlessly.

“Oh, thank you Adrian,” Rich managed to coax his words to come out. Adrian made his way towards him, snaking around the suspended bike in the middle of the room. The chocolate drink was warm and comforting, sitting like a warm hug in the bottom of Rich’s empty stomach. Had the boys even noticed how much thinner he’d been? How many layers of fat and even muscle the grief had stripped off him, like a ruthless butcher?

The other mug had been for himself. “Doesn’t Jonathan want any?” Jonathan didn’t even look up. Adrian, now leaning against the wall of the workshop with his legs crossed, took a sip of his drink.

“No, he doesn’t like hot drinks.”

“At all?” Rich expected Jonathan to respond, but he didn’t. Adrian apparently knew he wouldn’t, so he responded immediately in the negative.

“Do you repair stuff too?” asked Adrian.

“Well, no. Not really. I used to have a car when I first got a license, it was a real clunker. I sometimes had to do stuff to it. Repairs and stuff. Because I couldn’t afford a mechanic.” The reality of the wealth disparity between them struck Rich as soon as he said this, and he felt small knowing that this person, who was so much younger than him, knew nothing of financial struggle.

“What was wrong with it?”

This was a side of Adrian Rich hadn’t seen before. He was talkative, inquisitive, curious. His questions were sincere. He cared. Rich didn’t know if it was because of this, or because of the distraction, or even because of the hot chocolate, or any combination of these, but he found himself slightly more energised than he had been for a while.

“Well, and this is kind of funny,” Rich actually found himself smiling as he started. “The engine would stall unless you had the hot air on at all times.” Adrian smiled widely, showing the metal braces on his teeth, which he quickly tried to hide by closing his lips. This was a habit Rich had noticed in the few times he’d seen him over the past couple of years. “So, it was always hot in there. Until I finally figured out that you could direct the air to your feet. Everyone who rode with me knew they’d be riding with hot feet. They actually called me Rich Hotfeet for a while. ‘Let’s hotfoot it to Rich’s car!’ It never got old for them.

The story had only caught Jonathan’s attention towards its conclusion, when he’d looked up at Rich for a few seconds, attentively, and then returned to his work. Rich saw the reflection of Quentin’s eyes again and his smile dropped. He wanted Jonathan to look up again, to feel Quentin in the room, yet the pain was so intense he felt it could destroy him. Shortly, Jonathan stood up and wiped his greasy hands with a rag that was sitting on the floor, and then silently and enigmatically walked out of the room. A silence hovered between Rich and Adrian; the air still thick and heavy where Jonathan had been just seconds ago.

“He’s – he’s always been like that. Don’t take it personally. I promise he’s normal.”

Rich’s head fell. “Oh it’s alright. He’s a good kid, I can tell.” Adrian smiled faintly. Rich did not at all feel that Jonathan was a typical, angsty teen. This was not the throes of adolescence being acted out in dramatic fashion, as one would expect. No; there was a sense that Jonathan had been, and would be, like this his whole life. Not rude, not stand-offish, not uncaring. Just silent, pensive; an observer.

“You know, I – ” Adrian shuffled uncomfortably, breaking eye contact with Rich. “I – I wanted to just say I’m really sorry for what happened to you.”

Rich felt choked-up. Before he completely lost the ability to speak, he managed to croak out “it’s OK, please, please don’t – don’t feel like you have to…”, but then he lost control over his faculties, and walked back outside into the fog, fell to his knees by the edge of the lake, and wept.