In The Eyes of The Stars

They were drunk when they arrived. Roy felt the walls of the bar as they ascended the stairs while Lue tried to prevent the blood from fleeing his wounded heart. He imagined plugging its holes with his fingers, one after the other, in a fruitless pursuit to mend what he knew were terminal wounds. Roy sensed his friend’s destruction, fed off of the perilous energy, and used it to compel him up the stairs and into another bar so that they might both feel okay for just one night. The lights in the bar were like those of an old tv, seemingly fading into the realm of a memory incurred one midnight long ago. The wall behind the bartender stretched so high up Roy felt it would be necessary to get a ladder to retrieve the bourbon at the very top. Lue locked eyes with a woman leaving and almost poured his entire soul into her eyes before she ripped them away. Roy secured a seat at the far corner of the bar and beckoned Lue away from his interpersonal insanity. He sat and began caressing the tendons in his hands. Roy got the bartender’s attention and ordered two beers. He looked at Lue in the static light that fell over him and asked a question. 

“Do you think we die faster out there?”

“What do you mean?”

“It seems death’s decay latches faster to the sailor than anyone else. Virility sacrificed to the god of favorable winds, thrown into the drink with the oil, slick and black and writhing…” 

“Your head is bursting from those fucking books Roy.”

“Maybe so. At least I’m not afflicted by rumination.”

“Fuck do you mean?”

“Nothing.” 

He tossed back his beer, feeling eyes upon him. 

“How’s your dad?” Roy asked, resurrecting what appeared to be an accursed conversation. 

“Hanging on. He’s the last man in my family, you know? Besides me I guess.” He offered a wide and agony riddled smile before pounding his beer outright. 

“Whiskey please!” He shouted at the bartender, slamming the butt of his 805 on the countertop. She looked at him for a moment, scrubbing the empty section of counter, then twitched into motion for the whiskey. She set the glass before him while Roy looked on, nodding at the bartender and receiving no consolation in return. Roy cleared his throat. 

“You know there’s a saying about the people on the military ships, that they lose their minds from the waiting. Maybe it’s happening to us.”

“Those would be the guard, whose job it is to just wait for things to happen. Classic stuff really. But not us. We’re grounded by the money.” 

He launched a mouthful of booze down his esophagus and began to laugh. Roy felt no warmth emanate from the sound, which rang like a bell in a deserted church, flock long dead, calling to nobody.  This feeling struck him as so uncanny that a certain burn developed within, like he had been shunned from that same chapel so the crows could listen instead. 

“You know what Lue, I think I know what your problem is.”

“Yeah? Enlighten me.”

“You are a sociopath. Ever heard of that?” 

He spat on the floor, drawing a host of eyes. Roy put his hand around the back of Lue’s neck feeling the warmth of his body seeping into his own, before it was ripped away by a belaying hand. 

“So you’re a fucking doctor now, huh? I didn’t know doctors moonlighted as the engine room bitch.” 

Roy’s head swam with half-articulated retorts, culminating in a sensation of rejection that plunged itself into his own heart, corrupting his resilient blood. He dug his fingers into the flesh of Lue’s back until the man swatted away his arm. 

“You trying to get sweet with me kid?”

Roy stood, knocking over his stool. Just then, the bouncer made his presence known. Roy locked eyes with him. 

“What?”

“You two are trouble. Get out.” 

Lue laughed like he had just huffed nitrous, and Roy nodded, ushering his friend out of his seat so they could make their exit. They stomped back down the stairs out onto the ruptured street. Ragged groups of people swarmed along the sidewalk, prompting the two of them across the street to where a derelict business allowed for relative peace. They sat before the windows, reflecting the lights of the bars into infinity, and continued their jibbing. 

“Your fault, you know.” Roy said. 

“Maybe it was yours and you’re just too firmly planted in your own cerebrum that you were ignorant of your own transgressions.” 

“You trying to imitate me?”

“It’s not hard to do.” 

They looked at each other for some long moments. Roy’s large and sad eyes caressed Lue’s porcelain complexion, while Lue saw something catch fire within Roy’s gaze. The drinks could not drown their emotions, the tidal wave of them doused every flame, with the exception of the one which compelled Roy to slap his friend with the back of his hand. Lue stood, cradling his face, not shocked, but as if it had confirmed a thought that had been worming through his mind since they got off the boat. 

“Come on then.” Lue said, raising his fists. Roy planted his back foot into the gum-stained concrete, and felt the song of the old streetlight above as confirmation by the universe that violence would be their only deliverance in that moment, as he sent a punch just past Lue’s chin. Lue planted his fist in Roy’s stomach, causing him to lean his body into Lue’s for a sweet moment before they righted themselves by a push that set them back into their defensive positions. Lue threw a jab that connected with Roy’s mouth, ripping away at his lower lip, causing blood to fall freely as they both issued a flurry of punches, most of which caught only air, before Roy clocked Lue on the side of the head with a wild hook. He put his hands on the base of his head and cried out, overflowing with a sadness that had been stuffed away for years. But Roy kept on battering his head until Lue fell to his knees as if he were submitting, when he wrapped his arms around Roy’s legs and brought them both into the filthy brine of the street’s gutter. They writhed in a shared agony, Roy’s blood covering the front of Lue’s shirt, onto his exposed chest, mingling with his thick chest hair. 

They rolled over, with Lue laying in the street, and Roy sitting on his crotch. Roy looked across the street as people had arrayed themselves to watch their scuffle. Blood wept from his mouth as he shouted at them, until Lue pulled his body back to him. They looked at each other for some long moments, while the alcohol worked its tainted magic on their discretions. Roy and Lue met each other again, this time with their lips, drowning away everything that had led to their fight in a single moment of unrestrained passion, sweeping aside years of compulsory friendship to unleash a lifetime of unexplored desires. Roy’s blood was in both of their mouths, intermingling with Lue’s tears that fell freely. Catharsis embraced them both in that moment until pragmatism crashed into their rapturous moment. They were wet and bloodstained as they stood, dusting each other off. 

“We should go back.”

“Right.” 

The dock was close enough to the bars that they could walk back along a sparsely lit waterfront trail. The ocean disappeared into a gaping shadow, overhung by a shawl of bright stars that they both watched as they walked along. Lue still cried, and in between a deep shuddering breath he managed to say something to Roy.

“When did you know?”

“When we first met.”

“I meant…”

“Ah, yeah. After my marriage fell through I had suspicions. You?”

“My whole life. Just never came into being like this. Pretty fucked up if you ask me.”

“It is but, there’s something sweet about it, you know?”

They locked eyes, then came to a stop. They kissed again, then turned and leaned on the rail, looking at the stars and the ineffable dark raging on the horizon. 

“Want to walk on the beach?” Lue said. 

“Sure.” 

They hopped the rail and walked toward the thrashing shadows. Lue spread out his arms and laughed, spinning toward Roy, who could see the relief flow through his friend in that moment. They stopped just where the tide dissipated into a line of foam and came together. 

“What if we could stay here, forever?” Roy said. 

“I know a way.” Lue replied in a whisper. He began picking up stones scattered along the beach and filling his pockets with them. 

“You can’t be serious, if you’re thinking what I imagine you’re thinking.”

“We can’t go back there and be together. You know what they’ll do.”

“But we can’t just die because of them. Wouldn’t that be the worst kind of quitting?”

“We’re not quitting.” His pants were heavy with rocks then. “We’re trying our hand at a new life.” 

“I’m not sure what your conception of the afterlife is, but mine surely doesn’t involve drowning in this lightless ocean.” 

Lue outstretched his arms again, walking back into the water. 

“I won’t let you do this Lue!” Roy cried, expression wired with horror. He started toward his friend, grabbing at his shirt which now hung loose around his body. He couldn’t pull him back, for the force of the tide sucked him down into the water in tandem with the weight of the rocks. Only his head remained above water as he shouted back to Roy. 

“I love you Roy. See you in the next life.” 

His head slipped away, totally lost to the blackened waters. Roy dove in, reaching, but it seemed his grasp could not catch Lue’s shirt or any part of him. He stayed in the water struggling until the last instant where it seemed he would pass out and die just like Lue. He retreated, poking his head above the waves, and returned to the shore, crying out at god, willing him to make sense of his broken life. No affirmations visited him aside from the sound of the water thrashing and the presence of the stars which hung in the heavens like a host of eyes, collectively watching his agony unfold in their great cosmic pact of silence. He sat there on the beach for an hour, shivering after having been drenched, wondering what he should do in that moment to correct the atrocity that had just taken place before his eyes. 

He dragged himself to his feet, weeping all the while, and staggered back to the trail to return to the ship. He watched the stars as he walked, eyes piercing lightyears to interrogate the grand spectacle of life above. He wondered how such a beautiful structure could oversee such barbarity on earth, while they sat in their nebular sofas and knocked beers together and didn’t fret over the peculiarities of the insects squabbling on the planets they oversaw. Such a rage fomented within him that it carried him the rest of the way to the dock, up the rickety gangway, and onto the gray bulk of the military ship Roanoke. He came to the galley with vengeance in his heart, and stood, still sodden from his struggle in the water, before three members of the crew as they played poker and laughed at eachother. 

“Hey!” He barked. Their grizzled heads snapped to him. 

“Roy.” One said, raising his beer. 

“You motherfuckers.” 

One of them stood, spinning his rooted chair about in the silence of the galley. 

“What’s your beef Roy?” The standing one said, clad in a boiler suit and a red bandana. Roy inhaled deeply to issue his indictment with as much force as he could invoke. 

“You all play like you’re old school, hard edged and unflappable, but you’re really just tired old men with no connection to what it is that makes you a person. You are imprisoned by tradition to the extent that you think it’s your entire identity. You’re as good as dead. Dead as Lue.”

Roy buried his face in his hands, feeling as if his entire life had slipped away in one night. Whatever life that had been, after all. 

“What happened to Lue?” The oldest man at the table asked, squinting through his glasses. 

“He fucking killed himself because he knew life would be hell for him if he came back here. That’s on you.” Roy stumbled into the hallway, wracked by grief as the man with the bandana came to his side. 

“Why did he do it?”

“Because he was in love with me, you trog.” 

The man splayed his hands, backing into the galley to spread the message to his compatriots. In a moment they filled the hallway, barking words at him until he produced a rock from his pocket. He brandished it before they fell upon him. He clocked the old man in his head and put his lights out in one motion, rearing back to strike the man in the bandana when he felt a blow to the side of his head and an arm wrap around his neck. He planted his heel in the crotch of the man issuing the headlock and fell to the floor. He gasped for air, scrambling to find the rock, as blood from the old man’s head filled the hallway, causing each man to slip, as they roared like beasts, he took up the rock again and bludgeoned the other man to death while receiving blows to the head, unnaturally resilient, like an avenging angel, revoking life from those who took advantage of Providence’s mirth. 

The man in the bandana reeled back in horror of the brutality, slipping on the blood and contacting his head on the deck, knocking him unconscious in one fluid stroke, ceasing the chain of events, and returning the hallway to silence. Roy heard people coming from the upper decks, and knew he would never get out of prison when they discovered what he had done. He rose to his feet, covered in blood and with a blackened visage, he walked to the porthole in the galley and looked out upon the lights of the harbor. He looked at the glassy black water and saw the stars reflected therein, reaching downward into another world, one where he hoped Lue waited to join him, so they could sail away from earth on a sunbeam, luminescent and unshackled.

“Roy?” 

His eyes refocused on his surroundings. He held his phone, which displayed a picture of him and Lue at their high school graduation. His eyes looked through the grate beneath his feet at the third engineer’s bald head, which shone like a beacon beneath the hard white lights of the engine room. 

“Yeah?” 

“Cooler’s out of ice.”

“Alright.”

He looked at the picture again, at Lue’s piercing blue eyes, and wondered what could’ve been if he had ever professed his feelings.