#shh i know they are very different bands but they four guys from working class towns who used books and movies and creativity to escape | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

likenessofwolf-blog · 7 years

Photo

Victor said that if they could manage to build something out of the wreckage of their former lives, they’d be some sort of heroes. That was a hard pill to swallow for a twenty-one year old kid who had regular, half-remembered but disturbing nightmares of a car crash, but Victor was not perturbed. Boston, he said, was their oyster. Nevermind that Frederick was there for school and Vic only couch surfing and lucking out with the fact that he was momentarily the only one in his dormitory. Freddie had been a fool to think he could just walk away from it all, his brother, the neighborhood, and not be followed. After a few weeks, the things Victor said were beginning to make a sort of sense. He found himself slipping back into an old role he had believed college would help shake him of. Maybe he was right; it didn’t have to be the typical path. They could emerge triumphant their own way.

“Boxer or the bag.” Victor was especially fond of that one and like most of his favorite things he’d impressed it on his kid brother.

Victor was sitting on the edge of the bottom bunk at one side of the room with his elbows on his knees, watching The Highlander. It was the afternoon movie, and had all the good bits edited out for the daytime slot. It played on Freddie’s tiny, dorm television with snowy reception in slightly adjusted but familiar scenes.

“I don’t know why you’re watching that.” Referring to the loss of meaning inherent with the edit and nodding his scruff covered chin in the direction of the screen.

Victor made a face as if he were aware of the inadequacy, but admitted to nothing. Instead, he pulled a cigarette with had been waiting for him between the crook at the top of his ear and the knitted hem of his beanie. He tilted his head to the flame in the cupping of his palm while he thought of something else to say. “We’re going out tonight.”

Freddie didn’t argue with that part. If Vic had his mind set on tying one on there was no stopping him. He was like their old man that way. Three or four bourbons in and he was everyone’s friend. The most charming and good looking man in the room who seemed to magnetize women with the barest glimpse of his darkness. Passing the half-dozen mark and he got reckless. That was when they bet too high when Freddie wasn’t sure of the count and, too often, washed out. More than ten, they’d both end up bloody and breathing hard, sharing a nearly forgotten, luke warm pint sized glass bottle in the alley.

Victor had an invitation from a girl he described as having golden hair and long legs to come to Grendel’s Den – a bar in Cambridge, near the university square and well out of their depth. BU guys were not precisely the top of the food chain in that neighborhood and Victor wasn’t even that, but somehow there they were. It was not all that different than the way – a few days later – he’d show up with a stolen cable box and smug expression, swiftly solving the problem of bad reception and afternoon movies. No explanation as to how he worked the magic; it just was like that.

Freddie was an imitator. He practiced and practiced, absorbing every word shared, until he mastered each and every trick. But it was never natural magic for him. Slight of hand was the attractive cousins of conning. Freddie learned them through methodology. If you could conceal an ace, you could steal a watch. If you could keep someone’s eyes on yours, they weren’t watching any of the fifty-two cards. I also helped if you could count.

“Aw – C’mon, show them, Freddie. Be a pal. Show us the trick.” Victor knew how it worked, of course, but he had his arm slung around his statuesque blonde and put on the show for her sake.

Freddie was huddled around his beer. He wore tattered denim and a long sleeved black shirt with logo so faded it was no longer discernible what band it belonged to. The back was a little clearer – Tour 1999 – and a list of cities touched. He did not fit in with the sweaters and roman alphabet crowd, but Victor’s girl had her sister with her who had the same coltish, long limbs but was a few inches shorter dark, pixie cut hair and doe eyes. She piped in and won him over.

“Yeah, c’mon, Freddie. Show us.” She smiled sweetly.

“… Yeah. Okay. Alright. Here…” He reached out to take her by the wrist first, then her sister. Each girl was stood apart by several feet but facing each other by his direction. He cleared his throat and tried to deepen his voice, sound commanding. It was very simple magic, but he started while looking at the little fairy girl and nearly lost his train of thought. They did not even notice.

To the blonde, without turning, he said, “You… You’re going to keep your eyes open and stand here, because you are our witness,” then he focused on her sister.

“It’s important here you listen to my instructions exactly. This is all about connections. Like the one between you and your sister… “ He helped ease her into place against an unoccupied spot on the wall where she’d be mostly out of the way of drunks during the process. “Or you and me.” He smiled there and the way she blushed up at him said he was doing something right. “Now, you’re going to close your eyes and just focus on that. Connection.” She did.

Freddie allowed himself only a second to admire the dusk around her dark lashes before turning to her tow-haired sister.

“Now… “ He only mouthed the word as he approached. With one long fingered hand he gave her a silent but heavy with meaning push – two fingers center left chest over the blonde’s heart. Firm enough she was nudged back and had to steady herself by planting her feet. As he did so, his other hand raised a single digit up to his lips – shh. No one made a sound and for a moment it seemed as though even the ambient noise of the pub had been turned down a notch.

He turned once more, centering himself between the girls. Victor had a wolf’s smile slashed across lightly bearded features. There were only a handful – perhaps twenty five or thirty, but arguably even less – tricks like this one which relied on mentalism as much as they did deft handiwork. This was one of the oldest, and simplest. He knew just how they worked. Still he liked something about seeing his little brother put his flair to it, a bit different every time.

“Alright. Open your eyes. She did and met his smile with a dreamy one of her own. “Now tell us what you felt.

There was a moment’s hesitation as if she wasn’t certain she trusted her own senses enough and feared she was wrong, then - “I felt someone tap me over the heart.”

Her sister clapped both hands over her mouth and squealed, wide eyed.

“What?” The pixie was confused. Had she gotten it wrong? “Someone touched me.”

Victor was laughing loudly and throwing back his beer. This never got old.

“Did you know he was going to do that? How did he do that? Holy shit.” His date was still wide eyed, but now turning her focus to him, demanding answers to how her sister felt through her while ten feet away with her eyes shut.

“Someone explain!” The brunette pleaded, now looking to Freddie imploringly, distressed by her sister’s shock.

“While your eyes were closed, I poked your sister in the chest. You felt me poke you.” Not a single lie to be found. Only slight of hand.

Now it was her turn to cover her mouth and stare. The rest of the night Freddie felt like he’d gotten away with something that went above and beyond pick-pocketting or hustling cards. She looked at him like he was some sort of magic. Progressively, but pretty quickly, the brunette – her name, he learned, was Katie – got closer until she was hanging with both of her arms up around right. She was clinging to it so naturally it would seem like they were long-time lovers and giving him big, brown eyed stares of admiration. Frederick felt like a fraud.

Three months later he and Katie were a regular thing. They hadn’t put a title on it, but it was clear they were both comfortable and attracted. They spent most nights together in one or the others tiny living space, huddled on twin beds and barely dressed. She read voraciously and he enjoyed watching her do it while they both should have been sleeping. His own sleep had never much improved and he didn’t mind being kept up by her. None of it was perfect, but it was pretty good and laced with the easy acceptance of youth and inexperience.

That night, Victor dropped by with a pizza and beer to watch the fight on cable. Their guy won, and that lead to a long night of his brother reminiscing about his own time in the ring and if only he’d kept at it instead of squandering his talent and youth. Twenty-six and already an old man in his own estimation. Katie slunk off to bed first, bored of listening to the boys talk and class in the early morning across town. Freddie joined her a bit more than an hour later with a belly-full and fuzzy-headed. He dropped in beside her and right into a fitful, uneasy sleep.

He was in the wreck again. The cabin of his father’s car filling rapidly with icy water and unable to move. His chest was being crushed again against the white-wall seats by the steering wheel. He could feel the broken ribs and punctured lungs filling with fluid of their own. If the cold lake water didn’t do it, internal bleeding would have, but he was not thinking at all about the pain. He would have chewed his own limb off like a trapped animal if he could have gotten to her then, his panic was so great. She was unconscious and he watched as her perfect mouth and nose slipped beneath the rise of water first with terror gripping his heart.

“Freddie! Goddamnit. Wake up!” He was being shaken.

When open and blinking wide his eyes were the color of ice water filtered through glass. Suddenly alert. He came to with such a jolt that he knocked her forcibly back with one arm. Katie in her heart-spotted underwear and his Joy Division shirt sprawled against the mattress on her rear, catching herself against the heels of her palms behind her. Her surprise and fear was all over her face, but quickly replaced with irritation.

“What the fuck, Freddie!”

“I’m sorry.”

He still wasn’t all there. Senses kept trying to trick him and go back to where he had been. His heart was hammering and he could not catch a full breath. He’d sat up too, and rubbed his eyes with one hand while reaching for her with the other. She retracted from it with a scornful look and he felt the shame of it making the tears he was only narrowly averting harder to hold back. His eyes clouded over.

“I’m sorry. I am. I didn’t mean to scare you, Katie. I didn’t hurt you, did I? …Please don’t be that way. I just… “ He had tried to explain it to her before as best he could and she’d been bored at best, unsympathetic at worst. She wasn’t a bad person, he knew it and cut her all the slack he could; she simply didn’t understand. In his frustration with knees drawn up slightly and arm cast over them, he let out a broken exhale as the other hand came up to pinch at the bridge of his nose.

“Jesus. If only you could call up this sort of emotion for anything in our lives.” She was up and on her feet a minute later, yanking on her pants and finding her shoes and bags.

“I have class.” The moment she said it Freddie stopped expecting to ever see her again. Three months was a good run. He did not try to stop her.

Later, alone in bed, he tried to shut his eyes and reconnect with the dream. So much of it had already faded as it always did. What he remembered was only due to the repetition of imagery. It came to him in flashes, but always from behind a curtain. The harder he tried to grasp it, the more it slipped away. No one could help him capture the truth of it, and he could not help himself. Depression began to take hold.

0 notes