Chapter Text
The view from the Rivoli’s roof was not that dissimilar from their old Queens Street apartment. The major landmarks were the same. The sun crested below the Toronto skyline the same. The only difference was where the Rivoli was: below rather than to one side and visible only at an angle.
Matt had always imagined the feeling of being on the Rivoli’s roof as their greatest triumph. Ecstasy. This was Nirvanna the Band’s moon landing. Their Everest. Their Artika 2007. All he felt was the dull ache of Jay’s absence.
They had been so close. Jay had abandoned him just before the finish line. Flighty fucking Birdie.
Matt looked over the edge at the public. The golden light of early summer had fallen away to a chill.
He ran his tongue over his bottom teeth and scrubbed at his face. His hands came back damp. There wasn't an eyelash on them but he knew what he'd wish for if he had one to blow away. That it was earlier and that he had more time. That it was earlier in the day and that the sun was high in the sky and they were together on the roof so that when he looked to Jay he could see him how he was ten years younger, scruffy, blasted, and in flip-flops, dancing to their boombox. He could picture in how Jay’s aviators would slip down his nose from his sweat as he clicked his heels and gleefully showed their neighbours the Booking Book.
But it was a different time, different day. He couldn't look to the sun and burn his eyes out again with a doting Jay at his side. It had not hurt so bad with Jay there, looking after him. If he did it again now, would Jay be there at the hospital with him? Would Jay feed him soup Jay made? Help Matt dress in the clothes that Jay liked on him? Would Jay describe films that Matt knew off by heart but would see the details in it that Jay focused on? Would Jay abandon this fraudulent dream for him?
He did all of this for Jay and Jay didn’t even give a shit. He wanted to take another step towards the ledge but turned to Jared instead. Jared was stood stock still, camera balanced on a shoulder, his brow furrowed, eyes soft.
‘You think I pushed it too far?’ Matt said.
Jared just smiled slightly and cocked his head. He lowered the camera, fiddled with it for a beat and then clasped Matt on the shoulder. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Something wet and harsh came from Matt’s throat. It sounded between a laugh and an exhalation. It tasted like yellow bile and hurt on the way up much. Everything from his mouth did lately. ‘Yeah. Alright, man. Have a good one.’
Only when the chill of the May night began to leave a dew on Matt's neck did he leave.
---
Matt woke with puffy eyes. The morning was already half-finished, but it felt like yesterday’s evening had never ended. It was one of those hazy summer days where it felt like a perpetual golden hour. Downstairs, he could have sworn he heard Jay talking to himself.
Matt looked over and saw his grey trilby sat on his dresser. The thought of putting it on made him feel sick. He glared at it. The hat glared back.
He couldn’t be dressed as Matt Johnson from Nirvanna the Band that day. He would play at conventionality seeing as that is what Jay wanted. He would be Matt Johnson from slumming it around the house, from quick trips to the grocery store to get a demanding Jay popcorn before watching a movie, from visiting his family in Mississauga. He put his seldom-used glasses on. The outfit felt more like a costume or cultural appropriation. Something prickled at the back of his neck and he tucked his tag in.
He didn’t feel like himself. He did not want to be himself. He felt unmoored and listless, nauseous and numb. He did not want to talk to Jay.
Through the slats of the banister, Matt could see how Jay was sitting at the piano like a cat in a sunbeam, his dark hair turned reddish in the sun, his freckles were prominent down his arms. His dress shirt was thin and pink and stretched across his hunched shoulders. It moved with his playing. Something that soared and dived like a dream. The creases crashed like waves along the flat plane of his back. Jay sang like he was living it, completely method.
There was a dopey look on his face, like when a girl showed an interest in him before Matt had to shut that shit down for the sake of the band or like when Jay used to smoke with their neighbours.
Something about this performance rang true like Matt had only seen in film with character bleed. Like how Ellen Burstyn in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore shook and sobbed as she protected her son. She spoke in interviews Matt watched under his loft bed in the old apartment about how she had felt it so deeply she’d cried for an hour after. She had acted out her real anxieties on screen. Of the fear of her abusive partner hunting her down, of clinging to her young child, trying to protect him from the horrors of family. It wasn’t true but it was close to true that her body believed it and the mind followed.
Matt just sat on the top step and listened. Jay translated some jangle pop song to the keys so effortlessly it was like breathing. This was the most genuine Jay could be. It was hard to look away. It made Matt want to puff himself up, and, like when he was Tony, put his hand at the small of Jay’s back and tour him around a party talking about how wonderful and talented Jay was. Jay would preen and press himself back into the touch.
But look where that got us? He thought sourly as pulled the tongue of his Air Jordan out from where it dug in.
About a year ago, Jay’s sister, Siobhán, had come with her then-partner to take Jay away to Muskoka for a weekend. She reminded him of Jay in his twenties, where he had fizzled constantly under his placidity. There had been more of a push and pull with him then. Now, Matt could click his fingers, and Jay would only put up a show of protest before strolling to his side if it meant he’d get a treat.
Siobhán had picked at her Mackage pullover’s sleeve, flecks of red lint landing on their doorstep as Jay grabbed things to stow in an overnight bag. She was “eighties supermodel” gorgeous in the same way all McCarrols were: lithe, strong features, dark defined curls with kind, down-turned eyes. He likes Siobhán in theory as she is all the parts of Jay he likes but hates her because she listens to her mom about Matt.
Jay’s mom had been fond of Matt once upon a time. He had been as charismatic a child as he was as an adult and he’d talk to her frankly about how Jay was getting on whilst Jay kept her at arm’s length. Jay only really ever called family to ask for money. Matt called to update them about Jay. However, sometime in the mid-2010s, she grew as icy to him as she was to Jay. She no longer sent him a Christmas card.
He imagined how Siobhán would sit in an office chair doing her whatever mercurial job in tech that paid six figures and a serpent with those big McCarrol doe eyes curled down from the ceiling, Siobhán sat twisting the body around her finger like phone cord as she listened in.
‘I hadn’t realised you were still…’ Siobhán had made a circle with her right index and middle fingers. ‘Involved.’
Matt had given her a flat look. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘Does he still play the piano?’
‘He does.'
‘That’s good. I’ve missed hearing—'
‘We’re still in the band together. Trying to get a show at the Rivoli.’ He had added that last part to Siobhán’s partner. ‘It’s great. Jay’s great. We’re great.’
‘Oh,' she had said. ‘That’s great.’ Then she turned to her then-partner who had taken a step down off the porch. ‘Jay plays beautifully. If he’ll play for us this weekend, you’ll see. He went to Berklee. Mom always thought he’d go on to be a concert pianist, you know, like at 888 Yonge. He was so talented.' She said it like Jay was some wilted faded beauty trapped in Grey Gardens.
'He still is,' Matt had bitten out. 'He's incredible. He's great in the band.'
'Your band: What's it called again?' Siobhán had asked with a very Jay-like pout.
'Nirvanna the Band.'
‘Nirvanna. The Band.' She had looked to her partner who had shifted slightly. 'It might be different now but I think their band is just Matt improvising over Jay’s playing. It’s an acquired–’ Siobhán stopped, cocked her head slightly and smiled. The same smile Jay gives him when he calls him “Matthew”. The pitying sycophant. ‘They’re a very avant-garde act.’
Avant-garde. Like those Lars von Trier films they showed in film school that the lesbians liked and that made his teeth ache. Matt had puffed himself up. He had begun going to the gym by then and could use his new heft to his advantage when he needed. ‘Jay likes our band. He’s happy. He’s brilliant.’
Siobhán had turned to him and in her eyes, he had seen that same look Jay would have when standing over him in their old apartment to lay into him and he was burning hot like the sun and it hurt but he did not want to look away like some pansy. He couldn’t help but want to be in Jay’s orbit when he was like that. It was always when he was at his most gorgeous.
‘Yes,’ she had said, ‘I can imagine that a caged Bird likes to sing.’
They had stood on the porch for a while in silence. When Jay left, he’d allowed Matt a hug. Matt remembers how he looked at Siobhán over Jay’s shoulder, right into her eyes and saw his own smug look reflected back.
Maybe that was the spark of all that would happen. Jay realised that he could leave him by himself with very little coaching. Sure, Jay had called every night to listen to Matt talk, but it wasn’t the same as being in his pocket.
Jay wrapped up one song and was straight into another about horses.
Matt took his chance and sneaked downstairs to the kitchen. He jolted at the threshold. Jared sat on the counter eating some oat-based cereal. He paused when he saw Matt. Flecks of milk landed down his front.
It wasn’t uncommon for Jared to be here early. After all his years of hanging with the pair of them, it was comforting having him around. A steady, grounding presence in their life. There was a stillness about him Matt had only previously associated with hunters in the brush.
Jared often tagged along for excursions with the two for no greater reason than to shoot B-roll. People watching. Back on Queen Street, Matt once said if he was recording Jay without Jay knowing Jared would be a ‘birdwatcher.’ For the comment, Jay had stood up mid-Golden Eye session and ripped Matt’s controller out his hands and thrown it at his head. There had been a lump for two weeks. The bruise has spread from his crown to his brow. The doctor said if it had been a few millimetres down it could have caused vision impairment.
Jay was very doting for five months after that. Matt thought back on that time fondly. They’d broken into the hospital with Matt bandaged like a mummy, to steal Valence’s medical records to find something to blackmail him over.
'What if he has a secret child? Or an STD? What if he's like Roy Cohn, right? And he's pretending that he has cancer but it's actually AIDS? What if Valence has AIDS! Bird, if he does, we’ll have to go to the local bathhouses with Jared and have him film the proof.’
‘I don't think this is something we can be speculating over, Matt.’
‘Why not? Why not?! People speculate all the time and win money from it. We could win a show from it. Anyway, if there's nothing in the records we'll need to think of something plausible that he could have so start thinking what could ruin him!’
Jared would have done it too. Gone to the bathhouses if that had panned out that way. He has always followed the pair like a little duckling. Their tirades and antics breadcrumbs that led him down the path to “getting the best shot”. He clambered over furniture now if he thought it'd look cool in the viewfinder.
So, seeing him then, sitting with his camera poised in his lap, bowl balanced on top, eyes wide, made Matt’s hackles raise. He shifted a bit in the doorway and saw a completely alien version of him. The closest thing to that look on Jared’s face was a sneaking expression.
‘Oh. Uh, Jared. What, uh. What the fuck are you doing here?’ It came out as a frantic whisper.
Jared just looked back and swayed.
Then, as though he took sick pleasure in startling Matt, Jay answered. ‘He’s just hanging out. We were shooting the s█t a bit around town, riding the streetcar, but that got a bit boring, so we came back. Been playing some of the Sundays.’
Matt turned around and there was a little pleased smile that took over Jay’s face as he stretched out, his back popping in such a way that it made Matt wince. Jay then looked bleary eyed at his hands hovering twitchily over the keys. The first four buttons of his shirt were undone. The curls of his chest hair fully out.
Little Birdie’s got them stoned. Matt thought. The more dreamy and upbeat Sundays songs fit perfectly in his repertoire when high. High and susceptible.
‘Right, well, I suppose it’s a good thing I came up with a plan then, Bird. To get us unbanned. While you. I—I’m just gonna get changed– I’ll be back.’
Matt went to toe his shoes off, but Jay said, ‘Oh. MJ. Can we just have a video game day today? I really don’t want to do anything. I’m kinda tired from yesterday.’ He looked up from under his lashes.
God, he thought he was the master manipulator. That Matt was so easy. That Matt was remorseful enough for lashing out yesterday that not only was Jay due a treat but also that he would ask the question that was the equivalent of the first sprinkling of soil over the coffin of Rivoli dreams.
With clasped hands and tight jaw, Matt managed a ‘How did the interview go, Bird?’
‘Alright.’ He played a quick rift. ‘I played a few things for Harry, and he seemed to really like them all. I’m going to go for a follow-up next week sometime.’
‘That’s great. That’s real great, Jay.’ He knew he was nodding too much like one of those bobble-head tchotchkes but couldn’t stop himself. If he stopped, he’d cry. ‘Really happy for you.’
‘Thanks. So, video game day?’
Sometime in the spring of 2011, Matt had finally gotten Jay to quit gig work. Jay only ever did small things: Doing demo session work or filling in at jazz bars around the city when they had a residency performer fall ill or, very rarely, teaching the glockenspiel to first graders. Not enough hours, only minimum wage.
This had been the last step in streamline distractions into treats and incentives. Sugar and video games could all be provided for a job well done and Jay could get Matt’s undivided attention for acquiescing. Before Jay had been an attention floozy. Now, he got it straight from the source.
Matt had needled and needled, saying how he could support them both (with the money his dad wired him and the trust his grandmother had left him) until they got a show and then the band would be so popular it would support them both.
‘Just think about it, Bird! We’d be fully in. It shows commitment. Like a branding or a tattoo. No distractions from the band.’
Jay had winced and had pulled himself up to rest his elbows on his knees. ‘I don’t want to brand myself, Matt. I don't like needles either. They give you drugs through those.’
‘Fine. A cut and then a handshake. Mixing the blood. It’s a metaphor anyway. It shows how dedicated we are. It's more a mental thing. It’s all mindset. Bird, don’t you want to get the show? This is the only way. We need to be serious about this.’
‘I am serious.’ Hunger and hurt had been in Jay’s eyes in equal measure. ‘You know I am. Why do you think I’m here with you if I’m not serious about this? I want this as much as you, Matt, you know that.’
‘That’s good then. I want you to imagine that we do a plan, right? And then Valence or whoever sees us and they’re like, “Woah. These fine young gentlemen are such serious musicians. Their whole life purpose is about playing a show. Why, we must have them at the Rivoli. I'd love to have them for dinner even. That piano player is so handsome. Maybe my daughter will be interested”. Bird, we’d be in’ – he had snapped his fingers – ‘like that.’
Jay had sat up, eyes wide like a cat having spotted a laser dot. ‘You really think that I’m–?’
‘Think? Jaybird, come on. I know!’
‘You do. You always know.’ Bashfulness coloured Jay's cheeks.
The blinds had been shut despite being during the middle of the day. Matt remembers the living room as a warm red. He had hoped that had disguised his own stupid Finnish flush. Behind Jay’s head, one of the pictures of General Mao had flopped in half. The adhesive had dried.
When they had been packing to move house later that year, Matt found a pamphlet in the bin of the agency Jay was with. A business card for a charity was stapled to it with a note in biro etched in on the front in an unfamiliar hand.
SHOULD YOU NEED IT
All that work undone by one forgotten B-Day.
—
The next week was awful. Not only did Jay not want to do any of Matt’s plans he would often get up well before Matt, disappearing into the city for hours only to return with reusable tote bags stuffed to the brim and takeaway for two. Matt didn't realise he even carried cash or had a card. Matt always paid for them with the card his dad got him.
If Matt left his room before Jay was back, he’d go to the gym to get his frustration out and then walk around Trinity-Bellwoods or Kensington-Chinatown until he tired himself out. If Matt didn’t, he’d mope upstairs online reading about upcoming Magic sets, arguing on film forums, bingeing past the point of fullness until Jay knocked on his door to check in on him.
On the third day of this routine, Matt sent Jared a text to only come over if Matt reached out.
On the eighth, Matt finally indulged his niggling curiosity and managed to peer in one of the bags. It was full of thrifted clothes. A pair of Gap jeans; a brown blazer with proper lining; two dress shirts with the original price tags on; a V-neck t-shirt that was so sheer Matt could see the capillaries of his fingers through it. There was also a five pack of new underwear in the plastic package and socks plastic stapled into the cardboard backing and most strangely a cardigan, brand new and full price.
Matt tried to think back to all the outfits he’d ever seen Jay wear, and he could not think of an instance where he wore a cardigan. The closest would be his quarter-zip fleece but this cardigan was one-hundred percent sheep’s wool and the bistre colour of his usual blazer.
‘Birdie?’ Matt called in his gentlest tone. The tenderest nickname was only busted out when he really wanted to cushion Jay’s feelings or, more damningly, when his fondness for Jay was too much to bear. He kept running his hand over the V-neck, how it would look on Jay. ‘What are these for? A plan?’
Jay glanced up from the sofa, his DS held loosely in his hands. ‘They’re my work clothes.’
‘Work clothes? What do you need– What’s wrong with your current clothes?’
‘Nothing,’ Jay said. ‘I want to feel, you know, fresh. New.’
‘Like you're born again ready for the working world? Nubile fuckin' working Bird.’
‘Sure. I guess. More like I want to put some effort in, you know.’
‘Sure. Yeah. Sure.’ Turning back to the bag of clothes, Matt took each item out and pretended to fold them. ‘So, you’re going ahead with the job thing then, eh?’
There was a little exhaled laugh. Matt could imagine how Jay’s top lip would curl over his gum, showing his cute messed up teeth. Matt could also imagine how they could drip red with blood from a shattered nose.
‘Yes. Yeah, it’s going ahead. I had a tour of the office on Wednesday, and they’re all really cool people, MJ. They said they go out for drinks once a month and they said people usually bring someone to go with them and I mentioned you and that we’re in the band together. They said you could come along once I get settled. What do you think?’
Matt wiped at his face. He shook out a dress shirt and refolded it.
Jay must not have liked his silence because he said, ‘Matt, come on. This is– It’s a big deal for me. It’s four days a week. Nine ‘til four. Twenty dollars an hour. We’ll see each other in the evening and on the days that I have off we can try and get a show. Well. We need to get unbanned first. But that’s solvable! I’m sure you’ve come up with a great plan for it. So, can you be a little more enthusiastic about this for me? You know how I wanted to do jingle writing.’
‘I still. I don’t fucking know. I’m just confused about what you need a job for.’ The words were thick like treacle.
‘Oh my God. I just want to. Isn’t that enough of a reason? Why’ve you got such a f█king hard-on about this?’ Petulant, passive aggressive, pretty, passionate Jay. No amount of taming could overrule instinct. Five years ago Matt would have goaded more until they were holding each other down telling the other to concede. Now, he just felt nothing.
Matt looked up to the ceiling. The paint was beginning to peel. When had they painted it: just after they moved in? Over seven years ago now. Matt remembered it so well. They’d gone to Canadian Tire on Dundas and bought paint and did not buy covers for their furniture. Several items of theirs still bore the scars of those days.
Matt often dreamt of that summer when they moved to their own house. He would retread those days before he fell asleep. Lying in his bunk, he followed the Matts of nights past down the path carved out in the tall grass. Those days stretched for weeks at a time. They glowed rose-petal pink in his mind and smelt of chicory, suncream, smoke and coconut shampoo.
There had been such a feeling of relief to no longer be renting and excitement to decorate it the way they wanted. They were like real adults, no longer playing pretend. Jay had had a ditzy grin on his face for the whole month of July and Matt was sure he had been just as bad.
They’d christened the house the same way they’d celebrated moving into their apartment with Thai takeaway, cheap beer and a Mario Kart tournament. Fireworks had been bought but they’d held off lighting them that night.
The CRT had been balanced precariously on three cardboard boxes because they couldn’t remember where they put the TV stand. For once, Jay had won Rainbow Road and, in his delight, jolted up so fast he yanked all the cables, causing the CRT to tumble. Their first night had ended with the pair wrestling on the uncarpeted floor, nails poking into their backs, as they pulled at each other’s hair, calling each other faggot, laughing deliriously from exhaustion and drunkenness. If not for his awareness of William Dean Howells’s ‘Christmas Every Day’, Matt would have wished for that day for the rest of his life.
They had understood each other so easily without words back then.
Jay’s hand on his arm startled him from his reverie. ‘Matty?’
‘Sorry. I’m sorry.’ Matt still did not turn to Jay. Instead, he moved to face the stairs. ‘I guess– I just don’t really know. I don’t know, Birdie. I don’t. I don’t get why you want to. Isn’t this enough? Haven’t I done–’ Matt sighed and rubbed his salt-streaked face with both his hands. ‘You know what, it’s fine, Jaybird. It’s fine. I’m going to go out. Play some Magic at the store on Yonge. You don’t want to come. It’s alright.’
That was the last they spoke on it directly. After that, it was even more stilted. Jay bought dinner (Polish on Matt’s card) for them on Monday evening. They sat on the sofa watching Todd Solondz’s Happiness.
‘I’ll be out until five tomorrow,’ Jay said. Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character talked on the phone about all the depraved things he wanted to do but all Matt heard was static.
‘Alright. I’ll come up with a plan while you’re out.’
All he got back was a small, relieved smile and a pat on the knee. His body hummed.
Matt didn’t sleep. He sat on the sofa watching Jay’s body on the bottom bunk. If he squinted, he could see the pink tip of his tongue sticking out, and how his lashes fluttered.
He felt sick, he felt there was a great emptiness that had just opened inside him and he could stick his hand in and find nothing there except droplets of blood that came from his throat. He was being left behind. They’d built this whole life, this whole stupid nice fucking happy life together and it wasn’t enough.
Matt wasn’t enough. Not any more.
Jay – pretty, stagnant, vapid, vain, doltish, naïve Jay – had outgrown him.
Who was Jay without Matt? Who was Matt without Jay? They had eroded away at each other until they fit together smoothly. A pot and a lid. It’d been a two-decade long process.
In all honesty, Matt didn’t care much for music. He didn’t know much about it. He thought of songs in terms of which films they had shown up in and where they did. But he cared for Jay and Jay cared for music. So, Matt made himself care.
Matt knows that what he wants isn’t really the show at the Rivoli, it’s to keep Jay with him. Matt wants to be the amorphous being of Matt-and-Jay until the curtains close on the human race but can be content with being the amorphous being of Nirvanna the Band until the Rivoli shuttered and then Matt would improvise. He had over a decade of experience. He could have figured it out. But it meant nothing now.
When Jay had his first recital at age twelve, he wore that stupid suit which had sleeves slightly too long, and Siobhán, who had only been six at the time but still had that awful blunt cut fringe, had mocked him for it. Matt, then ten, had sorted his collar and hair out like his mother had done for him at his grandmother's funeral and told him to kick their asses. He’d watched his friend, gawky and scrawny, transform on that stage into something he’d never seen before but saw daily now as an adult. The willowy savant who was as gorgeous as the music he played.
It had made him slack-jawed and giddy. He never wanted to look away.
Jay’s mother had smiled and whispered to him, ‘He’s very good, isn’t he?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘It’s all he talks about. The piano. And you, of course. I think he’s going to join the Symphony when he’s older. You’ll help him, won’t you?’
Matt had turned his head to look at her slightly. Her dark eyes had gleamed like lights on the harbour. Her hair had been all piled-on top of her head, so he could see where at her temples she was greying. All her wrinkles were happy ones.
If Jay looks like her when he is older, he had thought, I’ll be one lucky guy.
‘I’ll do anything he wants.’
She had grinned, tongue peaking between her teeth, like Jay.
He looked at her and all he could think was Jay. Jay loves music, Jay loves the piano, Jay loves me. If I loved music like Jay loves music, Jay would love me more.
It wasn’t enough.
Matt dug his nails into his knees. He had little green and purple crescents up his arms and across his thighs.
If the house caught on fire now from the dodgy wiring that Matt definitely had hired an electrician for, or was struck by lightning, or the ground opened beneath his feet, or a streetcar came barrelling into the bay window, Matt wouldn’t even give a shit. If he died, he would welcome it with open arms. What difference would it make?
He trudged upstairs and closed his blind with a snap.
Jay wanted the Matt of Nirvanna the Band gone. The only way to get him back would be to reinvent himself to fit around this new Jay. He’d done it before. He could do it again.