Chapter Text
Silence in New York was a wish not worth its time.
I have spent my whole life conditioned to the average American night, ears filled with the muffled sound of sirens, car horns, yelling and laughter, all from my perfect box of a room.
In fact, the noise was necessary. A staple of homeliness, comfort. Even the frequent and unchanging pattern of creaking floorboards whenever Hobie went to the toilet in the night were just checkpoints that guided my mind through the dreamless sleep.
These sounds are neither annoying nor pleasant, simply…real.
There was so much life that exuded from the restlessness of New York and, on nights like those, where my hardened heart fluttered in my chest and my mind repeated the same desperate anthems and my breathing never quite slowed to sleeping pace, all I could do was listen. I heard the distinguished leather wrapped steel of a woman’s high heels on the sidewalk, I heard the conjugated deep laughter of a group of old men who slap each other on the back at their incessant clowning.
It reassures me that New York’s people don’t submit to guidelines of stability. That it’s ok to lay awake, unsure, drifting through this reality without bad or good. Without morality or immorality. Just life. Life that continues whether your neighbour sleeps or the sky turns black.
The only thing that does disturb me is silence.
With Hobie on a trip with Mrs DeFrees to Paris, the house is a little quieter than usual and although I have New York to keep me company, I must learn to live without reliance.
Ever since my Mother, I’ve been scurrying around like a starving rat in the sewer, pleading desperately to find enough bones to create a stable spine of dependence.
The closest I ever came to that was the company of my Dad and Boris. Dad provided what I know now to be a false figure of safety and knowledge, Boris was there during the nights, surging with an electric excitement that overwhelmed the crowdless, plastic streets of Vegas.
Hobie is my friend but he has never been a father. Even since we first met I was painfully aware that social services would not leave me with him, though I thought such a decision stupid. He did not provide the safe passage of comfort as my mother, none of them did. And the knowledge that an adult like me is unable to live independently without a comfort blanket makes me sick.
Even the painting is gone.
It was never mine to keep, I know that now.
But on the rarest night, with the bird behind my headrest, Boris snoring to my left, Popchik on the floor to my right and Xandra and my Dad drinking downstairs, sometimes it felt like a had salvaged enough scraps to nearly build my mother again.
At least a support system similar.
I know now of course that it was all a facade, Dad never staying sober enough to think an actual job was available to him, Boris being too self concerned to come with me to New York and the painting being a Russian text book the whole time. I know that I’ve had very few people care for me the whole way through. Hobie comes closest.
Suddenly, the hard sound of glass being knocked on filled the shop, reaching all the way up to my room. My head snapped up as I reached for my glasses and walked out my room, catching the time on my way out.
1:30 AM
I hurried down the stairs as the second round of knocking hammered down on the walls with a scary urgency. I turned on the lights to the shop floor, illuminating each antique with a new coating of gold. Downstairs was quite cold in the dark winter night and my bare chest wasn’t helping. My shoulders began to hunch over and my skeleton shook as I examined the figure outside the glass door.
Boris.
His frame was completely hunched over, with his right arm reaching above his head leaning on the sliver of brick wall next to the door. It was holding his body up.
God knows how he managed to knock on the glass so hard.
His head was directed toward the ground, his hair flopping downwards over his eyes which was rare; he often kept his hair, although curly and wild, in some kind of tidy fashion. His other arm was wrapped tightly around his stomach curling and clenching deeper with a panic that struck me into a state of clarity.
The clear frosted concrete of the ground drew attention to Boris’ lack of coat, He stood there in only a long sleeved black shirt that hugged his arms and shoulders quite flatteringly.
I leapt forwards to unlock the door and as the metal chains began rattling against the weak wooden frame, Boris finally looked up.
I thought he looked a little pale and ghostly before. He looked dead now.
Dark circles hung from his eyes like perfectly symmetrical bruises, so dark against the white surface of his skin. His lips were dry and devoid of colour except the very centre which looked cracked apart and crimson. There was a clear glossy coating of sweat that coated his forehead and either side of his sharp nose and his eyes were desperately clinging onto their usual erratic joy as they looked into mine.
I quickly pulled open the door, letting in the freezing cold.
‘Potter!’ He said, clearly gasping for air he couldn’t find, trying his best to cover up the illness or injury or whatever was wrong with him.
Boris always does his best to stay the comedian. He knows I see through the stupidity of false comfort.
He knew shit would go down in Amsterdam and he was still trying to protect me. I hate it.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked still standing in the doorway.
‘May I come in?’ He replied sarcastically not having moved from his position. I sidestepped my body out of his way, making sure to hold the door firmly open. ‘This is how you greet me eh? No ‘how was your week Boris? So good to see you’’ He was hauling himself up the small step and hobbling in painfully through the door, both arms now wrapped around his torso.
His concentrated, screwed up face didn’t match the lighthearted tone I was so used to hearing.
‘What’s wrong with you?’, I yelled as an attempt to make him explain faster.
Boris exhaled exhaustingly at me and paused for a minute, leaning himself against an old table that Hobie was repairing.
It was not an antique really. Hobie and I knew this but when Mrs DeFrees calls with a table she suspects may be worth a little, even if they both know it’s a complete lie he always does his best to keep it alive.
Boris pulled a little syringe slowly from his left trouser pocket, trying not to move his body around too much but by the face he made just moving his arm, I could tell he was in agony either way.
He flipped the syringe upwards, displaying it guiltily to me, unable to meet my eyes.
‘I need to use your bathroom.’ He said in a quiet tone I’d never seen him use before.
It took me a minute to realise what he was holding. On another occasion this window of silence would have been taken up by a snarky comment from Boris, but he was clearly too hurt to speak.
It was Narcan.
The same drug they had given that boy who collapsed the day they visited Horst’s drug den. Doctors call it Naloxone. I looked at Boris. Shame hung his neck as his arm dropped to his side and he waited impatiently for me to speak.
‘What are you on?’ I whispered.
‘Potter please, let me get this over with and then I’ll g-‘
‘What are you on?’ I asked more assertively this time. It was not often I held any kind of power over him.
This time it was he who took a minute to stare up at me. I wasn’t exactly in a position to be taking the high ground after he found me half dead in that hotel, but Boris wasn’t suicidal, he just fucked up and I needed to know how badly.
Suddenly, Boris placed the Narcan on the table and with a painful groan, took his right hand and began unbuttoning his left sleeve. He rolled back the material to reveal this arm.
My eyes widened at the sight.
Two giant bruises, spreading and disease like corrupted his bony arm. The higher up bruise, a deep purple colour on the inside, lined with a greenish yellow, wrapped almost entirely around the circumference of his arm.
In the centre of the bruise lay multiple puncture wounds along his veins just red enough to distinguish. Whatever vein Boris was aiming for had collapsed a long time ago.
He was on heroin.
My face was fixed on the intense horror of his mangled blood vessels. ‘How did you-‘ I cried frantically.
‘Please Potter.’ His great big black eyes glared up at me, quickly draining of life and so I nodded fearfully and Boris snatched up the syringe and headed towards the stairs.
I stood behind watching him eye up the stairs, contemplating how he would climb them. As if in slow motion he lifted his body up each step by the hand rail. I followed behind, ready to catch him, scared to touch him for fear I would increase the suffering.
Boris’ breathing had become unbearably shallow, a feeling I recognised as the last moments of consciousness.
It was then when I realised he didn’t want to just use my bathroom. Being here. Asking for my permission meant putting me through the torture of watching him vomit his guts out, pass out and wait until he wakes up.
Or of course he could die. Narcan was not a guaranteed cure.
It was unfair of Boris to put me through this and he knew it. If he could have gone anywhere else, he would have.
Unfortunately, I knew too much about overdosing for him to trust anyone else.
I also knew too much about Boris.
It felt like hours before we reached the bathroom. Boris stood in front of the toilet, staring down at it, apprehensive in a way Boris never showed. It’s hard to fake confidence while death chews away at your organs.
Like a baby deer learning to walk, Boris’ knees gave way and he dropped to the floor, hands grasping at the toilet bowl. Before he tried to induce any vomit, his head jerkily turned to look at me and for a moment I saw the fear in his eyes, not for himself, for me.
‘You do not want to see this Potter.’
‘No…I don’t’ I replied as I turned and closed the door. I knelt down beside him.
The side of his lips upturned for a moment, and then he faced to the toilet, and began forcing himself to throw up.