Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:31:32 -0700 (PDT)
From: BR
Subject: two boys a love story part 9

If you're not 18 or not legally able to do so, please don't read this
fictional story with non existent characters and situations which are not
intended to resemble any actual persons or events.


			  Two Boys: A Love Story
				  Part IX


It was quiet, deathly quiet in St. Joseph's Catholic Church as Mom and I
arrived for Don's viewing. We entered through the front door and were
greeted by two novices who showed us to the viewing area. Several people in
black whom I did not recognize were speaking to each other in hushed
tones. I looked around to see if Adam and Maddie were around, but I didn't
see them.

We went to the viewing area and I saw a closed oak casket surrounded by
candles. Mom and I kneeled before the casket and then crossed ourselves. We
retreated to the lobby and were led into the church. We sat at a pew on the
left hand side towards the back. I looked around and still saw no sign of
Adam, Maddie, or Sherry anywhere. I saw Rich and James and several other
acquaintances of Don's that I recognized from the house. The rest of the
people sprinkled throughout the church I didn't recognize.

It had been a week since Don had died. Toxicology reports were still
pending, but a preliminary autopsy showed that he likely died of an
accidental overdose of a combination of cocaine, heroin, and alcohol. His
blood alcohol level when he died was .30, which by itself probably would
have killed him. His death was ruled accidental, but I really wondered if
he had given up on life and decided to end it all in a binge to end all
binges. Marco was believed by the authorities to have provided the drugs
that killed Don, but they couldn't gather enough evidence to charge him
with anything. The entire house had been cleaned top to bottom. Marco was
absolutely devastated and moved out of the house. He was not at the funeral
today, as he couldn't bring himself to face Adam and Maddie.

It was discovered that Don owed two years of back taxes on his business,
and was about to be sued for five months of back rent. His "estate", such
as it was, was a tangled mess of debts, overdraws, and liens.  In short,
Don was absolutely penniless. Despite all of this, he never once missed a
child support or alimony payment, he always made sure that he could pay
those.

The organ started playing and the service then started with the funeral
procession. Two alter boys led the casket, which was being pulled on a cart
by a sacristan. It was followed by the priest and then the family. It was
then that I saw Adam. My breath caught in my throat when he walked in. He
was dressed in a sharp, black suit with black polished shoes. He now had
flowing long blond hair down to his shoulders. He looked the same, but was
a little taller and a little bigger. He looked absolutely golden, and I was
mildly tempted to call out to him. He looked grave and had a maturity about
him that I don't remember seeing before. Behind him was Maddie in a black
dress. She had matured into a beautiful and graceful young woman just like
her mother, who I saw following behind. I also saw two older women who I
assumed were his sisters Linda and Catherine. Catherine had her husband and
her three grown daughters with her. Linda was by herself.

During the service, between all the rites and the mumbo jumbo, the priest
talked about Don's life. Most of the stories I had already heard, about how
Don's father supported his mother, himself, and his two sisters as a
professional gambler, and was away for months at a time. He talked about
Don's efforts to become a professional musician, his time on a commune in
Italy growing figs, his first marriage, and his estranged twenty seven year
old son (who did not attend the funeral). I sat there thinking about how
much bad luck and wasted potential there was with Don, and I really felt
sorry for him.

After the service we all gathered for the reception in the lobby. I was
standing near the door with Mom watching the mourners filing out. We then
saw Sherry and Maddie come out, with Adam behind them. They were all being
given condolences as they walked out. It was Sherry who saw us first and
the three of them walked right over to us. I hugged Sherry, and then
Maddie. I then saw Adam there, with a serious look on his face and his
hands in his coat pockets. I walked over to him and we hugged. I was glad
to see him, but the circumstances allowed little joy in our reunion.

"Adam I'm so sorry about your dad..." I whispered in his ear. He tightened
his embrace a little and we stepped back and looked at each other for a few
moments before another mourner came to give Adam his sympathy's. Adam
accepted the sympathy's with a mature and gracefully stoic dignity. He
seemed like a wizened old man in a 12 year old boys body.

After a while Adam, Maddie, and I got a chance to step outside and talk. We
all hugged again and I gazed at them both, they were so beautiful.

"So how is the surfing, Adam?" I asked.

"It's cool. I go out every day before school and after dinner. I don't
really do soccer anymore."

"You look really nice in your suit, Adam." I said.

"You do too, you're dressed really nice." He said.

"You're voice is changing, Buyer." Maddie said.

"Yeah, at least it's not cracking or anything." I said.

"It sounds deeper, it used to be really high." She said.

"You look absolutely beautiful, Maddie. I really miss seeing both you
guys. We used to have some really great times." I said.

"We miss you too, Buyer." Adam said.

Before Don died, Adam and I were starting to communicate less
frequently. We initially were texting and calling, sometimes up to five or
six times a day. Once school started we were communicating less and
less. Adam, unlike me, was actually having sort of a tough time. He didn't
know any of the kids and he was having a harder time making friends than he
had in elementary school. He was tough and smart, though, and he
persevered. When he started surfing he finally found a group of friends
that accepted him, and he was settling into the California beach life as
though he had always been there. As our new interests grew, our separate
lives were becoming more and more distant. We were fading from each others
lives, but we had both also known that it would probably wind up being that
way. We had no choice but to accept that it's difficult to maintain a close
friendship when your friend is 2500 miles away. We still kept in touch to
tell each other what was
 going on in our lives, what was troubling us, and what was gratifying. We
were both discovering, however, that the current people in our lives could
serve that same function just as well, so our emails and texts and phone
calls were becoming more and more formal, less intimate, and perfunctory.

A group of mourners and family came out, and Adam and Maddie were soon
surrounded by a crowd of well wishers. I retreated to where Mom was and we
decided to go ahead and head back home to prepare for the wake.

The wake was held at our house. Don's landlord was nice enough to transfer
the lease over to us, so we had the place to ourselves now. The rent was a
lot higher than it was on our old house, so it was pretty tough on us, but
Mom made it work. Mom refused to rent the basement out, she wanted it to be
our house, and it was.

Mourners began arriving a short time later. I kept an eye out for Adam and
sure enough, he and Maddie and Sherry soon came walking through the
door. It was absolutely wonderful to see Adam in the house again. Almost as
soon as Adam came in he asked me to go down to the basement with him so
that we could talk privately. We bolted down the stairs while the adults
mingled and tried to be as relaxed as the situation permitted. we went
downstairs into the vacant basement and I turned on the light.

"Wow, it looks weird in here without Marco's stuff." Adam said.

"Are you mad at Marco about your dad?" I asked as I sat down against the
wall where Marco's couch used to be.

"Not really. I know that Dad did dumb things. It's not Marco's fault." Adam
said.

"I wish he knew that you thought that, he took off thinking that you and
Maddie blamed him for what happened." I said.

"I wish I could tell him too." Adam said.

"You're so beautiful." I said.

"You too. I think you're the best looking boy I've ever seen." He said.

"So...are you...with anybody in Malibu?" I asked.

Adam smiled and pulled a picture phone out of his pocket. Apparently Sherry
finally relented and let him have one. He walked over and sat down next to
me and showed a picture of him with two other boys his age. one had short
red hair and freckles and the other had long blond hair and blue eyes like
he did.

"This is Tanner and Gary." He said.

"Both of them?" I asked with a grin. Adam smiled and nodded. "At the same
time?" Adam nodded again and grinned. I laughed, "Wow Adam, only you!"

He then reached over and ran his hand through my hair and I ran mine
through his. We then leaned over and kissed each other on the lips. It
wasn't passionate, just tender, and it provided closure. We both felt ready
to move on now.

We returned upstairs, and Sherry immediately told Adam that it was time for
them to go to the airport to catch their plane home. We all hugged, said
our goodbyes, and I watched as they opened the door and walked out into the
sunshine, as he walked out Adam turned around and looked at me. I waved to
him and he waved back as he disappered out the door forever. I smiled to
myself. I didn't cry, didn't get a lump in my throat, or feel depressed. I
felt happy that I was able to have the gift of Adam's love and friendship,
and I knew that the most treasured memories in my life would be of him, and
would be forever.

 As time went on we sent less and less messages to each other, and got less
and less responses. Eventually messages began to go unanswered. Then I
discovered, after deciding to send him an email after four months, that
Adam's account was deleted. There was no trace of him anywhere that I could
find, it was as if he dropped off the face of the Earth. I looked up
Lintronix online and found no listing of any such company having ever
existed, I saw that Gerald Pipkin's Wikipedia article was suddenly no
longer up. Eventually I stopped seeing any reference to Lintronix and
Gerald Pipkin anywhere. It was like neither had ever even
existed. Eventually, people from that elementary school that I would run
would say that they didn't remember an Adam Fitzgerald, or even me for that
matter. Eventually, the events of that time began to become murky and hazy
in my memory, like a half remembered dream right at waking up. Also like a
dream, the memories would recede and
 vanish when attempted to be accessed.

One night, many, many years later, I was sitting in my den and staring at
my computer screen. Suddenly, I started hearing a carnival calliope
outside. It kept getting louder and louder. I started hearing crowds and
carnival barkers and music. I looked out the window and saw that my back
yard and beyond was filled up with a large and crowded carnival, complete
with a big Ferris wheel, dazzlingly lit up. I put on my slippers and a robe
and went out back.  Right outside my back door was the carnival entrance. I
entered the carnival and walked among the tents. The music and the sounds
of the crowd were right there, but strangley distant and muffled, as though
underwater. The people milling about were all colorless, featurless human
shapes, permanent strangers. Suddenly, right ahead of me in the middle of
the crowd, in an intersection between four tents, I saw Adam. He looked
just like he did when I first met him, bowl cut, soccer shorts, white
T-shirt
 with the Seaworld logo, white socks and sneakers. He motioned for me to
follow him. He lead me through the carnival among the crowd. He then went
around a corner and I followed. Once around the corner, I saw that he
looked like he had at Don's funeral, with the long blond hair and the crisp
black suit. I followed him around another corner and he had turned into the
three year old Adam I used to see in a family picture that Don had in his
room, with his Osh Kosh overalls he wore and the orange rubber ball he was
holding. He motioned me at me again to follow and I went around another
corner. When I did the carnival all of a sudden went dark and silent. I
found myself standing in the middle of a bunch of empty tents with trash
and debris blowing about. Adam was standing with a dim white light around
him, as though he were standing under a fluorescent street light. He had on
the black magician costume that he had worn during halloween when we went
 trick or treating together. I started to approach him and he motioned me
to stop, and I froze in my tracks.

"Buyer." He said, his chirping voice sounding like it was echoing through a
great distance. "You know that you can only go as far as this, right?"

I swallowed and felt a lump forming in my throat, and silently nodded. A
gust of wind whistled through, blowing papers and debris around me... and
Adam, my sweet, dead son, whom we lost to cystic fibrosis when he was
twelve, was gone. I drew a shuddering breath and gave a little smile. I
then realized that there were no longer any tents around me, and that I was
no longer in my backyard, and that I was still sitting at my computer,
where I had been the whole time. Just then an instant message popped up on
the screen.  It had no address attached to it. It was a simple emoticon, a
smiley face. It was green and orange. I choked back tears as I put my hand
on the screen, and the image faded and was gone.

"Goodbye, Son. I'll never forget you..." I whispered. I then turned off the
computer, went into the kitchen, and got a Coke.

				  The End