Humanistic Denial

Pulack stepped out of the car with a grimace.  He hated coming here to this slum.  The smell was always overwhelming and seemed to follow him home. 

            The cold hit him as he stepped away from the car, pulling the last of the heat from within with it.  This place was always cold as well.  Pulack pulled out his gloves and slipped the comforting leather on.  Just in case he had to touch anything.  He was already regretting his choice to come down here and missing the comfort of his apartment.

He walked quickly, not looking at anything.  He hated the people here even more than the smell, since the smell more often than not came from them.  And if he even so much as glanced in their direction they would be looking for a handout.  Filthy unwashed hands, rancid breath, half-rotten bodies.  Pathetic.  The worst of society conveniently gather together so that the rest of the world could pretend they didn’t exist.  They should be left to rot, since it was their own irresponsibility and self-destructive behavior that had brought them here.  If Pulack could have avoiding coming down here himself, he would have, but this was beyond his control.  Hopefully it would be the last time.

            The door was down the street, squeezed in between a second hand music store and an old Mexican restaurant that had been shut down years ago.  The rickety door divided them.  Thin wood that swung open loosely.  There was no handle, and Pulack had to slip his hand in the gapping hole left behind where it should have been to pull it open.  Stairs were behind it, leading up to a small landing that had two doors side by side at the top.  The stench wasn’t as bad now that he was in this small stairwell, but it wasn’t gone.  The walls were covered in filth and were rotting.  The smell of mold hung heavily in the air, but thankfully that was the worst of it.

            The door on the right was boarded up, leaving only the door on the left.

Pulack knocked on the door twice, uniformly, then waited impatiently.

Distantly, someone answered.  The door was thin enough that it carried through.

“I’m coming.”

Pulack nodded at the door and started to strip off his gloves.  He shoved them into his pocket as the door swung open.

Nikki was shorter than Pulack, and Pulack was always distinctively aware of it.  It was just something he was always aware of when they first saw each other.

Nikki looked up at him, steady unsurprised grey eyes that had known, and then he opened the door fully and stepped back to let him in.  Pulack strode past him confidently, comfortable into the room.  Nikki received all of his guests in what he liked to call his common room.  To Pulack it looked more like a cross between a lounge and a laboratory.  A work table was pushed into one corner, a long efficient set of shelves lining the opposite wall filled with books and tools.  A couch was squeezed against the far wall, under the two windows.  Nikki had found it somewhere, a stained and torn maroon thing that had looked ready to fall at any moment.  A small refrigerator was squeezed into the corner by it.  It was the only refrigerator in the place, and it never held food.

Pulack stopped in the center of the small room to glare at the boy currently sitting on the couch.  The boy stared back at him passively.  Some of the filth had found its way in apparently.

“You shouldn’t let the mutts into your rooms.”  Pulack told Nikki, disdainfully and with a sneer for the grimy thing.

Nikki shut the door.  There weren’t any locks Pulack noticed with agitation.  “Andrew, this is Thomas.  Be nice Andrew.”

Pulack merely scowled.

Nikki moved to his work table and continued with what he had been doing.  It was an amateurish set up, but Nikki made good use of it.  Beakers of different sizes were lined up orderly, Bunsen burner, mortars and other things.  He was testing some kind of white powder from one of the mortars, mixing it in one of the beakers with some kind of clear liquid.  It turned blue when the powder was added and he nodded as if that as what he expected.

Pulack watched him in his element and wondered what his teachers would have thought to see their student now.

Nikki was moving again, silently as usual, sliding around Pulack easily and gracefully.   The smell of wormwood followed him and Pulack inhaled it in.

Nikki was pulling something out of his refrigerator.  A chemist’s bottle, a medical warning label on it.  His hair was long again and Pulack wondered when the last time he had cut it was.  The last time Pulack had seen Nikki it had barely reached his shoulders.  It was passed now by a couple of inches.

The boy on the couch said nothing and Nikki stood up and slipped by Pulack again, and back to his work table.

“I thought you were in Russia.”

Nikki didn’t look up from his work.  He was mixing this new liquid with some more of the whit powder.

“I was.”

“How are Adam and Isan?”

“Fine.  Same as ever.  In France now.  They’ll be coming in a week.”

Nikki didn’t reply.  He nodded yet again at the results he found and set the beaker aside.  He picked up the bag of white pills that had been sitting on the table and brought them over to the boy.  The smell of wormwood yet again, almost like peppermint.

“They’re safe.”  Nikki told the boy quietly.  “Will do hell to your liver, but nothing drastic.”

The boy nodded and shoved them into his pocket as he stood.  He nodded once more and inched his way around Pulack and out the door.

Nikki turned to face Pulack then, his face expressionless and his dark blond hair pinned back from his face on both sides.

“Why are you here, Andrew?  I thought you swore never to come back to this city.  Not enough culture and refinement for you.”

“It is lacking.”

The light in the room was weak on this side.  Over by the work table there were halogen lamps, tall ones that leaned over the table like silent observers.  By the couch, however, there was just what little light that could force its way through the wax coverings over the windows and those damned Christmas lights Nikki insisted on having strung everywhere.  They served no prudential purpose, but he had them strung along the walls, across the ceiling and hanging down.  They reminded Pulack of ivy, a mechanical sorry excuse for fake ivy.  Frivolous.

Nikki stared at him for a moment, then turned away again, moving into the tiny kitchen.  It was only a few feet wide, full of chipped tiles, stained counters and dented metal.  But it was clean, as clean as it could possibly be.

Nikki was looking in a cabinet, stretched out to reach it.

“You’re thinner.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

Nikki shrugged.  He never kept track any more.  “A few pounds I think.”  He pulled out a small brightly colored package that crinkled loudly in his hand.  He looked tired, but at least he was smart enough to find something to eat.

“Sit.”  Pulack ordered, moving into the kitchen.  It wasn’t wide, but Nikki kept a high stool in it for when he washed dishes.  It was as battered as everything else, but Pulack pushed Nikki on to it anyway.  He then turned around and went looking for a pot to boil water in.

“Tea’s in the one above.”  Nikki told him, tearing open his package.

Pulack pulled it down and watch the pot boil.  Nikki made quite sounds as he ate, the package crackling from time to time.

“Careful.”

Nikki set aside his food and took the cup cautiously.  Slowly, he spread his fingers out around the cup, soaking in the warmth.  The fingers on his right hand were a pale blue, and Pulack stared at them while Nikki drank.  His own cup sat behind them, empty.

Nikki’s grey eyes finally rose up from the cup to Pulack’s face.  “Why are you here?”

“You shouldn’t be wasting your chemicals on mutts like that one.”

Nikki sighed.  “He needed my help.”

Pulack snorted.  “He’ll be dead within the year.”

“He’s lived this long…”

“But he won’t much longer.  None of them do and you know it.”

Nikki glanced away.  He knew it.  He’d seen it enough. 

“Do you need more?”

“No.”

Pulack stared at him, noting the skin stretched over bone, bluish purple under his eyes like makeup.  Pulack touched Nikki’s forehead gently, cool, then started to tug out one of the hair pins.

“Do you need any now?”

Nikki winced, his eyes shutting briefly before fluttering open again.  “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Pulack frowned, but ran his fingers through Nikki’s hair.  “This place isn’t good for you.”

Nikki stared passed Pulack’s head at the cabinets.

“Who’s going to take care of you out here if something happens?  If it acts up again?”

“I took care of myself before I met you, Andrew.”  Nikki’s eyes shifted back to him quickly, then away.

“This place isn’t helping any.”

“But’s where I can.”

Pulack pulled away, taking the one step back that moved him from right beside Nikki to leaning back against the counter.  “I forgot about this humanistic streak.”

Nikki smiled slightly.  “Such a terrible thing.”

“It won’t make any difference here.  This place is dieing and nothing’s going to stop it.”

“I know.”

Neither said anything.  Pulack didn’t trust himself not to be aggressive and he didn’t know what Nikki was thinking.

“Did Isan like the book I sent him?”

Pulack sighed.  “Yes, yes, of course he did.  He was very pleased to hear from you, even though no letter came with it.”

Nikki winced and stood up slowly, laboriously.  Pulack moved aside to be out of the way and yet was ready if he was needed.

“That’s why their coming.”  Pulack told him as they moved out of the kitchen and the opposite direction from the common room into what served as Nikki’s bedroom.  This was his private room, the ones mutts like that boy never saw. The bed was pushed up against the far wall, as far away from the windows as possible.  Its foot and head were snug up against the two walls.  Another, smaller, worktable was in here, also serving the function of desk among other things.  One halogen lamp was in the corner.  A chest of drawers was beside it, blocking out most of the light from the two windows behind it.  More wax coverings on the windows and Christmas lights above.

Nikki moved over to the chest, and started looking through the junk on top of it.  “I had something for else for him.  If I find it, will you give it to him for me?”

Pulack leaned on the door frame.  “Why don’t you give it to him when he gets here.”

Nikki didn’t answer and Pulack knew why.

“You won’t even leave this place to see your old friends?”

Nikki turned to face Pulack slowly, his hand moving limply over the top of the chest and slipping off it.  His eyes were half shut, and his mouth a firmly pressed line.  “Why do you do this?  What do you want Pulack?”

“What do you think?”  Pulack straightened.  “I don’t like you living here.”

“I am not your responsibility.”  Nikki stressed.

“I’d like to make you mine.”  And there they were all over again.  The same play night after night, and in their case, every time Pulack found himself back in these rooms.  Irresponsible and self-destructive.

“No way in hell, Pulack, and you know it.”

Responsible, self-preserving.  Distant, logical, a denial.

“I can’t leave you to this.”  Pulack said, feeling all of the hate he could towards this place and its smell and its dirty walls and needy children.

“And you can’t stay.”

“Damn it, Nikki!”  Pulack wanted to push something, fight it.  “What am I supposed to do?  Leave you here, never knowing if you’re well, if something’s happened, that you could be dead because no one’s here to watch after you?”

“And am I supposed to sacrifice who I am to make things convenient for you?”  Nikki shouted back.

“And what am I supposed to do without you?”  It was desperate, weak, panicky, and Pulack hated it.  Despised it.

Nikki laughed.  It was mocking, but not cruel, never cruel, and still melodic like the high-breed thing it should be.  “What you did before you met me, I suppose.  Why do you insist on this delusion when even I won’t?”

“This is different.”

“It always is.”

Pulack’s fists tighten.  Nikki is still standing before him, just inside the room, but in the soft weak light from the window.  The dust in the air catches that light and reflects it back, and Pulack has to struggle not to lash out.  To break anything here would be tragic, but so was the urge to take Nikki by the shoulders and shake him, to force him, to take him, to remove him from this rotting place no matter how hard he fought back.

Nikki’s fingers slipped over his cheek and down to his neck.  He kissed Pulack gently, soothingly.  “You’re here again, Pulack.  You’ll stay the night, and maybe the next.  Maybe even the week. And then you’ll leave hating this place and me and sated for the time being.”  Nikki kissed him again.  “I’m tired, Pulack.  Why must we fight about this again?”

He let Nikki kiss him again, resolute on convincing him yet, and stayed the night.  He stayed for the next few days, until the stench and the poverty and the quiet refusal of him and the quiet acceptance of this place drove him out.  Pulack was certain Nikki would die there if he stayed, but he was too stubborn to leave.  He left frustrated with all of it, determined to be done with it, but also with the quiet trepidation this might be the last time he’d see Nikki.

The door at the top of the stairs stayed shut for the next three days, until Nikki’s equilibrium returned and he himself returned to his daily routine.  Humanistic, but a denial of his own.