He's the Air I Breathe

Side by Side

       White – of the scalding kind.

A colour that is the absence of colour.

Frank exhales. To his left, teeth clench. Or is it a lighter that has been ignited? His right eyebrow twitches. Heels click, antiseptic allure purls, paper sheets shuffle, and the scent of cigarettes filters his circumference, tearing the fabric of comatose apart. He tilts. Dean sits adjacent, hand upon Frank's wounded wrist. The latter's heart skips a beat, maybe two.

The crooner moves to rise, though he is ceased by a palm on his chest.

"I was told not to let you sit," Dean murmurs. His voice is unused, foreign, although concern is irrefutably decipherable. He presses his hand to Frank's cheek. "The fever is gone."

Frank stirs but remains exceptionally still for fear of dislodging his friend's hand. Curtains quilt. The sun kneels and lays its palms on either side of his bed.

Tongue dry; thoughts sluggish. "Where am I?"

"Mount Sinai Hospital."

"' Bet it's in all the papers."

"I wouldn't know. I haven't left your room, pallie."

An overhead plane resonates a soft tearing note. Rain trickles through downspouts.

Frank swallows. "I'm sorry, Dean, I... I."

Caressing his hand, Dean envisions Frank's pierced veins perpetuating blood to obscure his arm. He recalls the gaping room, tables starched with ash, his explicit declaration of Frank's undernourishment and leaving so much without a word of endearment. His sedated state is bought to reality. Indeed, without a spoken word, he is his dearest friend, but that does not mean he can depart without an utterance of love. Glaring bareness, vacant stares, and Frank's relentless frailty.

Dean Martin is entwined in the melancholia of it all.

"Don't apologize, Frank. I should never have left you alone," his eyes slowly fill. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have left."

Frank impotently squeezes his hand.

"Will you allow me to take you home?"

The crooner shrugs. "Sure, who else will?"

                                                                        *********

It is not the smell of serenity nor the smell of sanctuary. It is the redolence of desirable familiarity – a scent of reassurance that purls throughout Frank's bedroom. Jack Daniels lay supine. Cigarettes are paralyzed in an ashtray, forming a mound of misconfiguration as Dean submerges him with quilts to impede the onslaught of disparity. Has Frank's desperate yearning for endearment made Dean a fictional fixture of his furniture, or has he continually visited Frank that his sporadic absences are now vacant variables to an equation?

Blood seeps from the crooner's bandages.

Dean lifts his wrist. "You're bleeding again."

"It stops after a while."

A pause.

Frank blinks. "How do I look?" he asks. "Tell me the truth."

The truth? Like an abandoned dog in dire strait of comfort, a tormented soul dragged through the hordes of hell and back. His scars, usually masked by varying degrees of stage makeup, are prominent and seep further into the pores of his skin. Naturally, observation of such verisimilitudes dies on Dean's lips before they can be spoken as he rummages for an alternative truth that won't wound his friend further. He gazes into the fierce blue of Frank's eyes and believes for him to query, "How do I look?" is the bravest thing he has ever heard. There are mirrors, though Frank is trusting him to find himself, to face himself, and so Dean utters the only truth that's his to proclaim.

"You look a little tired, pallie," he gently states, a fraction from being timid. "You've been through a lot. Why don't you get some rest? I can stay if you like."

"Thank you," Frank whispers.

        Words cannot articulate their being, cannot decipher the trajectory of their reality. They're dormant to the existence of Dean and Jerry – a personification of love so pure that no managerial sway can mitigate, and yet, the absence of words is a blessing in hindering Dean's declaration of fearing what may come leaking out if the two may become utterly despondent, diminished into oblivion, but he sees Frank hunched and shivering while blood overruns the bandages.

"Explain something to me, Dean," he leans against the headboard, a stray tear lingering upon his cheek, "tell me how you can be so eager to live while I want to die. I have children too, for Christ's sake! Why do I want to die?"

       There's a calamity of disjointed movement as Dean sits adjacent, mattress springs sighing in reciprocation.

"People care about you, pallie. People need you."

"Nobody needs me."

"I need you!" his voice wavers. "You're children and Sammy too. We all need you."

Frank fleetingly shoves his knuckles into his eyes. Outside, skeletal branches thrash vehemently against the air as an aureate lighter settles within his grasp.

The crooner pulls an additional quilt to his shoulders. "Yes, but apart from those obliged to, no one else gives a damn."

"More people care about you than you realize," Dean proclaims.

"Who? Where are they?"

"I'm where I've always been: by your side."

"Apart from you?"

Dean falters. There was once a time when unyielding despondency over-taking Frank was an inconceivable concept – a time obscured by accolades and bobbysoxers grasping his bowtie. However, the crooner's present disparity has entwined them both in a structure of anguish. A dove swoops from an ivory branch and lands on his window-still. Frank taps the glass. The dove momentarily cocks his head, considering, before flapping away.

"Do you have an answer?" he asks. "I'm nothing! I've been utterly humiliated, and no one gives a damn! The slightest chance I have of redemption is this fucking film, and even Ava doesn't want to see me! Where is anyone, Dean!?"

Dean ignites a cigarette and gazes at his friend's trousers hem. "I don't know, pallie," he murmurs. "All I know is that I'm here."

       Lightning swells. Thunder barks. Frank stands, though nausea outmaneuvers him, and he collides with the nightstand, staggering and amalgamating with Dean's arms.

"Has winter come early?" he mutters.

"Not quite. The leaves were maple and aureate today."

"For now."

Dean painstakingly strokes his ashen cheek and places an arm around his waist. "Until December, Frank. Can you walk?"

Frank mutely nods, though kept in his endearing hold as he staggers upward. Tears grapple his face. Perhaps Dean avoids staring, for he is genuinely an irretrievable mess. A shrill, smearing note escapes his lips as he coalesces with Dean's chest. Encircling them are shelves starched with portraits, coated in sepia of beloved relatives. Nancy's unyielding angelic gaze. Tina's doleful pose. All eye him with equal levels of despondency and shame. Mangled amongst Dean's arms, Frank weeps forever heavier, for that is the pinnacle of his abilities.

"Help me," he pleads. "I can't cope. I can't –"

Fingers caress his skull. "Everything is going to be alright, Frank."

Dean's words move by unheard, for when Frank's tears subside, his wounds refuse to cease weeping. The chair is covered, as are the floor and walls. Dean and Frank, too, are draped in blistering red. His fate shall fall into the critic's grasp. They will maul him to shreds and stir the remaining pieces into an overused commodity, one to be flippantly plastered upon coffee mugs and calendars. With the ascenditure of his career, Frank vowed to provide for his family. Such promises have since dissipated into nothingness as he drowns deeper into the atramentous depths of redundancy.