The Taming of Frankie Carrozza

Epilogue

Author walked amongst them as they all came venturing from separate directions out of the dense trees and into the brief respite of the woods made of a glade. The room tasted strongly of smoke, alcohol, cooked meat, popcorn, and laughter. Reader was here, lurking somewhere in the shadows and listening attentively; if full of smiles or tears or a deadpan expression, he did not know.
Chandeliers lit the way, entangled with overgrowth, making it difficult to discern where the metal ended or the twisting branches they dangled from above begun. The only other source of light was from a feeble sun, finding it difficult to pry through the leaves. Fireflies danced together at the edge of the bald patch in the woodlands, beneath fairy lights strung around the branches and crisscrossing over the aisles above, thickly intertwined with ivy that decorating them with natural wreaths and tinsel.
The grass was buoyant under Author's leather shoes as he marched up between the aisle that separated two columns of chairs like pews for a congregation parted before the altar. They were all present—or, rather, those who could be—taking their seats on the chairs that had weeds curling around the legs as though to keep them in place and moss and lichen growing over the tops of the desks like rust. He could see their faces, expressions smiling or resting, glowing with youth under the light of the chandeliers, the strings of fairy lights and the lit candelabras perched around the edges of the assemblage. Many of them were leaping over chairs and desks, submerged and overgrown with undergrowth, to shake hands with friends they hadn't seen in a very long time or waving cheerily to those much farther away.
Rupert Emmerich, the Effigy, sat quietly towards the back of the class with his fingers resting over the tops of his desk, bouncing a knee underneath and looking around himself towards his old comrades to ensure everything he was doing was correct by their standard; with a pen tapping off his top lip, he looked like a boy who wasn't sure if they had an assignment to hand in to Author or not. Vincent Carlyle, the Raven, sat at the desk beside him with his legs crossed and picking at his nails with a compass used in mathematics to draw circles; his slightly ginger hair gleaming redder than usual under lamplight, as pink as a drop of blood in a pint of milk. Edmund Giles, the Aesthete, was the only one haunched over his desk, scribbling a doodle feverishly into the corner of it and tipping his glasses up his little nose every once and awhile. The Chessmen, Xavier and Bradley Valentine, took heed of only one another's company, discussing the friends that surrounded them and admiring the neon signs dangling above like Christmas decorations. Hugo Brooks-Humphrey, the Preacher, sat with a simper on his cheeks beside Jeremy Belvedere, the Snitch, who was looking sourly at the cedars and the lichen festooned over the wood of his desk, trying not to touch it or get any of it on his clothes. North Jones, the Compass, with his head perpetually hidden underneath the hood of his black hoodie, was leaning casually on the back legs of his chair against a tree, being mindful so as not to knock down the Henry Scott Tuke painting nailed into the bark. Cedric Bucks Buckley, the Protector, sat in the second row, his form looking monstrous in comparison to the small chair and desk he'd been contained in, his knees rising up on either side of it, looking mostly uncomfortable and fascinated as he tapped one of the many naked lightbulbs drooping down from a nest of woven twigs above, closely knitted like cobwebs. Imogen Rose, the Jeweller, sat on the front row with her legs crossed, sparkling as bright and shining as silvery as the chandeliers. She had taken a seat directly beside Cahir Quinn, the Rebel, and Charlie Chance, the Scrupulous Scholar. On the other side of the aisle, The Maverick Philosopher, Frankie Carrozza, sat with an ankle balanced on a knee and an arm around the back of the chair that was occupied by Bethany Holiday. Trevor Hamilton sat farthest at the back. He might as well have been in another classroom, Author noted, as he'd dragged his chair away from all of them, smoking a pipe with his knees strewn across his desk.
Author ventured up the centre, smiling at each and every single one of them with a face adorned with a love reserved for all those present. I often wonder when you will all see one another once more—or, rather, if you ever shall do again, Author thought, as he made his way towards the teacher's desk at the very top, where the altar was stationed for mass. Will you attend the funerals, once the days come where you spend them raking through the obituaries, searching for the familiar names of old friends?
Author placed the back of his thighs against the desk, folded his arms and regarded them all fondly as they turned to give their undivided attention, creaking chairs and knocking desks. I know exactly what you're thinking: "Oh, but you know ... of course you know. You're Author, after all." Oh, but do I? Perhaps ... perhaps ... yet, perhaps I only know so much. Try as I'd like to believe I know it all—your beginnings, your journeys, and your ends—these are your memories I am telling, after all, and perhaps I only know thus far.
Author could hear Reader shuffle indignantly, sipping their tea, perhaps, rolling their eyes and sighing with frustration from beyond the bushes, the trees, and the glade. He chose to ignore their exasperation and tilted an eyebrow. Oh hush now, you. We only ever know everything up until the last word, not what happens afterwards or stories adjacent to the tale. A book is a very large world in very small hands; we only get to take a peak into the doorway for as long as it remains open, and never do we see through the windows of the neighbours.
'Now that we're all in attendance, the last lesson may begin.' Author said aloud, leaning his hands atop the desk and reclining back. 'Tell me, what became of Frankie's boys? One of you is a magistrate, I know that much.'
Bucks raised one of his exceptionally large hands into the air, far enough to burn a fingertip on a lightbulb. 'That would be me. I had hands for building, they said. No one expected much from me in regards of cleverness, but bribes get you farther, and they get you farther with me, too, sometimes, if your case is looking dodgy. I wasn't ever righteous as a schoolboy, so why bother starting later in life? I own a few decent nightclubs from it, too.'
'And the rest of you?' Author asked. 'I say, hoping Bucks here isn't leading by example.'
'I went back to Eton,' Jeremy Belvedere said sullenly, 'after everyone else had already left. It was the last place where I had friends; I couldn't get any to stick come Cambridge, so I went back to become the next history teacher, where I make friends and favourites galore. It's different in the tomorrows from what it was in the yesterdays, but I do see the next group of Dastardly Boys in every generation and appreciate it all the more and miss it all the same.'
'Bradley and I started our own production company,' Xavier Valentine announced. 'We're quite successful. We have offices in London, Paris, Los Angeles, Dublin and New York—like my words, minimalism garners interest. We're bored, but it pays for the country clubs, the wives, and the international flights abroad. Though, mind you, it might have been the worst decision we've ever made as there are times in which we don't speak for years because of some silly arguments over management.'
'I'm an artist,' Edmund Giles said. 'I couldn't give it up, no matter how much I was pressurised to by my father. A friend and I have a successful series of graphic novels on the shelves. I don't draw anything in leisure anymore, not once for pleasure, as all my hand does now is go to work on a tale about an intergalactic bounty hunter, which everyone thought was silly at first for a boy who attended UCL. I think I've squandered my love for it as a simple flower among the weeds no longer interests me; it is sad to say I've lost my fascination for finding the beauty in the world if it doesn't offer coin. I don't mean to say I am a sellout; I just mean to say that art has become as meaningless as crunching numbers to me now.'
'I took after my father.' Hugo Brooks-Humphrey sniffed. 'I became a priest.'
'Well,' Author murmured, amused, 'you were never very God-fearing though, were you, Brooks?'
'Not in the slightest,' he replied. 'I drink too much wine and take too many drugs at the weekends still, spiralling towards a deadly cardiac arrest at a very young age, I'd say. I only took up the cloth because I never really knew what I wanted to do with my life and this was an easy option made available. Mind you, I'm actually quite good at it though, making a believer out of a heathen, but I'm sad to say there is no authenticity to my words when I give another the faith. I lead a blind parish with empty words; yet, then again, they fill the pews come Sunday, so that must account for something when performing pious work under the eyes of Our Lord. God never gave me a purpose; and so a man made a spokesperson out of me. Still, I enjoy myself all the same.'
'What a waste of potential, Brooks.' Rupert Emmerich sighed from behind him. 'I always thought you should have became a TV presenter, like myself. For a boy who never said too many words, I found them all when I left Eton, spewing them out when it comes to global pandemics and harsher realities. I'm a hit because I say all the politically incorrect things and tackle topics one isn't meant to address. I have my own chat show and the ratings are phenomenal.'
'Very good, Rupert. I'm impressed that you've carved yourself out a tongue for debate.' Author smiled.
'It's all poppycock. I'm only in it for the girls, the glitz, the glamour, and the flashy cars, causing them to roar until they make hints of my speedy death. It'll be a sad day when I'm a middle-aged man in a young person's bar with a bared finger ... once I'd worked off the ring over the swollen skin,' Emmerich replied, shrugging his shoulders as he leant over the desk, gripping the edge as they all turned to look upon him. 'They don't warn you when it's over, your youth. Especially men. Girls commonly grow up quickly in schools and boys usually grow up slowly in bars. We're unwilling to pass our youth down like a crown to the next generation, bitter when it is yanked from our hands and we're looking at a sorry excuse staring back at us in the mirror, wondering when the skin became puffy and the sides of our hair had greyed. We couldn't keep Eton with us or the friends; we're all too small and life becomes too big. One thing remains from the primary agenda at the centre all the groups made—the Nomad Lads, the Mischief Men, the Revellers, and the Dastardly Boys—we just wanted to be loud enough to be heard over the din roaring from the world, if even for just a moment, fearing being smothered in it unheard, until our graves are our last desperate whisper.'
'Is that what you believe?' Edmund Giles said, turning to stare at his old friend from their schooldays. 'That the world must see and hear us so that we can be validated? Where did you go, Rupert Emmerich?'
'Edmund, my sweet cynic, there are two types of people on this planet: those who want to rise to the pedestal and have the world scream back their name and those who want the quiet life, finding family, friends and slight fortune enough to fill their bellies. The end goal remains the same—happiness is all we want, whatever the route to that may be. Either way, when we've accomplished everything we want, we'll be bored to death anyway, regardless.'
'Well, I hope you're happy, Rupert,' Edmund replied as he turned back on his chair to regard the rest of the assemblage. 'I truly hope all of you are.'
'I'm not happy,' his friend said, 'but I'm not unhappy; I'm only living, content with being alive. Happiness doesn't visit forever or for long. Listen, all those princes and princesses didn't live happily ever after all that often; they lived happily every other day, and fought about smelly socks, tax evasions, and dishes left unwashed in the sink in the rest. If we could be happy forever, I think we'd go mad, as positively bonkers as those minds that become disturbed by too many potent drugs. We're human, and humankind is constantly unsatisfied.'
'What a very pessimistic outlook,' Carlyle retorted nonchalantly.
'It isn't pessimistic,' Rupert responded, resting his chin on the desk, 'it is realistic. I can tell you now, that happy ending doesn't mean spending the rest of your days in happiness, it means being content with what you have.'
'Tell me then, Roo,' Carlyle droned, 'when was the last time you where happy after you became a media mogul?'
'When I reunited with Emily Jean many years later after two failed marriages. She was an old girlfriend of mine from my years at Harvard who had this grand vision of going off to find herself after something terribly traumatic happened to her in college,' Rupert murmured, resting his head in his arms. 'It was graduation day and I was waiting with Emily for an airplane to come and take her away so that she could backpack around Italy on foot. She took my hands in hers and told me that there was nothing left for her here, but me, and that she must do this on her own. She hoped that I could one day come to understand and would also find myself someday, too, before she got on the plane and flew away. I gave her my Harvard class ring to remember me by, and promised her I'd use it to marry her someday. I couldn't ever forget her, so I pooled all of my resources together many years later and tracked her down to Tully, in Australia, where she had been a widow of seven years. We got married in Bundaberg with our class rings and moved to Byron Bay. There are days where I'm happy, but I'm content in every single one. You would know, Carlyle, if you and I reconnected once again and became more than a Christmas and birthday card every other year.'
'I don't know what to tell you, dear,' Vincent Carlyle replied, drumming a hand on the desk and slapping an insect away from his ear, 'the West End has made of me a very busy actor and playwright.'
'Do you ever consider settling down, Carlyle?' Bradley asked.
'Not for a second,' Carlyle retorted, scraping off leaves from his boot on the leg of Xavier's chair. 'It never interested me. I find people are like shoes: they become tattered and worn, letting puddles in to soak your feet after overuse.'
'And what about you, North Jones?' Author called, redirecting the conversation as they looked over their heads to North sitting towards the back and picking at the bark over his shoulder. 'You're arguably the most elusive and enigmatic member of the Nomad Lads, so what of you?'
'I formed a band called the Directionals with three friends I'd made at Edinburgh University—Jimmy Easton, Sam Westwood, and David Southland. Our gimmick is that we only refer to one another as North, East, South, and West. We wrote a song called Isaac in the Air that earned international success in the charts when it debuted on Top of the Pops.' North rested his hands behind his head and looked to the tops of the trees, rubbing at his blonde buzzcut and fidgeting with the gold earring in his ear. 'I met Georgia Rose on tour when I played a gig down in Georgia, America, funnily enough, and we've had a torrid, sensationalised and constantly reoccurring affair that has been well-documented in the media ever since. She's the only Rose I ever see again, and my last, though weak, connection to Eton. Maybe I'll marry her one day if she doesn't kill me first.'
'Aren't you forgetting someone?' a voice drawled from the very back.
Author tilted his head to see Trevor Hamilton, leaning back on the two hind legs of his chair so as to be seen, with his own lanky legs dangling over the desk and puffing on an emerald hookah by his kneecap. Unable to refrain himself, Author smiled at him, betraying his wary affection. 'But of course, how could I ever? What was your outcome, Hamilton?'
'Devil forbid. Regardless of being the first, I'm easily the most important one out of Frankie's boys,' Hamilton continued, sweeping a hand through his silvery blonde hair and eyeing the rest of them dangerously. 'I'm his kooky inventor, after all. I made him.'
'You're not even one of Frankie's boys!' Imogen snapped, without turning on her seat. 'You're just Frankie's nuisance.'
'Nonetheless, carry on, Hamilton!' Author interjected, to keep the peace.
'Despite my little brief stint in jail for seven years, which Father finally plucked up the courage to ensure rather than sweep under the rug to instil some sense of responsibility into me, I'm a spokesperson for a rather major bank and several other colossal companies ... a spin doctor, if you will. I make a killing.' Trevor blew a hoop towards the lights and plunged a finger through the centre of it. 'Perhaps it was presumed my being in the nick would obliterate any hopes of a future for me and leave me in ruins, but it only delayed my undoubted success. However, despite Seraphina Rose's insistency that I prematurely draw my last breath, I'll outlive each and every one of them here. Be that as it may, due to my devious flouncing, my careless floundering, my wicked scheming and my illicit affairs catching up with me, I have all that I thought I've ever wanted, but only myself to enjoy it come the end. I suppose you can say I am only left with waiting for death.'
'I'd hoped you'd have mended your ways once you'd matured—if you ever did, that is.' Author sighed, drumming his knuckles off the desk behind him. 'However, it seems your Machiavellian ways have only evolved and strengthened alongside you on your walk down a path so dark and so easily avoided. I'd prayed you'd make some sort of peace with yourself, your sense of entitlement, and your wrongs, but that was too much to ask of you it seems.'
'Oh please, spare me.' Hamilton sneered. 'Vindication is for the fearful; portraying the essence of yourself entirely is for the bold. I wasn't a spoilt child throwing tantrums for all the sweeties I wanted in the shops, someday due to mature into a gentleman once I lost my sweet tooth; I was always a great mind that demanded sovereignty and anarchy since womb to tomb because I saw this planet as weak from the very moment I first opened my eyes. It is as though the world is on fire, and you're all commenting on the good fortune of the heat coming off of it. Alas, regardless of how I spent my final days, had I the chance, I would not go back to do it all over again any differently; I see it much like a captain willing to go down with his ship. Mark my words, they'll make a martyr of me, someday.'
'And now we come to you, Charlie Chance, one of the men of the hour. Wherever did you go?' Author said, watching the boy shift in his seat and ponder where to begin for a moment, looking to the hundreds of lightbulbs above. 'Tell me your story.'
'Two years later after the boys had left and the Dastardly Boys had disbanded, I graduated from Eton with a healthy stack of qualifications and my friends keeping their word: of promising to never leave my side,' he said, waving away Imogen Rose's cigarette smoke from his face as he briefly looked to the boy at the very edge of the gathering, the only one standing. 'I stayed in Eton town for awhile and worked in the local newspaper outlet, continuing to publish short stories and journalistic articles for them, whilst simultaneously redacting a manuscript for a book that was quite personal to me. My boat never sailed onwards towards matriculating to university, much to the displeasure of my family; I had adventures to partake in elsewhere and it would have taken up too much time.'
'And Imogen, what of you?' Author asked.
'Well, darling, I continued to gallivant across the world, of course, flouncing off towards different jobs in foreign lands for many a year,' she said, waving a hand that clutched tight to a cigarette through the air and sipping on a crystalline glass of champagne. 'I simply do not believe in brakes, and so on I soared on as a fabulous trailblazer, never ceasing and never believing in the meaning of it. I expanded my portfolio and even worked on many different films, having finally exceeded my mother's popularity and name, before setting up my own fashion magazine and company called The Perks of a Rose. I'm so terribly successful, sweetie, that it's all a rather great bore.'
'Yet, there remains one boy who is no longer seated amongst you,' Author announced quietly, glancing towards the edge of the class, where a boy stood, where many of them had been refusing to look towards. The lithe figure was only visible as light poured through his transparent frame, with another silvery shadow running far behind him.
'Yes,' Imogen said uneasily as she looked to her painted nails in her lap.
'Isaac Perkins worked at the Echelon Theatre and cabaret bar that Bethany Holiday's uncle owned,' Author continued for her. 'She had corresponded through several rather enthusiastic letters with her uncle about Izzy, having placed Perkins' name down for a job on Canal Street in Manchester years before. He was granted free reign of his own productions, in which most nights he performed renditions of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with himself, of course, to no surprise, decked to the eyeballs as Dr. Frank-N-Furter. He had been rather popular and well-received with critics, renowned across Manchester and various areas of England. Charlie Chance and Imogen Rose could be seen clapping avidly each time from the front row on the nights they were in town; though the house was always full, Isaac Perkins made sure that it was never too difficult for them to get the best seats.'
Imogen turned to lean an elbow on the back of her chair with her head in her hand, gazing towards the ghostly boy longingly. He was standing at the very edge, between a gap in the trees where it fell away into fields, as a gorgeous sunset bled down upon him from behind. 'As the newspapers and policemen reported,' Imogen said shakily, 'after a showstopper of a performance, in which he made a significant last-minute change to the poignant production by ending it with his singing an emotional rendition of When It's Cold I'd Like to Die by Moby to honour the victims of the AIDS virus, all the while swimming in a large martini glass, Isaac Perkins had left the Echelon Theatre late that evening still dressed as the lead in Rocky Horror, glittering bright through the night and, as always, standing far apart from the horde as something slightly more unusual and more fantastical than an everyday occurrence—a supernova amongst the stars. Looking as extraordinary as ever, Izzy was on his way to a nearby nightclub to celebrate his birthday with his boyfriend, Alejandro Bray, whom he had met whilst visiting Havana. Walking remarkably well through snow in a pair of heels possibly higher than any ever worn before, it took my heart when he stumbled into a crowd of people with so much hate in theirs.'
Author turned their head to see the boy, a pale phantom formed out of blues and whites, standing by the edge and staring blankly back into the glade towards them all, his colourless clothes blowing gently in the wind. Author envisioned Izzy's final performance, singing on his knees in the huge glass with his spine arched into a pose and his head tilted back, gazing longingly and reaching towards that great spotlight dangling above him with eyes sparkling with compassion, pouring yellow light down amidst the pale blue dreamy stage.
'He died from internal bleeding on the 1st of December, fourteen minutes past midnight,' Imogen said quietly, resting her chin on her arms as she looked upon the willowy spirit, almost seemingly etched out of lead, disregarding the second soul running through the fields behind him with a head full of the curliest hair and a face decorated by the biggest smile. 'He was alone ... he died alone. He was twenty-seven-years-old.'
The heads of the congregation bowed to stare at their interlocked hands in their laps as though in prayer or turned finally to look to the ghostly boy staring back in at them, deadpan and wordless.
'By this time, I had reverted back to my original name, Seraphina, and had flown in from Belarus for the funeral,' Rose said, putting her hand on Charlie's knee as he made to speak. 'His parents had followed my dear Izzy's wishes—to be buried in Eton, if he was to pass, the place where he was most fond of his life. I stooped to kiss him, but he did not kiss me back.'
'I recall it all so vividly. We acted as pallbearers to carry him on our shoulders, just as we weightily would for the rest of our lives, through a town so precious and integral to us one final time,' Charlie said, suppressing a feeble snigger. 'She came floating towards me through the graveyard like a fancy Grim Reaper wearing a short black Gucci dress, bright pearls and golden jewellery dangling from her throat and ears, topped with a very extravagant black hat that took up most of the vicinity, and the largest pair of black sunglasses hiding her eyes. Our giggles under the willows were his best-written epitaph, trying desperately to shed no tears for all the years we'd laughed.' Charlie turned his head to look to the rest of the Dastardly Boys seated beside and behind him as he spoke. 'As the mourners dropped flowers and bouquets onto the casket, Seraphina Rose placed a vibrant pink feather boa in with him and scattered a large handful of glitter across the coffin and grave.'
When he spoke next, his body had turned to face her, his hands clamped between the knees that pointed towards her. 'Alas, it was my proof that she truly cared for us, right down to the very crevices and hidden mysteries of her heart. She had come back to pay her respects and say her final farewell to her dearest friend, only to then jet off once more. I didn't believe I would ever see her again. I thought I may hear from her, every now and then, at the other end of drunken phone calls, long letters scented with cigarette smoke, citric perfume and bitter alcohol, or short and ecstatic postcards, but the next time I would set eyes upon her, I believed I may very well need to be heading six feet under, too. I knew she would never return to Eton again. She couldn't.'
'I remember looking down into the earth where my soulmate was eternally sleeping as I threw the feather boa around him to keep him warm and fabulous.' She sucked in on her bottom lip and looked away from Izzy Perkins, stirring in the breeze. 'With eyes full of true tears, I told him one final thing. I said: "Congratulations, Izzy Perkins, you little extraordinary bastard, you have done what no man could ever do before: you have broken my heart."'
'You had attended the funeral, too, hadn't you, Cahir Quinn?' Author asked.
Cahir shifted around in his seat beside Charlie, hunched over with his elbows balanced on his knees and his hand clutching a fist. He nodded his head. 'I was in town to sell me great-auntie's house when I heard the terrible news. I had to go, since I made a friend of him that last summer. One of the most important t'ings I remember from me days in Eton was ranting about Ireland at Glastonbury, getting mad at the boys and feeling distinctly then such a profound shift in the divide between. I'd stomped off and Isaac was the only fellow to follow after me. He caught up with me at the edge of the camp and we sat on an empty stage and shared a cigarette. He said something to me that didn't mean much to me then, but it kept haunting me over the years afterwards to become something to me now. He said ... he said to me, "People aren't going to ever take the time to understand you; they've either got their own t'ings going on or they're not ready yet to celebrate anything diverse .... that is so divergent to themselves or from the norm. But you've got your own struggles going on, now wouldn't you be a bore without them? Your struggles can be a very special and powerful thing if you can wield them correctly. Some people make celebrations, some people make films, some people make books, some people make art, some people make sonnets, some people make riots and some people make songs out of them. What are you going to make out of yours, Cahir Quinn? You'd best surprise me."'
'We'd met Cahir at the gate, full of hugs and smiles and tears,' Charlie said, turning to the Irishman. 'Do you remember? He'd then offered to take Seraphina and I on a night out on the town to an Irish tavern called O'Neill's that we'd frequented often in the days of yore, where the three of us drowned our sorrows together again that afternoon, laughing the night away with tales and toasting to a beautiful soul that departed prematurely without us, the kind of spirit that doesn't come around twice.'
'We simply must do this again, we simply must make a tradition of it!' Seraphina joined. 'It was a promise screamed throughout the course of the night, but sadly, come morning, one we believed not meant to be sincerely kept. We'd known then that the music had stopped and the old party had ended.'
'But sure be to God, we three started a new party and began to sing along to our own wee song.' Cahir grinned beside them, sharing it with Rose and Chance.
'We had our first drunken kiss that night, do you remember?' Charlie laughed. 'It was after we battled over picking songs on the jukebox; Cahir wanted I'd Do Anything for Love (But I won't Do That) by Meat Loaf to play again, Seraphina wanted Stay Another Day by East 17, and I wanted to hear Wonderwall by Oasis. In the end, we all settled for singing Fairytale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl repetitively, drunk and loud and dressed in black, as snow stuffed the windowsills of a pub empty of all other patrons but us as we swayed under Christmas lights glittering over the bar together and sung our hearts out over and over.'
'It was better playing any of that than Rose having me up Irish dancing to I'll Tell Me Ma for the umpteenth time.' Cahir sniggered. 'She'd nearly the legs worn off me into stomps.'
'We continued to kiss for several months after—'
'I'd prolonged selling the digs, see,' Quinn interjected. 'I'd found myself coming back a week later to stay for no reason at all, but one.'
'I still find it strange that we'd kissed by the jukebox,' Charlie said, furrowing a frown, 'since it took ages to coax another out of him when his Irish courage went out the window.'
'T'is a complex t'ing, fondness, when y'er heart and blood is Ireland-green,' Cahir explained. 'Affection is hard to come by in an Irishman because romantic intimacy is tough going for us when it's with another lad—we'd rather kiss your pecker than your puckered lips. Somehow there is no surrender of virility when it's a mickey in the mouth instead of a tongue—the former is seen as more intimate, ye see.'
'It was when we were returning from a back-to-back matinee at the cinema showing a trilogy of Stephen Spielberg's films—The Goonies, Hook, and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial—that Cahir had then proposed we go off to explore the world.'
'I had a few quid to spend after inheriting land from my deceased great-aunt, as well as receiving my share of the profits from the house being bought, quite a bit of money from her will and my share in the family pub being sold to a cousin,' Cahir said, lighting up a cigarette and tapping a lightbulb with a hand like a cat pawing string. 'The notion had come to me when I'd woken up in the middle of the night and caught me eye on Chance from the bed, sitting by the desk for many an hour in the dead of night, pouring over some old maps of the globe by candlelight. A few nights later, I woke from my sleep to drop tickets on the desk in front of him. "Hey, you going my way?" I asked. After a moment of wonder and brief hesitation, he whispered, "Never feel the need to ever have to ask that question again."'
Intrigued, Author watched as Charlie Chance turned a fraction of his head in the direction of Frankie Carrozza, but he didn't look towards him directly. 'I've become him now,' he murmured. 'I took the generous advance offered to me by my publisher for a manuscript composed out of letters I'd strewed across bedroom floors, letters meant for him, letters never sent, journal entries written of the year he'd left, pages that became a book comprised of them all that was eventually published, and Cahir and I, we coupled our earnings and our fates together and we travelled the world.
'They were our proposals, I know, but I watched those plans explode like supernovas, like fireworks, like him—so loud, so present, and then so quiet and gone. Off they went to join the stars we'd spoken about, constellations that I looked towards as a destination and wished upon over and over, until he joined the dust in the gutters in the roads we drove.' Charlie swept his hair out of his eyes as Frankie Carrozza reclined upwards to listen intently, crossing his arms and his legs at the ankles. 'I've grown older now,' Charlie said. 'The one thing we promised never to do. And yet, Frankie Carrozza persists.'
There was very little noise but the twitter of birds, the whisper of the wind, the songful sigh from the boy banished to the edge of the woods, and the sounds of Trevor Hamilton groaning and spinning his pocket watch as he puffed on the pipe, Vincent digging the compass into the desk and Edmund Giles doodling on the corner of his own, looking up every so often.
'I wrote under a pen name, an old familiar pseudonym that few knew called Matthew Darling. I published The Taming of Christopher Rose under it a week before I left. And in it, I wrote our tale,' Charlie continued, looking to the little patch of sky. 'I swear, I was close enough to see the boy I was, and hoped to keep him with me forever. I've seen the image of me that Frankie conjured in his eyes, and I often fear his going away. What if that boy, the one swimming those irises who seems so marvellous, is only extraordinary in the eyes that contain him, never truly existing. I was a burnt, crumpled, and withered leaf, but Frankie, he made me feel like autumn. And so I gave that boy form and tried to make corporeal the one who made him feel like magic.
'I tucked another boy safely away into paper, forging him out of woodlands and often wondering which tree they took to make him. Between the covers, I declared to the world that I'd already seen Heaven, Earth, Purgatory and Hell ... as we lay there, up amongst the gods. And I spoke of this boy, a passionate boy who was the embodiment of wildness, wiliness and wilderness, who'd sought his redemption and made his compromises to redeem himself, and how this was the consequences of it all—for the love to be given to someone else ... another more worthy or always destined, but as equally deserving, perhaps. And maybe that was how it was always supposed to be. Perhaps that was our cosmic purpose together. Him with his demon, and her with her angel are a match made perfect in the realm between Heaven and Hell forged to keep them. However, I see now that I was wrong; I have shone and swam in the eyes of others succeeding Carrozza and preceding Quinn. Frankie was the first for me, but he was not the last; there have been others, less memorable than both, perhaps, who've made me feel like summers and springs and winters, and autumns, too.'
'I feared that would happen.' Frankie smiled. 'I knew that he'd go off on some mad adventure with Seraphina Rose and find himself some moronic, more exotic, and extremely European lover of some sort.'
Author watched as Charlie grinned to his joke, unable to deny it. Instead, he said, 'When those roses bloom come spring, I will love him; when the leaves crinkle crimson come autumn, I will love him; when the lambs bleat as they run across fields in summer, I will love him; and when the bakers sprinkle their thighs and arms with flour come winter, I will love him ... until I find another as consuming.'
'Quite right, old fellow.' Frankie nodded his head until his chin touched his chest. 'I'd be heavyhearted If I came to know that I ever haunted him.'
'Alas, I'd written the tale of him and I, but I hid where it was. Eton ... rhymes with Eden, where monumental banishments had happened before. We could be there or we could be anywhere.' Charlie looked to the other boy as he spoke, glowing under fairy lights, the colour of stars. 'England was him, I had to leave. His ghost is with me in Paris, standing in the corner of a garret overlooking the Moulin Rouge as I write on a crude desk. I sense him in the Markt of Bruges during Christmas as I am eating chocolate and drinking strawberry-flavoured beer; and him, he is wandering through the dazzling light, obscured by the crowd, smoking a cigarette and breathing in the exotic smells of the foreign food. I hear him singing in Venice with a foot on a gondola, coursing between the canals alongside us unseen. I feel him drift underneath me, stirring sand on the lakebed, as I swim on my back through Lake Bled in Slovenia. He is with me, that is, until I wake one morning in Ankara and my first thought consists of the boy still sleeping beside me. Quite suddenly, just as I was least expecting it, he is gone; his spirit had left me to return back to him in England.'
'Did you ever return?' Author asked, rubbing his chin as his contemplative eyes narrowed.
'Briefly,' Charlie answered, nodding his head as he turned back to face Author. 'I came back for three days after our Interrail Pass around Europe had run out to collect my earnings from the sales of The Taming of Christopher Rose, to say farewell to my parents, and to attend a book launch party, where I'd learned that his sister, Marigold Carrozza, is an editor for my publisher. I don't ask about him and divert any conversations heading towards making any connections between him and I and Eton. Too much time had passed and he was always safer in a mystery. I've come to understand that he was made for memories. That is what he became to me, like Endymion, whom the gods made slumber forever, Frankie Carrozza has been immortalised into folklore, like the king under the mountain, the sleeping hero—he is a memory and a myth.'
'And then afterwards, you were bound to leave England, am I correct?' Author asked, looking over Charlie's head to ensure the others were behaving.
'Mind you,' Seraphina interjected, spreading a manicured hand over her chest, 'I told him that he would have simply outsold the Bible if he'd only granted the character based on me access to more pages.'
'Yes, I was.' Charlie nodded, ignoring Rose with a tongue stuck between his teeth to split a smile. 'With nothing left for me here in Eton anymore but a life gone by, Cahir Quinn and I had decided to fly off to the United States, where Seraphina Rose was living in the American dream to hide from her English sorrows. However, before I left the Kingdom for the States, having only heard wind of the other boy via a newspaper clipping detailing the marriage of Frankie Carrozza and Bethany Holiday, I couldn't help but ask divine intervention to let me see him for just one last time. The only other news I'd heard of the Carrozza and Rose family was that Frankie's mother had grown pregnant with another child, whom she'd called Thomas Patrick, finally freeing Frankie from the navigations of her filial affections. However, it seems my prayer was answered.' Charlie lit his own cigarette, took a sip from the bottle being passed around and looked to the chandeliers, gazing off into yesteryears. 'Fleetingly, by the will of serendipity or something else evangelical altogether, I caught sight of him from inside a hotel bar in London one chilly December morning, where I was waiting to meet my agent for lunch, the day before I was due to fly off to America. He walked by the window, and before I even saw more than an ear and a patch of hair, obscured by afternoon sunlight, I recall seemingly sensing it was him, my attention drawn to the windowpanes before he'd even stepped by. He came in with the snow through the foyer with Bethany, his young, gorgeous, and charismatic wife by his side, and both of them held the hand of a precious and pretty daughter with the rosiest cheeks dangling between. They swung her up into the air towards the stairs to make her giggle as I watched through the doorway of the bar with my hand held around a tumbler of whiskey and the other hovering a cigarette over an ashtray. From what I could see, he looked as dashing as ever, and she was positively glowing from the swell of a second pregnancy, which would be a boy called Patrick. There was no pain as I repressed the urge to call out to him; there was only a smile that warmed my heart once I heard him laughing loud enough to send echoes down every corridor of the hotel as the pair of them playfully chased the tiny darling up the stairway. I witnessed that great grin on his cheeks once more as his fingers snapped at her ankles and Bethany urged him to catch her, following suit after little Elena Rebecca Carrozza, all of them looking as happy as a photograph in a magazine, which made me happy for him, and then the little charming family had vanished as quickly as they'd appeared.'
'And then they soared off to reunite with me, where the grass is green but rare, and grand parties on rooftops are common—New York, New York, that is. It was here, running between yellow taxis, partying until dawn and eating breakfast together in diners once morning rose to greet us, that our friendship rekindled properly,' Seraphina exclaimed, trailing a hand through her blonde hair and crossing her legs as fingers tightened around a cigarette holder. 'He continued to see me occasionally—Cahir Quinn and him, that is—to uphold a meaningful tradition well kept. However, I don't think either of us felt that it would ever be the same again, but we'd been brave enough to face the loud and vacant space alongside us that couldn't ever be filled nor forgotten. It seemed partly empty of an ingredient, giving it a bitter taste, but the nourishment provided made it necessary for them to swallow mouthfuls of it all the same; and, nonetheless, something sugary to it remained.'
Charlie reached across and took her bejewelled hand, resting his own against the ivy adorning the top of her desk and offered her a glib smile. Wistful, the boy and girl glanced off to the edge of the woods, where a window through the trees tumbled away into field and sunset, to see the dead boy bow his head.
'Mind you, the friendship revived close enough to its former glory as was possible once Charlie helped me escape from my second husband,' Seraphina said, swallowing thickly. 'He'd struck me, and a man ought to know that if you ever raise a fist to me, I would raise an onslaught as powerful as a fleet of tanks and armies in revenge once I've filled myself back out from the shell he'd left me in and found my fire once more. My vengeance would be all the more terrible to behold. And it was. I believe he'll be in therapy for the rest of his life, if God is good.'
'Seraphina lived with Cahir and I in sweet harmony for a year until she met a music man from Galway just outside Times Square,' Charlie declared. 'He was a musician, a photographer, a painter, a drinker, a gambler, and a Molotov cocktail of a man. Seraphina Rose was a woman who believed that love was a fabrication designed by lyricists, writers, artists, and liars, yet, she thought she had been destined to meet the Galway-born man, fancying the idea that she had only been waiting for him as he was for her. They had met on three separate occasions beforehand by chance; the first time was when they had commenced battle over the last parking spot and he'd stumbled into an unfortunate mishap when he'd accidentally called her demented; the second time was when they fought over the last table in a restaurant, which concluded with the both of them accepting it and cancelling the previously arranged engagements with other dates; and, lastly, the third time, she'd found him performing in a dingy bar, singing a song he'd wrote about her soul that eventually woke it up, causing her to feel something so unshakable, so profound and so unbearable—a sensation that not even God was able to grant her. She had allowed herself to love him when they'd sat on stage and performed a duet to his guitar, singing Viva Forever by the Spice Girls together on the anniversary of Izzy Perkins' death.'
'I always believed ...' Seraphina whispered, looking to the grass around her feet, 'that Izzy Perkins was the only boy I ever truly loved and ever would; except, perhaps, for the briefest second, after a brief lapse of my sanity ... Trevor Hamilton.'
'Ronan Doyle never backed down from her scarlet fire; he encouraged it and relished in it, enjoying the pleasure in its warmth and all the more willing to burn up in it if that was her only wish. His unpredictability, as whimsical and as capricious as hers, made of him a man she could be with forever, due to his potent ability to never bore her and supplying her with a thrill unlike any other. His stride matched hers,' Charlie said tenderly with a grin, acting as a vessel for her joy. 'She found herself falling in love with Ronan Doyle; and he not only loved her, but he hero-worshipped her. No matter if he was as poor as dirt and pigeons had more prospects, she adored him. He kept her on her toes and he challenged her. He enjoyed smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey until dawn just as much as she did, wearing leather and taking drugs, adventures, and cars in the dead of night. He was different from the socialites, aristocrats and monarchs that she usually frolicked around with for longer than a night, and it did wonders. She fled the ballrooms and abandoned garden parties so that he could whisk her away off into the most secret smoky Manhattan bars that hid snug in the gutters, cellars, and rooftops like portals into other worlds. He was passionate when belligerent, thoughtful on special days, loving in all the rest, sentimental when drunk—as most Irish became—and liked nothing more than to hear her laugh at a dirty joke or to see her become vexed over being the victim of some outlandish prank he'd performed. And as much as she might have bruised his flesh or heart at times when angered, he never once was tempted to hit her. Their hearts recognised a similar flame in one another, burning only to keep the other warm at night or fusing to make them larger than everything else. They'd become the foreign conquering King and Queen of Brooklyn until the day came they willingly left their crowns and thrones behind. She proposed to him on a leap day, her birthday, the 29th of February, bloody and wearing leather and anger on a rooftop.'
'With Ronan Doyle, it was always a ride-or-die situation between us; we were just that kind of guy and girl, pushing one another to the very limit of ourselves in every aspect of life available; he reminded me of Frankie Carrozza in that regard.' Seraphina said, gingerly. 'I thought he was a gangster, only to find that he was just a sweet boy with a little bit of blackness dashed in his green. On a night that we'd stolen a Lamborghini from a very unpleasant fashion photographer who'd wronged me, outracing street racers and police, as we waltzed together until the radio melted and watched it burn alongside the Hudson River, I'd asked him, "How long can you hold your breath?' He looked to me in that queer way he does, as though I'd asked him to jump from a bridge and he was awaiting my hand to make the leap, before he replied, "Until death, if you need me to, babe". I'd realised then that I wanted to live for him, as much as I wanted him to live for me.'
'Though,' Cahir chimed in, 'I'm fond of ole Ronan loads now that he's calmed down a bit, but I don't ever believe she loved Doyle half as much as she loved Isaac Perkins.'
'I'll never love anyone as much as I loved Isaac Perkins. He was my soulmate; everyone else just pales in comparison into loves of my life,' Seraphina confessed, sweeping a hand up into her hair before stretching into a pose to hide her sadness behind a smile, causing for her pearls to jingle. 'We'd once made a pact, a champagne-scented drunken vow, inside his room back in Eton College as we watched Princess Diana getting married. We made a promise to wed one another once we reached the age of thirty-years-old if we had not found suitable suitors. And so, I got married for the third and final time on the last day of my twenty-ninth year. I had a daughter, gave her two godfathers, and named her Elizabeth ... little golden-haired Lizzie.'
'Do you still fear the party ending?' Author inquired, imploring her with the wave of a hand. 'The end of the prime of your youth, that is.'
'It eventually lost its compulsion over me,' she said, somewhat sadly. 'They don't tell you that once you're older, when the affects of the drink and the drugs are wearing off, as is the mesmerism of that cocktail of pretty, harsh, gritty, ugly and glittery glamour, that it can be mind-numbingly dull, tedious enough to drive you absolutely batty when you watch the dawn come in ... if you see sunrise being moored on the docks alone, awake long enough to watch it permeate into afternoon light.'
'And to revert back to what dear Rupert spoke of earlier, are you happy, Seraphina?' Author asked, folding his arms.
Thoughts mulled around her mouth as she considered this a moment, folding her own arms and poking a tongue at her cheek. 'Happiness is for the children; and peace is for the adults. Joy visits me at certain moments in my life, yes, just as Izzy Perkins does, never truly leaving me, and me never truly forgetting either of them, but as Rupert said himself, everlasting happiness is but a fairytale if you've got marks of sorrow on your soul. I'm not happy all the time, as I often wonder upon the what-could-have-been, but I'm happy more often that I'd initially believed I'd ever be when I was a young and vibrant girl. Though, mind you, I am never bored again. I've all I've never wanted, but I'm glad to have it. I only have one wish left: that when I, too, go to greet my death, in the utmost sensational fashion, I'd imagine, that they'll scatter my ashes over his grave, for I couldn't bear to leave him lying there all alone.'
'Finally, we come to you, Frankie Carrozza. We haven't heard yet what became of the King of the Revellers, the leader of the Dastardly Boys, and the other man of the hour.' Author smiled underneath a frown. 'What did you see beyond those paradisiacal gates of Eton?'
Frankie leaned forward to engage him, interlocking his hands over the desk. 'I became a headmaster at Charterhouse School, where I have control over a small army of dastardly boys to council and imbue with my mad philosophies. I'm idolised there, for all the right reasons; I make a friend of each of the boys, and see the face of a nomadic lad or a little man of mischief among them. The joys of their laughter when I sport a rugby uniform and cover myself in mud with them on some weekends are my sips of wine and a merriment for many with an absent parent. I'm kind, but firm, and fatherly.'
Frankie leaned back on his chair and directed his mouth behind him so that Bradley Valentine could light his cigarette for him. It wagged when he spoke, billowing smoke. With a squint in each eye, he said, 'I never stray. Though I catch the eye of a handsome caddie or a pretty waitress at times, I never stray. I'll confess that for a second the notion is there, but only the notion and never the allure. I need only think of my two daughters, my two sons, and my Beth sitting in a meadow of deep red flowers with an extravagant picnic, and the best of our happy times.'
'It appears you truly left Eton behind you with your crown and throne and sceptre,' Author mused.
'Quite the contrary,' Frankie replied, with a quick shake to his head. 'I left most of what I could and all of what I must behind those wheels and in that rearview mirror. And to this day, I still get students and old Etonians asking, "Are you thee Frankie Carrozza, the boy who staged the Revellers' Rebellion?" My head is empty of the crown, but my reign lives on in history and proceeds to precede me. I still have the letter that Charlie Chance wrote me, his last words, and I have a photograph of us both that he'd snapped when we'd sat against the bark of the Forever Tree with my arm slung around his shoulder, our lips full of cigarettes, our mouths full of smoke, our cheeks full of laughter, and our eyes full of love. I put both of them into his book, The Taming of Christopher Rose, and I safely tucked them away into the top shelf of the bookcase. One day I mean to read it, I hope. Bethany purchased it—two copies of it, in fact, to support him. I don't know if she ever did read it herself.'
Frankie coughed and wiped at his mouth nervously, breathing in deeply and gazing at his surroundings before he let out a resounding sigh, focusing his eyes on the stained-glass lampshades. 'I recall after I left that I slept through many a day, for it was only in my dreams where I would ever find that boy again, and I longed to return to that place—where he'd asked me to meet him in forever. Slowly, as the years past, I began to wake. Although prone to my dreamer ways, I am also exceptionally rational; I was logical enough to accept things as they were.' He took a long drag of his cigarette and hid behind the smoke as the lights above gilded his irises. 'I never heard a word of the direction his feet took him afterwards, and nor did I seek that knowledge out; yet, I could feel he'd left this island. I often sat in my chair by the window smoking a cigar, listening to the children at play, drinking a cup of tea or supping on a brandy, and wondered if he still lay down somewhere sometimes and thought of England.' Frankie reached forward to curl his fingers through the smoke that streamed out of his lips as though to take ahold of it, as impossible as it was to grasp, like all the days now gone. 'I didn't ever enquire about him. I never wanted to know, if I could help it. I liked to imagine that he was still there in Eton, somehow—a spirit, a memory, a legend, a fairy tale that I'd nearly quite forgotten I'd wandered in when I was golden as I grew grey. Sometimes, some people belong only to our memories ... after they become the best of them.'
Just like the days after their departure of one another, a great hush followed; the only sounds to be heard was the creaking of desk and chairs, fingers flicking lighters and matches, and the buzzing from the insects and the bulbs around them, crackling like static.
'I'm not haunted by it all either as such; it's all become a fond memory for me now to ponder over on my greyer days.' Frankie looked to the heavens above him wistfully, letting out a content sigh and a nostalgic smile. 'I believe that in the end we become prisoners to our nostalgia. I think of the Forever Tree, from time to time. I'll ask to be buried there, an ever-present wish that I'll insist upon from the moment my hair begins to grey until my dying day; I'll ask it of my wife, I'll say it to my children, and I'll repeat the request again to my grandchildren and then to those who come after. I fear they'll cremate me here, and spread my ashes over somewhere else I love and was loved; I can hope for Eton, at best. It is rather comical, that I vowed to always leave with fire under my heels and an inferno behind, yet, all that lies in hindsight of me is dust and ash.'
'No, you're wrong,' Charlie exclaimed, without looking to him. 'Underneath all of that rubble, debris and soot, a flame of your brilliance will always remain, buried now in Eton, but warm enough still.'
'Are you at peace with yourself, Frankie?' Author asked.
'Well, I can truly say I am somewhat happy, if that's what you mean.' Carrozza leant back on his chair, put his ankle over a kneecap and rubbed above his lip pensively before sucking in deep on the fag. 'My troubles have ended, and I have found my peace of home and of being in from out of the wild; yet, often, before I am quite fully awake, I fancy I am still in the sea in Dorset, swimming spiritedly with my friends through the archway of Durdle Door.'
'And you, Charlie, are you happy?' Author said, shifting his eyes to look towards Chance.
'Perhaps. I believe so, at the best of times. When we woke from our dream in America, Cahir and I returned back to Ireland to settle in Cork; once again, he heard her calling him home like the banshee crooning the death of a loved one in the middle of the night and there was nought he could do but answer it. Cahir and I took over the farm from his family. After long periods together and long periods of intermission, short periods of intermission and long periods of stay, Seraphina, Ronan, and Lizzie followed after us and they bought the pub back from Cahir's cousin to take it over. Even though our third soulmate was gone, we couldn't ever truly leave one another; Izzy was the adhesive, but rather than fall apart, we fell towards one another to keep each other from hitting the ground. We are our own little family, the five of us.' Charlie narrowed his eyes and thought long and hard, staring sternly at his boots. 'I'm unsure as of yet if Quinn and I will truly last together until old age, but only time will tell. After Eton, his relationship with the English had soured due to the events leading up to the Troubles that made him bitter. The letters and phone calls gradually waned, until he never contacted them again. In the nights I lay awake, restless and watching him sleep, I wonder if he has—or, rather, ever will—come to terms with loving an Englishman, even if that boy professed to run as wild as an Irishman.'
Charlie looked to the side view of Cahir's profile, who remained staring raptly at the trees ahead, steely-eyed and clenching the muscles in his jaw. 'He told me once that Irish people are a mess of contradictions, which I'd come to learn was true; Cahir was unapologetically polite, always thanking the bus drivers, even if they were late; saying what he thought was difficult at times, but then, in complete contrast, there were times when he couldn't stop talking, unable to filter out saying exactly what he thought. His nature was stubborn, humble, arrogant, explosive, childishly ignorant, friendly, bad-tempered, humorous, wise, and artistic, at times. I think he'd developed a complex with how he felt, as though the sensations of his heart clashed with what his mind thought he should be doing with himself, making it hard to discern how he felt or to tug some sort of act of affection from him sometimes.'
Unexpectedly, Charlie turned to address Frankie Carrozza properly; the other boy leant forward over the desk to stare back at him, slowly nodding his head and listening intently as he quietly said, 'It wasn't like how it was with you—it wasn't so all of a sudden and at once. I was sitting with him at the table one morning and we were arguing vehemently over something silly about the farm and then something sillier happened: the rooster choked, spluttered, squawked, and then crowed, and we began to laugh. With his mug of tea held over his mouth, smiling over the top of it towards me with his foot resting on the wood between my legs, it was then, in that moment, that I realised I'd fallen in love with him. I came to truly cherish the Irish boy, adoring his endearing, complex, and slightly crooked little heart that bloomed with an overload of drunk sentimentality after heaps of Guinness.'
From very far away, a school bell began to ring; deep, dull and rusted clangs that came from across the hillsides like the church bells tolling the evening Angelus.
'However,' Charlie continued charily, looking to the other boy underneath a neon glow until the signs began to blink and turn off behind him, 'I still could never quite stop listening to the vague whisper that followed me from country to country, the old songs we shared just lingering behind my ear, that put the seventeen-year-old face of Frankie Carrozza before my eyes, recalled so vividly it was as though I'd seen it only yesterday, standing radiantly before a gorgeous and glorious backdrop of honey-coloured light and a pink, crimson, and lilac sunset, with a wide open field falling behind for him to run and a mischievous grin full of dares on his cheeks—the boy who'd covered me in honey until the bees had come.'
With melancholic eyes and a nostalgic smile, Charlie took a long sip of the bottle before he handed it back to Author without breaking his eyes away from Frankie Carrozza, his fingers slipping over the heel of Cahir Quinn's hand. 'I cannot help but often wonder if he still looks as beautiful as he once did in the polaroids I've kept in the dusty photo album sitting on top of the bookcase in the living room that I fondly return to on some grey Septembers or white winters to think, for only an afternoon, on what could have been.'
Drawing the class to an end, Author watched them all slowly rise from their tables before walking towards their old friends to grasp hands, kiss cheeks, slap the backs of shoulders, and embrace one another in long hugs, with fond smiles decorating their faces.
After jokingly sticking their tongues out at one another, Charlie Chance grinned at Frankie Carrozza from the other side of the desk before Frankie shrugged his arms to beckon him into a hug with a simper. Releasing one another, Carrozza drooped an arm around his shoulders, inclining his head closer towards Chance to press the side of his mouth to the hair above his ear as he spoke and walked him down the aisle after the rest of the Dastardly Boys, deep in discussion.
To the days to come, Author heard Charlie Chance muse rather wistfully as his mind —as it had throughout most his life, every now and then—was borne back into the days of yore and Eton, to soar down a rural sunny road, along the valves and rustic arteries of the English countryside that they'd ran together through the seasons of 1983, leaving a beaten track behind and climbing over an old, rusted, and crooked little gate before racing up across green and beige fields of grass and barley to return to a hill, where the names of two boys would remain eternally entwined, carved together into the heart of the Forever Tree. And all of my love to way back when.