Despite his deepest wishes, time would not stop for Gene Morrow. He stood at the edge of the dock, feeling the storm brew. The wind whispered four words caught in his imagination. The one and only. It was a fond phrase Gene had heard in his youth, perhaps a decade ago, in the echoing halls of the estate. Never one for television or the normalcy of current affairs, the little barbs of his circumstantial life would cling to him. The one and only.
In his sixteenth year, he had received his first unfortunate ailment, a plague of pneumonia that shifted his sleep cycles to momentary lethargy and then nocturnal bouts of psychic energy. Once he had overcome it, he felt his brain wholly different. Clinicians told him it was teenage hormones. His godfather told him it was normal and nothing to fight. Gene, however, worried it was a permanent melting of his mind produced in the late hours of his illness when his co-morbid fever reached one hundred and four.
Since then, he’d ignored any passive appetites and afternoon activities with his peers during his months of boarding at school. When home for the summer or winter holidays, he’d walk the quarter mile downhill from his estate, knowing every step would be another trudge back up the grassy incline to the main house or along the lake to the perpetually empty servants’ quarters. His godfather had told him in upon their arrival so many years before that the servants’ quarters were haunted and never to enter, but that only gave Gene the idea to explore every corner and narrow passage.
Hauntings felt like forgotten things, and Gene, too, felt since his fever, there had been something exceedingly important for him to do. Only he had let it slip from his grasp like a chocolate wrapper onto a sidewalk somewhere out in the wide world.
And so he had trekked down to the edge of the lake. He had sat upon the dock that once served a purpose, whether to fish or for families to take photographs as they leaped off into the cool water. That, too, felt forgotten as the mist of mid afternoon rolled in and spilled down over the mossy banks. The cold air cut through him, and as the breeze tousled his hair, he couldn’t help but welcome the sensation, craving a touch that held some meaning.
Soon, the dense air had masked the lake so thickly that it could be mistaken for an ocean. Gene took off his sweater and tossed it in the water, letting it slowly wet and descend beneath the dark and glassy surface. Then his trousers and his Swedish watch—a gift from his godfather, worthless in the scope of the ache in his chest—plopped and dropped like a silver stone. The water would be just above freezing. Just enough to kill him if he let it, and so he looked back at his estate one more time, fleeting and yet calling him back. It had so much potential. But what would it do other than stand on the hill? Each season would pass, the sun would rise and set without its permission. Even this lake would freeze and thaw and refreeze with Gene underneath it, never to be found.
Even with all his potential, this attempt would still be Gene’s first great failure in life. And so, he fell forward into the water with a petty crash.
Rain settled on the tinted windows in long streaks. The staccato tappings to the compact limo’s roof muffled the engines and beeps of the other cars racing by. At the edge of Yonkers and the Upper West Side, Gene’s mind had gone limp.
Jerome was fuming. He took to eating the free jelly beans the car service offered until he was down to leaving only the black licorices in the bowl. His seat faced Gene’s. Since the attempt, even he had not been himself, wearing ties with his vests as if he needed to step up his responsibilities by show. But he yanked at it to loosen its squeeze as he picked at the last butterscotch jelly.
Gene caressed the smooth and glossed wood accent on the car’s door, feeling Jerome’s eyes wrap around his hand. As he reached for the door’s handle, Jerome flinched and Gene dropped his hand, casting a tired and disappointed look at his godfather.
“I’m not throwing myself into the street,” Gene told him, sick of the babysitting.
“You threw yourself into a lake,” Jerome said back, clicking his British tongue on the final word.
“Jerome—”
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“No,” Jerome said again, seeing the absentminded jellybean in his hand was black.
“It’s my life, if I want it over—”
Jerome threw the candy at Gene, hitting his eye. “Oh, real mature.”
“Don’t think I would have agreed to look after you if I had known you were going belly up on me at the final fucking gasp! I won’t hear it.”
The final fucking gasp… Gene understood that to be Jerome’s nice way of mentioning the mostly unspoken agreement that once Gene was an adult, he’d have nothing more to do with him. Not that Jerome had much to do, anyway. Security bred boredom, and where Gene had expected Jerome to understand its crippling qualities, he hadn’t. No, booze and drugs and women and jellybeans filled those voids just fine. But when the chasms in one’s soul were too deep for all the materials of the world, there was suicide. Suicide and expensive New York City therapy.
The car pulled up to an unsuspecting row of buildings, each like the entrance to a home, or perhaps a museum, Gene couldn’t tell. All were of the old Neo-classical styling, each unique yet packed together so tightly any could be overlooked. As the car chose its final destination, the exterior was white with Corinthian columns, black windows, and marble front steps.
The jellybean Jerome had thrown found itself tucked in the crook between the seats and Gene pinched it out. Its shell shined, untarnished. Gene pinched it until it cracked and oozed between his fingers in sandy gray bits. “I’m sorry you found me,” he said to get a last barb off.
“Oscar found you. I was too busy to even notice you had gone.”
“Who’s Oscar?”
“You mean to tell me you don’t know the head of security’s name? He’s watched your every move since you were wetting your bed.”
“Is he the big person?”
Jerome took the cup of black jellybeans and flung them at Gene, showering him with melodramatic pettiness, little pieces falling into his shirt and over his peacoat. “I didn’t care either,” Jerome finally said and the car’s driver stepped out and opened the back door for Gene. “One’s stuck in your hair,” Jerome added before getting out and Gene flopped his fringe about, feeling nothing come loose.
The driver had an umbrella ready for him as he eased himself out and adjusted his coat collar. The cool air felt foreign and thick with grime this far south. Not that they were far from upstate in the grand scope of things. Leaving the Hollow for anything but school would have been exciting for any other reason, but the dejection of surviving his attempt left an embarrassing childishness stain on Gene’s ego. He had considered before the attempt to study the ironic link between its robustness and his suffering, but lost the effort when the seasons had changed yet again and time grew faster around him. Suddenly, he was seventeen and couldn’t bear it any longer.
Now, he was waiting for his chauffeur to walk him to the curb rather than he walking the chauffeur.
Gene took a breath and kept his head down, circling the car and paying the man no mind. Jerome stepped up to the doorway first and rang the bell.
At the top of the wet marble stairs, Jerome dismissed the driver and said he’d meet him in the car when they were through. When he was through, Gene thought. This would be a prison for the foreseeable future. And if he should escape, well, Oscar would find him somehow, even if he hopped a jet to Paris. But the truth was, he was too tired to wander off anymore, and so Gene had a fleeting hope that somehow this would fix him. But he knew it wasn’t a serious prospect. No one can stop the currents of time.
The door opened and a shorter and older woman answered. She was dressed in cheap faux jeans and a hoodie. “Dr. Lastra, please,” Jerome said.
“Oh, I’m just the cleaner. He’s in his study. Come in. Come in. The floor is clean.”
Gene glared his brow and entered. The foyer floor was slick and its Cherrywood stain appealed to his eyes. The rest of the art déco stylings felt bare. Tall plants, real by the damp soil, stood in the corners of the entryway. Black accents lined the archways and the bronze fixtures warmed the home in vintage light. But it felt less homey and more presentable, not too dissimilar to the home Gene shared with Jerome. There were no pictures on the mantle as he entered further across the foyer. The fireplace below shielded empty andirons, and Gene fixated on them. The traces of previous fires lined the cement inside.
“Mr. Morrow,” a voice said, distinctly American with a light tone, but a slow cadence. Gene gazed up at the open second floor. At the top of the staircase was a man, mid thirties, not much older than Jerome, but distinctly built with a tight sweater that curved around his shoulders, pleated slacks and a shiny belt—it said he was new money. His bare feet patted each stair on his descent. The cleaning woman smiled at him and retreated further into the house.
“Dr. Lastra,” Jerome said, “this is my ward. Ward, Dr. Lastra.”
“Charmed,” the doctor said. His angular face and dark curls contrasted what Gene had expected: a scruffy academic with no sense of the world beyond his little brain. But this man, he seemed worldly, or maybe it was just his bare feet, tanned like the rest of him, vaguely Latin with no discernible foreign accent.
“You got my transfer?”
“Oh yes,” Dr. Lastra said like a sigh, putting a gentle hand on Jerome’s arm. “Not to worry, you’re free to go. I’ll look after him fine.”
“No medications.”
“Yes, I know,” the young doctor said, “and no dairy.”
“Are you being funny?”
“Apparently not. Would you like some tea?”
Jerome stared at him, grinding his teeth and pouting his lips. Gene smirked, beginning to like his new master. “Call me when he’s fixed,” Jerome said and turned to leave, but as he was about to step back through the door and into the rain, he wavered.
Gene looked at Dr. Lastra, who waited with his hands in his pockets, casting an all-knowing gaze, then flickered his eyes as if to say, go on. And Gene turned back and caught Jerome at the door, pressing his face into his shoulder, and Jerome hugged him with an awkward pat. Gene gripped his godfather to savor the warmth of his shirt and the scent of his cologne. In all, it was a pathetic effort by them both, and Gene dug his brow into Jerome’s vest to cast away the tears. Jerome grabbed a tuft of Gene’s hair and pulled him back like a dog to look him in the eye. Jerome studied his face and took a quick breath to say something that failed to sound. So instead, he softly said, “Don’t be a monster, will you?”
Gene gave a half nod and Jerome let him go, not taking another look as he turned and showed himself out, stepping back into the rain and down the steps. Then Dr. Lastra shut the door.
