It was still light when my panic attack struck. This was after the dripping bags I’d put in the hall to dry. After leaving Nick in the living room to cocoon on the couch above the under-floor heating with a steaming pot of chamomile tea, after I’d sized up the room and said, “Can’t get more Swiss than this, not including raclette and tax evasion.” This was after Ramses jumping out of his travel bag the second I unhooked the latch and, offended, pretending to suss the place out, but never wandering too far, because nowadays, he’s actually a scaredy-cat, too chicken to be alone with Nick. After my text to Julia: One guess where I am—with any luck they serve fucking pflaumenschnaps and after her reply: Bro, seriously??? BAD IDEA. This was after my hot shower, after my soaked clothes in front of the radiator, after sweatpants and white T-shirt, after, after, after.
You gotta hand it to me. Up until then, I was coping fine. Despite the chalet’s old-fashioned cuckoo-clockish woodwork and beams, it was surprisingly modern, almost clinically clean, and if you pushed me, maybe I would even pronounce it “snug,” if only to tickle Nick.
But then I found myself in the master bedroom on the basement floor, unsuspectingly hanging up clothes, and suddenly the whole house tumbled on top of me. Suddenly my head itched, my T-shirt was too tight, my skin the wrong size. Ruffled my hair, spun around, felt like I was heading in all directions at once.
What’d gotten into me? Everything around me suddenly felt abysmal and terrifying. I looked around, seriously rattled. Only the patter of the rain on the roof. The indistinct rocking of the house in the wind. Maria crying in her little chapel.
That feeling you’re trapped, that you can’t get out—they didn’t advertise that on Airbnb.
So there you were, incarcerated in the Eurotrip version of a house you’d spent your whole life running away from. Twenty-four and life focused solely on escaping the boy in the pee-soaked loincloth, the boy who brought fire to humanity and set his family tree ablaze with a single spark. Twenty-four and life spiraled you back to where you started, where the piles of ashes were still smoldering.
All you ever wanted to forget but couldn’t.
No one winds up in a house like this by accident.
I walked to the bathroom and splashed my face with cold water. Stared back at my bloodshot eyes, thinking, What the fuck are we doing?
Responsibility. That’s why I was here. Still, everything that was so logical before we’d left now seemed deranged. And the disquieting feeling crept over me that the line between chasing shadows and fighting lunacy had become so fine, so unclear and fluid, that you could hardly call it a line anymore. Maybe there was some sort of general condition Nick suffered from after all. Maybe I hadda U-turn back to Amsterdam and spill the beans to Nick’s shrink or some other AMC doc who’d finally shed light on the whole deal.
But the birds were real; I saw them with my own eyes. (And you saw something else too—Whoa! File it behind the floodgates.) The birds were real, and that’s why I was here.
Plus, I was responsible for Nick. We all know how the last mutilated face on my account ended up.
All kids have scars. All kids have stretch marks, cuz the skin grows too fast. We all suffer from soul striae. I was here to iron something out.
Still, back in the bedroom, I couldn’t shake off that uneasy feeling, and I saw my grandpa emerging from Huckleberry Wall, all ablaze, but this time he didn’t do a smoldering face-plant into the snow. This time he wobbled toward me through the wailing wind and took me in his arms. Only when I felt the force of his grip on my ribs did I realize it wasn’t Grandpa but Nick, and I heard him say, “Little, fragile Sam!”
The Catskills or the Alps, Phoenicia or Grimentz, the Hermit or the Maudit. Every house was buckling under shadows.
Every house was haunted.
3
“There’s absolutely no reason,” I said, as we climbed up through the valley, “no reason why we shouldn’t take you back to New York and start an escort service. Facial disfigurement is the new buxom. You aren’t deformed, you’re differently abled. You’ve got a whole new career ahead of you in the States. Political correctness alone will do the trick.”
He was doing his best, but I could see Nick was having trouble keeping a straight face under those bandages.
“Think about it. No one wants perfection anymore. Beauty calls for insecurity. From a certain age, we all start using profile pics from ten years ago. No one’ll admit it, but they want pay boys with progeria. Playmates with psoriasis. Everyone wants to compensate.”
“So it would actually be a kind of social therapy.”
“You got it.”
“And you’d exploit my handicap without any remorse.”
“Not me. Us.” I stopped walking so he could catch his breath. “And I haven’t even gotten to the merch. Imagine, the first ever life-size Nick Grevers sex doll. The hole in the mouth fits all sizes, baby.”
Nick shoved me and said, “Cut it out, asshole. It hurts like hell when I laugh.”
It was a crystal clear moment on a crystal clear morning. Nick’s laugh, it has the power to pump me with instant happiness.
I missed that laugh. Even now, when I could see only part of it, it was like a supernova in a vacuum of dead stars.
Before all this business, it was one of our favorite things—to shamelessly roast each other about our flaws. No limits, no taboos. Our way of marking out each other’s territory. Saying you’re mine and I’m yours. It was our relationship’s defibrillator. Pecs: check. Pads. Clear. Aaand . . . zap!
It was great being us again. Made me feel the wounds of the past coupla months were healed, and I’m pretty sure same goes for Nick.
More important, the mountains seemed to do him good. Hadn’t seen him so upbeat since the accident. The Maudit seemed further away than ever. The rain had stopped during the night and been replaced by a bright, crisp fall morning that was so invigorating it almost floored you. Cuz you were practically strong-armed to spit it out: it was magnificent around here. Slopes gleaming with blinding colors. Air so organically pure and filtered your lungs collapse from cold turkey CO2 withdrawal. Cowbells tinkling idyllically in the distance. Nick doing his exercises on the rock next to our house, which, for obvious reasons, I’d dubbed Castle Rock. Seeing him stretching on the plateau, those luscious lungs sucking in mountain air, radiant white shirt, body brought to you by shakes, liquid baby food, and pills, pills, pills, it hits me how clear-cut his sexiness is. Even in bandages. Clear-cut—get it? (Da-dum-dshhh cricket sound)