“Er. Right,” said Fat Charlie. “To Mum.”
They drank to their mother. Fat Charlie found that the taste of the bitter wine was beginning to grow on him; he found his eyes prickling, and a sense of loss, profound and painful, ran through him. He missed his mother. He missed his childhood. He even missed his father. Across the table, Spider was shaking his head; a tear ran down Spider’s face and plopped into the wineglass; he reached for the bottle and poured more wine for them both.
Fat Charlie drank.
Grief ran through him as he drank, filling his head and his body with loss and with the pain of absence, swelling through him like waves on the ocean.
His own tears were running down his face, splashing into his drink. He fumbled in his pockets for a tissue. Spider poured out the last of the black wine, for both of them.
“Did they really sell this wine here?”
“They had a bottle they didn’t know they had. They just needed to be reminded.”
Fat Charlie blew his nose. “I never knew I had a brother,” he said.
“I did,” said Spider. “I always meant to look you up, but I got distracted. You know how it is.”
“Not really.”
“Things came up.”
“What kind of things?”
“Things. They came up. That’s what things do. They come up. I can’t be expected to keep track of them all.”
“Well, give me a f’rinstance.”
Spider drank more wine. “Okay. The last time I decided that you and I should meet, I, well, I spent days planning it. Wanted it to go perfectly. I had to choose my wardrobe. Then I had to decide what I’d say to you when we met. I knew that the meeting of two brothers, well, it’s the subject of epics, isn’t it? I decided that the only way to treat it with the appropriate gravity would be to do it in verse. But what kind of verse? Am I going to rap it? Declaim it? I mean, I’m not going to greet you with a limerick. So. It had to be something dark, something powerful, rhythmic, epic. And then I had it. The perfect first line: Blood calls to blood like sirens in the night. It says so much. I knew I’d be able to get everything in there—people dying in alleys, sweat and nightmares, the power of free spirits uncrushable. Everything was going to be there. And then I had to come up with a second line, and the whole thing completely fell apart. The best I could come up with was Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty got a fright.”
Fat Charlie blinked. “Who exactly is Tum-tumpty-tumpty-tumpty?”
“It’s not anybody. It’s just there to show you where the words ought to be. But I never really got any further on it than that, and I couldn’t turn up with just a first line, some tumpties and three words of an epic poem, could I? That would have been disrespecting you.”
“Well…”
“Exactly. So I went to Hawaii for the week instead. Like I said, something came up.”
Fat Charlie drank more of his wine. He was beginning to like it. Sometimes strong tastes fit strong emotions, and this was one of those times. “It couldn’t always have been the second line of a poem, though,” he said.
Spider put his thin hand on top of Fat Charlie’s larger hand. “Enough about me,” he said. “I want to hear about you.”
“Not much to tell,” said Fat Charlie. He told his brother about his life. About Rosie and Rosie’s mother, about Grahame Coats and the Grahame Coats Agency, and his brother nodded his head. It didn’t sound like much of a life, now that Fat Charlie was putting it into words.
“Still,” Fat Charlie said, philosophically, “I figure that there are those people you read about in the gossip pages of newspapers. And they are always saying how dull and empty and pointless their lives are.” He held the wine bottle above his glass, hoping there was just enough of the wine left for another mouthful, but there was barely a drip. The bottle was empty. It had lasted longer than it had any right to have lasted, but now there was nothing left at all.
Spider stood up. “I’ve met those people,” he said. “The ones from the glossy magazines. I’ve walked among them. I have seen, firsthand, their callow, empty lives. I have watched them from the shadows when they thought themselves alone. And I can tell you this: I’m afraid there is not one of them who would swap lives with you at gunpoint, my brother. Come on.”
“Whuh? Where are you going?”
“We are going. We have accomplished the first part of tonight’s triune mission. Wine has been drunk. Two parts left to go.”
“Er…”
Fat Charlie followed Spider outside, hoping the cool night air would clear his head. It didn’t. Fat Charlie’s head was feeling like it might float away if it wasn’t firmly tied down.
“Women next,” said Spider. “Then song.”