JC hovered at Chris's sink, watching beads of water scuttle down. Each one crept over the stainless steel, cradled by some mysterious tension, and stopped at the drain like sequins on a string.
"Es nerve mich," he remarked to Lance.
"JC, you're speaking some language."
He blinked. The light sealed his eyes in amber. "I know."
"You're--no. Chris, come in here."
Chris appeared in the kitchen door, holding one of the dogs. Simultaneously Lance and JC thought of a large taupe-furred vagina. Simultaneously they dismissed the thought, primally disturbed at their own bizarrity.
"Hey, I was busy."
"Oh, yeah," Lance said.
"Doing what?" JC asked, and Lance remembered that he had been planning to add that to his remark.
"I was making Raggedy Ann and Andy fuck." Chris pulled a stuffed leg from the dog's mouth.
"Raggedy Andy is gay."
JC burst into hysterical laughter.
"What?" Lance the offender said, and laughed too. He hated laughing on acid. It always felt like some red secret would break loose and gush from his mouth. He thought the words "floating rib" and shuddered, casually gripping his side.
Chris shook his head. "You're wasted. What's the problem?"
"JC's speaking in tongues," Lance remarked. He slapped JC's ass, his hand sinking in and lingering like it was the sidewalk in front of Graumann's.
"Whoa, none of that! Jesus, I'm still young. Hey, Howie's here."
"Oh, rad," JC said, fickle to the water and ever unmindful of the passage of decades. He sprinted for the living room.
"He brought a mystery date!" Chris howled after.
JC stopped in the hallway, heart slamming. Lance hit him in the back, wondering why JC felt wet. Streetlights trickled over their skin, and a gaggle of stranger's voices drowned past the door.
"Human voices wake us," JC whispered.
Lance didn't know who owned the thought. He took possession of it as soon as it was spoken. "It'll be okay, Jayce."
"It's pouring out there."
"JC?"
"No! Jesus, wake up, Bass." Justin snapped his fingers in front of Lance, bracing the living room door open with his foot. "Come and meet Howie's dream date. Holy fuck, you are all pupil, man."
Lance saw lizards the color of his eyes every time he blinked.
***
JC was sure more time passed than it took to cross one threshold. More changed than distance--a clock strike, a mood shift, a state of mind. Chris's living room embraced them, luminous, every color solid through, like a fresco in a Mexican church.
Someone stood by the door in a red rain slicker. Howie displayed Raggedy Andy to him by his remaining arm, laughing, his face shining like a castoff pearl.
In the windowseat of JC's bedroom, there was a time-polished Buddha just the color of Howie's skin.
"Oh Christ you'll never believe who Howie brought," Joey breathed, hot as a backfire. His glass spotted JC's shirt. "We're gonna have to sign waivers."
The Red Death lifted his hood.
"It's all right, JC," Lance whispered, wrapping him together in threads of rain.
***
the end.