Mike does. Right? He’s sure of it. Everyone knows loss. It’s part of life. It’s part of living.
“Do you love him?” Oscar asks, and Mike can barely keep up.
“Who?” he asks.
“Don’t play me for a fool, son,” Oscar says, clearly agitated. “You ain’t got enough time for that. Life is too goddamn short for uncertainty and bullshit. You hear me?”
“Oscar,” Mike says, trying not to reel from thinking yes, I love him, more than anything. “Where’s this coming from?”
“I don’t know,” Oscar says, and only then does Mike see the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. “I really don’t know. Everything was fine, and then I saw this dress in the window of the wimmin-folk shop when I was going on my lunch-break walk and it was in my head, Mikey. It was in my head and I remembered her saying, ‘I’d like to wear that, I think. It’s fancy, and I’m not always fancy, but I’d like to wear that.’” He takes in this great, shuddering breath, like he’s about to cry, and that, out of everything, is what surprises Mike the most. Not the mountains. Not this stacked honey who doesn’t exist anymore, but the fact that Oscar, the great and terribly wonderful Oscar, is choking back a sob.
“Hey,” Mike says, alarmed. He’s halfway out of his chair and reaching for Oscar before he even realizes he’s moving. “Hey. It’s okay. It’s all okay.”
“Her name,” Oscar says. “You have to know her name.”
“Yeah, sure,” Mike says. “Anything. You know that. Anything, Oscar.”
“That boy,” Oscar says as Mike puts a hand on his shoulder. Oscar’s skin is overwarm, even through the material of his shirt. His pulse is jumping erratically under the skin of his throat. “That boy of yours.”
“Sean,” Mike says, crouching down next to him. He’s sure Oscar is on his way to a heart attack, sure that the grimace on his face is from pain shooting through his arm. Mike’s two seconds away from tearing inside to call the operator to get emergency services on the line to send an ambulance when he’s hit with a realization that should be impossible.
Amorea doesn’t have an ambulance.
Amorea doesn’t have a hospital.
Because no one gets sick here. Not seriously.
Not like Oscar, whose breathing is labored, who’s lying back in Mike’s patio chair, clutching his arm to his chest, mouth open and panting.
“Sean,” Oscar says again. “You listen to me about him. Are you listening?”
Mike says, “Yes,” because he doesn’t know what else to do. Everything is tits up, and he’s not sure how to stop it.
“You love him,” Oscar says, “with everything you have. Because one day, there may come a time when he’s not there no more. And you won’t even remember him. No matter how hard you try, you won’t remember him no more because he’ll be taken from you when you least expect it. So you love him, you hear me? With all you got.”
Mike says, “Yeah,” and he says, “Okay,” because he will. He does. He might not say it ever, he might not even really allow himself to think it, but he does. He gave his heart away to a green-eyed boy the day he stepped into the diner, whether he knew it then or not. He wouldn’t have it any other way. Sean owns a piece of him that will never belong to anyone else. Mike knows this as surely as he knows there’s nothing he can do for Oscar now, because there’s nothing in Amorea that could help him.
“What’s happening?” Mike asks, voice hoarse. “What is this? Oscar, what’s going on?”
“Would have liked,” Oscar says, eyes sliding lazy and unfocused, “to have seen those mountains. With her. Did I tell you her name yet?”
“No, no you didn’t. Oscar, just breathe, okay? I’ll figure this out. I just need you to breathe.”
Oscar chuckles. “Ain’t no breathing here,” he says. “Not anymore. Can feel it. There’s a thing—” He cuts off as his eyes bulge from his head, staring into nothing. “Holy shit, what is this? What the hell is this?”
“What?” Mike asks, gripping his shoulder tightly. “What do you see?”
“Mikey,” Oscar breathes. “The birds. Oh my god, the birds. How they murmur.”
And Mike thinks of clouds spinning above his head.
Oscar cries, “I’ll tell ya! I’ll tell ya her goddamn name, fo sho! Ain’t got time for all your honky-tonk boolshit. You’ll see! You’ll see! Her name was Nadine, and she was my African queen. She was stacked. And she was a honey. She was a dolly. Ain’t never been anyone like her. Ain’t never will be anyone like her. She’s—”
His voice dies.
His voice dies off because one second he’s hollering to the night about Nadine the African Queen, and the next he disappears. One second he’s there, writhing in Mike’s patio chair, skin fever-hot, and the next he’s gone.
Mike stumbles forward onto his knees, the support of Oscar’s shoulder gone. His face hits the side of the chair, nose against the armrest, which digs painfully into his face. He’s not quite sure what’s just happened, his mind misfiring, unable to reconcile the fact that Oscar was there and now he’s not. He existed until he didn’t.