Trickster

Lis hated hospitals; they always brought her down no matter how hard she tried. 
She still had her night-gown on and threw on her large burgundy flannel coat and carried nothing but a small purse and her smart phone. The last message she received said,
"Help me, I´m in Hell."
She had been waiting for more than an hour for the doctor to show up. Impulsively she called the her mom. She had just been talking to her the day before for she feared "something unusual" would happen.
"Calm down, sweetie! I´ve never seen you this nervous in ages."
"It´s not just anyone, Ma," said Lis, "I fear I might be losing my best friend."
"He´s always been a troublemaker," said her mother.
"But I love being around him! Anyway, I sure hope it´s nothing serious."
"My prayers go out to that boy. He´s been mislead from the start."
"That´s what you think, not me."
"Did they already tell you what happened?"
Lis´s voice trembled as she clenched her fist, "No, I don´t know much but he was in pain all night and to be honest I didn´t pay much attention of how serious it was. I always give him some privacy. The next thing you know I found him passed out on the floor."
"Oh dear..."
"I feel partially responsible because I know there´s something else. It´s the same story all over again."
"Don´t torture yourself, sweetheart. He´s no longer a cross you have to carry. Take care now, it´s late. Call me when you get home."
It was three in the morning and there was barely a soul in that waiting room. Only the usual reek of disinfectant and the sound of a power plant. A tall middle-aged man was sitting away from her.
His clothes looked aged and hadn´t shaved in weeks.
Lis wasn´t the kind of person to strike a conversation just like that so she kept staring at her smartphone perhaps to compulsively check the weather or update her status. She resisted the need to post she was at the hospital.
"Who the Hell does those things?" she thought to herself. "I swore that I´d never ventilate any of Adrian´s problems just like that."
"35 F and cloudy," it said in an app.
She took a deep breath and went back to watch the old man for a bit. He coughed like a dog and muttered, "Helen, please be alright."
Lis reprised his words, "Adrian, please be alright, please be alright. I need you so much...of course I do, we do."
She suddenly received a text message which startled her a bit. It was Daniel, one of her roomies.
"House is empty, where are you guys?"
She replied as quickly as she could because her fingers were somewhat numb.
"Emergency. I´m at Saint Vincent´s with Adrian. If you want to come please lock up as usual."
"Are u kidding me? It´s waaaay too late. Anyway, good luck."
"Selfish prick," she thought.
She felt the shock wash away slowly and rested her head against the wall.

----
It was about 4:15 AM. The middle-aged man was gone but by then the specialist already arrived."Lisa Summers?"
"That´s my full name, yes," she answered timidly.
"Are you related to Mr. Black?" asked the man in the scrubs. He was a young slender man, probably in his mid twenties with very short hair.
"Actually he´s my boyfriend." Internally she said, "yeah, right. I hope he doesn´t  keep asking me any further questions."
"Oh good," he smirked."Listen; he´s gonna be okay. He came down with a high fever which is why he could have collapsed."
"That sounds awful," said Lis in a lower voice.
"Sorry if we took so long to run down some tests but it seems he has developed a condition known as esophagitis. I don´t want to go into much detail but it makes it very painful to swallow due to a tear in the esophagus."
"That sounds even worse."
"Has he been taking any medications?"
"No, not really. He´s always been very healthy, you know."
"There are no signs of any viral infections either. My other theory is that this could be self-induced."
Lis beared a heavy question mark in her head and was heavily concerned.
"You mean he, I´m sorry, did this to himself?"
"It´s just a possibility, Miss. The answer is up to you. He can remain under treatment but he will have to change a few habits, that is if you can provide us more information."
"Sure. Can I see him now?"
"Yes, this way , please."

--------------

Adrian seemed peaceful in bed, as if he hadn´t slept for days. His long ebony hair covered his face subtly and Lis reached down to get a better look. He was unresponsive though and it made her worsen until she broke into tears.
"Why did you do this?" she said as she found a seat. "I don´t know you anymore. It´s like you´ve left me here all on my own and I don´t have a clue how to deal with this. All I can see if that you´re self-destroying and that sucks!"
She breathed heavily, "There, I said it. Doesn´t that make you look completely selfish and all for what, a lousy breakup? Let him go, it´s not worth it."
Then she grasped his left hand, "Please, wake up. There´s so much that we need to talk about. Wake up, wake up."
Adrian answered with a raspy and weary voice. "Lis..."
"Oh my god, yes! It´s me, baby!" Her eyes glowed and she sounded more upbeat.
"Where am I?"
"I assume you don´t remember much," she continued as she played with her raven hair, "We had to bring you here because you´re very sick."
Adrian paused, "Damn. Was it that serious?"
"Yes it was. In fact they said it was self-induced which means you provoked this. Don´t think I don´t know what´s going on. Ever since you broke up with Daniel you´ve been abandoning yourself to the point of starvation."
He sighed deeply.
"I didn´t want to worry anybody; it´s my thing and I´ll deal with it."
"No you can´t! It´s our problem now."
He paused again and sobbed, "Please forgive me."
"Aw, sweetie," said Lis as she ran to hug her deared friend.
"I´m so sorry,kid," he continued, "because I never realized it got out of control."
"It´s a very dangerous thing, Honey," said Lisa drying her eyes with her sleeve. "It´s like walking on thin ice."
"Ha," he said, "it´s funny that you mention that because I just saw that in a dream.
I was running in the middle of a winter day, January perhaps. The place seemed familiar like down the river where my grandpa used to take me when I was five or six."
"The Black River," she said.
"I guess.A small creature appeared across the road like a rabbit. He was black as the back of a crow and had gleaming red eyes. He stood there waiting for me and them I realized I was no longer running away from anything. It was like it found me."
"And then?"
"I followed him and stepped into the frozen river. At the time it seemed interesting. Little did I know the ice was very thin and it easily cracked. So I fell into it and he left me all alone.
Then I heard someone call out to me and I think it was you and then I woke up."
"Is that all true?"
Adrian just nodded.
"Then I think it was a vision of Death. You´re not there yet; you´re only becoming an adult."

------------
A few hours later, around seven in the morning Lis traveled back to the apartment down in Mercer Street on a seven-story building.
A guard probably in his sixties known as Evan stood behind a counter. She always remembered everybody´s names even the passers-by and the one night stands.
"Well, hello, Miss," he said. "You seem tuckered out, did you sleep here last night?"
"No, sir," answered Lis shaking off a little rain water from her coat, "Unfortunately Adrian got sick and he was rushed to the Saint Vincent. He ´s okay now but he just needs to take it easy from now."
"Hmm," said Evan, "But he´s so young! How old is he?"
"Barely in his thrities," sighed Lis.
"That´s the problem with the young ones today; nobody wants to grow old, they devour everything as fast as they can."
"I know but there are few exceptions," winked Lis.
"Oh, not you. You have a motherly attitude; one can see that right away."
"Do you really think so? Bless you. I gotta go."
"Take care," said the man.

---
"Motherly indeed," thought Lis as she stepped into the elevator. "Is that all I am to him and
to everyone else in our home? It makes sense now because I feel like I rescued him back in high school. It´t not a coincidence that "thing" he said about the dream. I pretended I´d never heard about it."
Most of the tenants on that building were artists and what-nots. It was a kind of requisite to have access to these ancient lofts with tall windows and infinite spaces attracted the wildly creative minds.
And among them stood Adrian Black once labeled a great promise and a kind of provocateur comparable to the radiant children like Basquiat, at least that´s what he said. The rest of his roommates were Daniel Hyde, whose main business was male modeling among other things and a little skinny one named Damien.
But Daniel hadn´t been around for days. When Lis found Adrian´s phone by the side of his bed it had tons of messages like there had been a huge rant.
"I guess my bad feelings were right again," sighed Lis.
As soon as she entered the loft Daniel gave her a tight hug, "So how did it go, he´s not dead or anything like that?"
"No, no," said Lis with a trembled voice, "but I´m sorry he had to come to this, this, stupid behavior that makes no sense at all! You know it wouldn´t surprise me if you talked him into this."
"Wait," said Daniel, "you blame me for talking Adrian into becoming "manorexic"? That is so not fair."
"Well I don´t know who else to blame."
"It´s him and you should know better so stop lying to yourself."
"Will you help me, please?" said Lis pressing her hands against his.
"Sure!"
"He´s gonna need all our support because the healing process won´t be that easy. And by the way he´s not "manorexic" , it´s more like bulimic."
"That´s even worse!"
"Yes it is." Lis went back upstairs to her room to find a change of clothes before she headed back to the clinic but she was feeling more tired than ever. Before that she decided to go back into Adrian´s studio and tidy up a little.
he had left a red fake leather sketchbook behind. Lis thought it was out-of-place and decided to put it back however she took it with her.
She also made some calls to make sure she was excused at work.
Lis dressed in a simple manner and threw on a large turquoise blouse under a pair of dark leggings and went downstairs to have a last look in the mirror in the foyer.
"We´re all mad here; you should have known by now," she said.
As she passed down the exquisite and lavish neighborhood in Manhattan in her BMW she could
only think that fame comes with a price. Underneath that glamorous skin of Soho once stood a
paradise for the bohemian and a much darker realm at the beginning of the twentieth century.
It seemed not everything around here has ever been that pretty; there is a dark side to
everything.
Adrian loved the darkness, he felt safe in it. He said it worked best to feed his
imagination. He also hated to be a cultural stereotype but back in Elyria, in the nineties he
was known as a shady, scrawny kid who hung out with the goths outside the parking lot in high
school.
The majority of these kids grew up being told they were going to Hell; some of them already
felt they were in it! They wanted to leave by the age of eighteen.
At least those were Adrian´s plans. It seemed that he had carefully penned them in his
journal.
It was his mystique which attracted Lisa in the first place. She was practically spoon fed
with ideas that was going to be the perfect daughter, the perfect wife and eventually the
perfect mother.
She was an overachiever for the moment thanks to the help of her dad. Somewhere along they
way she forgot all about that because all she really cared about was to be loved.
When she began to harbour feelings for that mysterious boy was when she fell into the deepest
rabbit hole.
After a while she got invited to a party on at the end of October, not exactly Halloween. She
went with some friends and stayed for a couple of hours even though she was not allowed to.
She even wore black lipstick as a kind of gesture.
She waited until she was left alone to pursue Adrian who went quietly with another boy into
the bushes. She could barely see them for they clad in black from head to toe like two big
bears. They held hands and smiled with ease probably because they were too drunk.
Lisa stopped and stood there bathed in the moonlight feeling her hair tickling her skin with
the breeze. Although this was uncomfortable she hardly cared.
Adrian had slammed that short-haired boy with the skin-tight shirt against the tree and began
to make out with him. Progressively he pulled down his pants and devoured every last bit of
that trashy-looking, beer guzzling man. She glanced at the Devil himself.
She was careful enough to vanish the scene and the party at that house as well; hers was only
a few blocks away.
By the time she got there she went into her room around one in the morning. She quickly
removed her Doc Martens and wiped off the dark lipstick.
"Fuck!" she repeated this many times in her head. "You´re so stupid, Lis."
Still not everything was a tragedy for the time to show her true feelings would come along;
precious feelings of empathy.
One morning at school Lisa arrived earlier than usual because her mom had dropped her off.
She had seen Adrian on a bench with his on his knees holding a cigarette in one hand.
She boldly approached him and said softly, "Hey, I´ve seen you in Art class."
"Yes," he answered. "Do I know you?"
"No, you wouldn´t but I was at a party down at Kevin´s last weekend."
"Oh, right."
"Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that you have an amazing talent. You could be famous one
day and make it big."
"Thanks but I think I started off on the wrong foot."
"How come?"
He took another puff and continued, "They found out."
"I´m sorry?"
"My parents; somehow they found out I´m gay."
Lisa froze for a while and remained silent, "I am so sorry to hear that but," she stumbled in
her own words, "I think you´re still great. In fact you´re far too special to be stuck in
this town."
"Truth is I´m not sure whether I want to show up in class."
"What if this is just a phase, you know, that you´re being curious?"
"No. I´m fully convinced. There´s no turning back."
Lisa had felt that day that she was talking to the most adult-like person in the planet and
she was ashamed. Her fantasies were being torn apart by wild animals and the only reasonable
thing to do was to make the pain go down. So she held his hand tightly and said, "What if you
come in with me? Hardly anyone pays attention to me."
"Why?"
"We could say that we met at the party and now we´re sort of going out and they won´t
suspect."
"That´s the stupidest idea."
"At least I´ll be by your side. Please let me be your friend; I believe in you."

And so she did for that and other powerful reasons they stuck together and became confidants
throughout high school and decided to move to New York hoping their dreams would come true.
They did but the ride would still be bumpy like now.
You see even though Adrian was surrounded by an incredibly sweet girl there was a shadow that
had been after him for years; a creature he could never fully grasp but it was most of the
time rabbit-like.
"Inle," she thought.

Lisa became her master´s assistant. She was the one who had all the connections to most of
the big galleries in the country, that´s what a smart girl does. This time "they" were after
a Jewish guy known as Fiver which base was in Chelsea; in fact all the hot new artists wanted
to show there. Adrian became obsessed with this fellow because he once claimed to know Mary
Boone and who was a very big name in the nineties.