Leaving Town

By The Queen of Blueberry Toast



"Tell me the truth," Crawford said as they pulled into the heather-drenched 
hills just outside Shrewsbury, "would you miss me if..." but his voice 
trailed off under the hiss of the convertible's tires as they crossed onto the 
glittering and empty highway. 


Schuldich shaded his eyes from the sun and tried turning to his 
companion.  The glare of the late afternoon kept him from seeing Brad as 
more than a shadow before the sheen of the cloudless sky.  "If what? You 
taste like day-old coffee with too much sugar in.  What's the matter?"

"Would you miss me if I died?" This time, his voice didn't even crack, 
didn't even pale beneath the hiss of the engine.

"What does that have to do with anything?"He laughed then, laughed as 
hard as he could and still keep his breath as they spun down the road.  He 
laughed so hard he cried, and his tears, whisked off his face by the rushing 
air, splattered on the back of his seat.  

"Schuldich?"

"That's the dumbest question I've ever heard, you know that, right?"

In the silence that crept through their speeding halo of space, he found he 
couldn't do anything but sigh away the last of his sniggers and fold his 
hands on the wet traces his saline left.  Above them, a single powder-puff 
cloud popped out from the brilliant umbra splattering the heavens, and a 
few of the farms gave way to stretches of bare grass and wild flowers: here 
and there a stone, here and there a grave tumbled half to ruin.

Crawford, certain at last there was no one to see him, slammed on the gas 
as hard as he could.  "Well, it wasn't to me," he admitted evenly.

"Oh shut up." Schuldich unfastened his seatbelt and somewhere between 
two heartbeats, somewhere between two hills without any names of their 
own, he kissed Brad and held his lips with his own for as long as he dared 
at ninety miles and hour.

"Stupid question, right?" he gasped as the last of the fog that had gathered 
on his glasses chased itself away.

"I've heard worse."