On the right-hand side of the chapel, Sebastian stood in the candlelight, beautiful, pierced and astonishingly patient.
Brian had by now given up on the chestnut-coloured cushion and was merely holding it in front of him because it had been given to him and because even an old Catholic chapel set a limit for him. Emmett remained wrapped in his rug, looking less like a repentant ocelot and more like a man who’d learnt that dignity sometimes consists of scraps of fabric and good posture. Justin stood between them, fully clothed and, as a result, almost superior.
They waited until the voices by the Hippolytus Altar had died down. For the three men, a different future lay ahead of Sebastian: sun, bodies, art, advertising, shame and the unpleasant talent for not immediately regretting bad decisions.
Justin looked at the saint.
“He looks as if someone designed him for a poster and then forgot that he’s supposed to be in pain. That’s probably unfair, but I can’t see it any other way right now, because this whole night consists of images that pierce me like arrows. Sebastian stands there, beautiful and wounded, and I wonder whether beauty is sometimes just the most polite way of surviving a fatal injury.”
Brian looked over at him.
“I suppose this is the moment when you paint a greater truth out of my nakedness, Emmett’s carpet and a martyr with a very good physique. You’re allowed to do that because I love you and because I currently lack the means to stop your darkness. But before you get too poetic: I’ve messed up, I know it, and my head hurts too much to turn this into a advert for a Greek horror film.”
Emmett pulled the rug tighter around himself. He looked first at Justin, then at Brian, then at Sebastian, who was keeping out of it all and, precisely because of that, seemed dangerously understanding.
“I’m not going to hide behind the anaesthetic, although I’d very much like to have a dramatic medical excuse. I was curious, I was flattered, and for half an hour I didn’t want to be the man who’d been too slow to suspect the Korean woman at the table. I didn’t mean to hurt you, but that’s very little to my credit, Justin, when you consider that people usually hurt one another because they’re only thinking of themselves.”
Justin exhaled.
Outside, the wind battered against the chapel door. The candles flickered, but Sebastian remained calm. Perhaps a saint who lived by arrows had less patience for men who were already wavering in the wind.
“I don’t know if I’m angry, Brian, or if I’m just tired of constantly having to be modern enough to put up with you. I didn’t love you because you were easy, and I’ve fallen in love with freedom often enough, even when it was really just a prettier word for chaos. But I don’t want a freshly made bed to decide whether something really happened, and I don’t want Emmett to dissolve into his carpet just because you sleep badly.”
Brian looked at Justin for a long time.
Then he nodded.
“That’s fairer than I deserve, and more dangerous, because I can make less of sense of it than I can of a slap or a cup of hemlock from your hand. I don’t want to promise you I’ll become a man who, before every disaster, dutifully asks whether it fits into our relationship or your idea of it. But I can promise you that I won’t let a yellow room or my own poor handling of yellow fear wash me clear of this colourful responsibility.”
Emmett raised his hand cautiously, not quite as he would in class, but more like someone knocking before entering their own confession of guilt.
“I’d like to add, please, that yellow isn’t my lucky colour. I crossed a line, and even if your boundaries are more complicated than a normal city map, I shouldn’t have pretended that complexity was the same as an invitation free of blame. Justin, I owe you an apology, and I owe myself the realisation that yellow curiosity isn’t a colourful moral shield.”
Justin looked at him. His face was calm, but not yellow. That was worse for Emmett, because it remained pale despite the candlelight.
“Thank you. I accept the apology, but I can’t promise you a fully clothed glance at breakfast. You’re my friend, Emmett, and perhaps that’s precisely why we can’t sit next to each other on the boat journey back; strangers can rarely disappoint you quite as precisely as the people you trust.”
Brian’s mouth twisted briefly.
“I hate it when you sound more grown-up than you are. It’s very bad for the ad campaign. Besides, standing naked in front of Sebastian whilst my friend and my carpet-clad friend negotiate a moral contract; that’s an ambitious night even for Pittsburgh.”
Justin looked back at the saint. Then, very slowly, a small smile appeared.
“You’ve got that job in Tarifa, haven’t you? The club at the tidal power station, the glass walls, the wafting eco-music, the rich people with bare shoulders and green tastes who think they’re embracing distilled liberation. You told me about it as if it were just a job, but in truth you were beaming because you get to run a campaign for people who want to sin and be photographed doing it at the same time.”
Brian raised an eyebrow.
“Tarifa is a serious gig. A new club, an international crowd, the beach, the wind, bodies, light, expensive drinks and the usual claim that everyone there finds their soul, provided they’ve first jumped onto a very high-priced guest list. I admit that to you this sounds like a boring commercial hell, but it’s an eco-trophic hell with brilliant sunshine and highly marketable sustainability blunders.”
Emmett looked back and forth between them. Something inside him perked up before he could stop it.
“Tarifa has wind, sea and vain people who believe self-awareness is an accessory. That sounds like exactly the sort of place where Justin could paint, Brian could sell, and I could stop everyone from wearing nothing but yellow just because they think they’re gilded. I’m not saying a Spanish seaside club will solve our problems, but I am saying that problems look more honest sometimes in the sunlight, with the wrong sunglasses and good cocktails. I’ll curate a buffet.”
Justin looked at Emmett, this time with less harshness.
“I need sunshine. Not as a cure, not as a postcard, but because ever since Jilib and that night, I’ve had too much black and yellow in my head: black reef, black cloth, black carpet, a black spot that vanishes again, yellow sheets, yellow cushions, yellow lampshades: like something out of a Maya the Bee nightmare. I need bad decisions that don’t turn yellow straight away, and vain people who at least know they’re yellow and greedy.”
Brian snorted quietly.
“That might just be the finest definition of my target audience anyone’s ever come up with. Bad decisions that don’t prove fatal straight away are the foundation of every successful club campaign. And vain people with an awareness of yellow are rare, but when you find them, they pay for the yellow light and then claim they’ve stripped themselves bare.”
Emmett placed a hand on his chest, causing the carpet to slip dangerously and be reflexively held in place by Brian.
“Then I’ll come along, if I may. I won’t pretend that Tarifa is penance, because penance with a beach bar isn’t in the spirit of Saint Sebastian. But I can be useful: I know vain people, I love non-yellow light of any kind, and I can teach a club that glamour isn’t just about bare skin, but about the moment when someone realises how ridiculous they are and dances anyway.”
Justin looked at Brian. This time, Brian devoured Justin’s eyes with his own.
The yellow room still lay between them. It hadn’t gone away, hadn’t been forgiven, hadn’t been made pretty. But it was no longer the only room. Tarifa seemed like a verdant slice of the night beside it: wind on the Strait of Gibraltar, ferries to Morocco, neon over sand, music that didn’t know how to drown out the sound of the tides.
“I’m coming with you,” said Justin. “I’m not coming because everything’s fine, nor because I want to forget what I’ve heard. I’m coming because I don’t want to let this island remain the yellow image of that night, and because you, Brian, can’t lie as well under the sun as you can under yellow lamps.”
Brian nodded, and something stirred in his face that, in another man, might have been called humility. In Brian’s case, it was more a willingness to survive a defeat without launching an immediate counter-offensive.
“Then we’ll head to Tarifa. I’ll do my job, you’ll paint, Emmett will save vain people from the yellow, and we’ll try to limit the stupid decisions to those we can still talk about in the morning. I won’t promise any more than that, because big promises usually age badly in chapels. I’ll be having sex every day in Spain – and it’s up to you whether you want to be part of it or not; I promise you that before Saint Sebastian, otherwise may all his arrows pierce me as punishment.”
Emmett looked up at Sebastian.
“I think the saint approves of that. He seems like someone who knows more about the body, vanity and pain than his admirers give him credit for. Besides, he’s been standing around half-naked for centuries and still has dignity; that should give us all courage.”
Brian looked up as well.
“Sebastian forgives the vain. That’s official Catholic doctrine, but I could also write a very good secular campaign around it. Arrows, light, the body, pain, redemption through perfect targeting.”
Justin laughed softly.
It wasn’t much. But after that night, a laugh that didn’t hurt anyone was almost a miracle.
Justin stepped closer to Brian. Not into an embrace, not as forgiveness through physical contact, but as a decision to stand beside him. Emmett remained on the other side, close enough not to be banished, far enough to realise that closeness had to be earned anew after that night.
With Sebastian, the beautiful wounded man, they didn’t envisage a future that was pure.
Just one that had sunshine.
Tarifa. Wind. Club lights. Morocco as a promising line beyond the water. Brian with a mission, Justin with sketches, Emmett with colours that swirled every club into ecological rainbows. Yellow decisions made in mutual openness, hopefully without any deaths. Vain people who perhaps had enough money to buy a better future whilst sipping expensive lemon cocktails.
