Peripheral Visions: Picture This

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Picture This

"So, did you have a nice time with Rob?" Calen asked. He heard his own snide tone of voice and almost winced. Then a rush of righteous indignation washed away his doubts.

Sam would get snippy and defensive, Calen was sure. Well, let him. The dinner party had gone well, everyone had enjoyed it, but Calen had felt his blood starting to boil almost from the moment Rob had arrived. "Hiiii!" Sam had sung, greeting Rob at the door, before grabbing him by the shoulders and planting a kiss on his cheek.

Rob had smiled that adorable smile of his... that hateful, adorable smile!... and blushed in the prettiest way possible. His cheeks were already red with December cold, and they matched the stupid red Santa Claus hat he was wearing. Calen, looking on, had hoped that Rob didn't intend to wear the stupid Santa Claus hat inside the house – but of course he had. He'd worn it all through dinner. What was worse was how everyone, including Sam, had kept telling him how cute it was. Sam had even pulled once or twice on the fluffy white ball that dangled from the peaked hat.

Sam always insisted on celebrating Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. That way, he reasoned, they could entertain their friends and still go have dinner with Calen's parents on the day itself. Calen would have been happy to skip both dinners... to skip the entire goddamn season... but he's long ago lost those fights and resigned himself to the exhausting annual tradition of back-to-back gatherings. At least they only hosted one party each Christmas – though the short one-month window between Thanksgiving dinner, to which Sam always invited friends, and Christmas seemed to get shorter and less restful every year.

Maybe it was the general sense of gloom that Calen felt around the holidays that made him feel so out of sorts, but there were other things on his mind, as well. As the guests kept arriving they started to mingle. Calen hoped that between cooking, serving, and tending to the various guests Sam would be too busy to flirt with Rob. He also hoped that Rob and Mick would hit it off; Calen's whole reason for inviting Mick was that he, like Rob, was single. The two men would have everything in common: They both loved watching that "Drag Race" TV show. Calen couldn't count the number of times he'd had to listen to Mick at the water cooler, in the break room, or on a company outing going into endless detail about the show's contestants, their performances, their rivalries... Rob, similarly, seemed to bring up the show and its ceaseless dramatics every chance he got. Not that Calen was entirely sure that Rob and Sam didn't talk about other things, as well – and that was what worried and angered him.

Calen knew he was being jealous. Worse, he knew he was being selfish. Calen's idea of the perfect evening was to be stay home, share the kitchen with Sam as they prepared dinner together, hear him talk about his day at work while the water boiled and the meat roasted and the veggies steamed, and then discuss their future plans while eating. After dinner they'd watch a movie or read, each in his own conformable armchair. Sometimes Sam griped about it – "We're like two old men, and we're too young to be old," he'd say – but he generally went along with it... when, that was, there wasn't a birthday party or a stag night or something else going on with one or another of his many friends.

Well, that was the way things used to be. Then Rob appeared. Sam knew him from church – one of the few points of divergence between Calen and Sam was that Calen had no time for religion, whereas Sam had grown up a Universalist Unitarian, and couldn't imagine that church not being part of his life, so much so that he kept attending the weekly fellowship services even when the Theopublicans in congress started debating legislation to outlaw that faith, along with all other churches that didn't subscribe to a strict neovangelical dogma.

"If they're gonna kill me," Sam had said more than once, "then they can kill me for my faith."

Calen's response to that was usually to hold up his left hand and show off his wedding ring. It was his way of replying that, for him at least, the one and only cause worth dying for was his right to marry, and stay married to, Sam.

In the dark of night when sleep eluded him (and, more recently, any time the subject of Rob came up) Calen wondered the same thing over and over again, obsessively: Why didn't Sam love him the way he loved Sam? Why didn't Sam fawn and obsess and adore him, the way Calen fawned, obsessed, and adored his husband?

But that wasn't how Sam was built. Sam liked everyone... Sam loved everyone. Sam had endless time to listen to friends complain to him. As they lay in bed together at the end of the day, Calen reading his book, Sam would be tapping away at his phone, texting with friends, reassuring them, offering them support and solace and suggestions for their endless parade of problems.

"Can't they pay someone for that?" Calen sometimes groused.

Sam's typical response was to pat him on the leg while continuing to scan the replies his needy little friends sent him.

Sam had always had more attention and more affection for everyone else that he had for Calen, but with Rob he was even worse. If Rob had no family, why then, he had to join them for Thanksgiving. In fact, he had to join them for Christmas dinner! Calen wondered if Sam would insist on having him over for New Year's Eve, too, even though the deal between Calen and Sam had always been that Sam could host Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners if Calen got his way and they stayed in on New Year's, forsaking the noisy crowds for a quiet and restful end to each year. Sam had not mentioned wanting to change that tradition, but Calen half expected that he might, and he got even angrier imagining the prospect.

So, no, Calen thought; if Sam didn't like the accusatory edge to his voice, then Sam could stuff it. More than that, Sam could take a hint and start giving Calen a little more of his time.

Sam bustled into the kitchen with a new stack of dishes for Calen to load into the dishwasher. "What's that, honey?" he asked.

Honey? Sam was a Southern boy, and he called people by a variety of corny endearments – Sweet Pea, Sugar Plum, Pumpkin. Weird food names that Calen thought were hilariously hokey at best, and cloying, if ridiculous, at worst. But Sam never even seemed to realize he was doing it; despite his irritation at the stupid pet names Sam called people, Calen often also found it endearing.

Not tonight, through. Not after having heard Sam call Rob "Sweetheart" and "Sugar" at least six times throughout the course of the evening.

"I said..." Calen looked up at Sam, who was beaming. Suddenly feeling foolish and a little guilty, Calen didn't repeat his comment.

Sam didn't notice his hesitation. Setting the dishes on the counter, Sam said, "What a great little celebration. Thanks for helping me cook up the roast beast and all the fixins."

"Roast beast." Another of Sam's feckless, syrupy verbal tics. He loved all those creaky old TV specials and was apt to quite from them. Calen wasn't sure which holiday show the term "roast beast" came from, but he knew he found it incomprehensible that a grown man would say such a thing. And that was something else, Calen thought as Sam whisked out of the kitchen again, a dishrag in his hand, presumably on his way to wipe down the table: Sam was such a child. There wasn't a problem in the world he wouldn't talk about as though it could easily be solved with a cornbread homily or a sunny smile and cozy chat.

Calen was still thinking about this as Sam darted back into the kitchen with the dishrag, humming a Christmas carol to himself. "Think the kids will come around tonight?" he asked.

"The kids?"

"The high schoolers."

"You mean the students who wander wound singing Christmas songs and begging for beer money?"

"It's not beer money," Sam scolded Calen lightly. "They're fundraising."

"Yeah, to party."

"No, for charity." Sam smiled at Calen. "It's a worthy cause. And they're good singers."

"Please don't give them any money," Calen said.

"I can't, if they don't come around," Sam said, absently, looking at the stack of dishes still sitting on the counter. "You want me to take over in here?"

"Why? Am I not moving fast enough for you?"

"I thought you might be tired. You helped me all day... maybe it would be nice for you to pour a splash of scotch and rest a while. Then we can each open one present."

Calen rolled his eyes. He'd forgotten Sam's insipid habit of wanting to open a single gift on Christmas Eve, saving the rest of the presents for the next morning.

"I've got it. You go have a drink if you want one," Calen said, sounding surly even to himself.

Sam stroked Calen on the back – Like he's petting a goddamn dog, Calen thought, irritated – and said, "You're so good to me." Then, giving him a peck on the cheek, Sam added, "Thanks, darlin'."

"No prob, darlin'," Calen muttered as Sam retreated to the living room.

Calen continued to stew as he worked, scraping uneaten food into the trash and feeling his anger shift to how the city no longer provided a service to collect food waste for compost. That change was part of the shift since the last election; the town council had declared that Stubbin, Oklahoma, was now a "sanctuary city for conservative values." That had spelled the end not only of the composting program, but the town's recycling efforts and all three branches of the local library.

Sam, of course, had taken it all pretty nonchalantly, suggesting that they could do their own composting and use the soil for a vegetable garden. Calen wondered where Sam intended to put a garden in their tiny back yard.

Calen's phone chimed, then chimed again. He paused. Were his parents calling? Were they canceling Christmas Day dinner? But no; the chime didn't mean a phone call. A text, maybe, but his mother never texted. His father didn't bother to communicate in general.

The phone chimed again, then twice more. Curious, Calen put the last of the plates and silverware into the dishwasher, wiped his hands dry, and picked up his phone. A number of FacePalm notifications had come in; Calen regretted ever getting on FacePalm. He found social media to be intrusive and obnoxious. But he also found it worthwhile in that he could track Sam's activities; Sam posted about everything, sometimes even about what he was doing with Calen, though Calen had asked him many times not to.

"But it's our vacation," Sam had protested last October, when they had gone hiking in the autumnal landscape around a lake.

"Nobody needs to know what we're up to," Calen had told him.

"But they need to see my pictures," Sam told him, and Calen had to admit he had a point; the photos Sam had taken were stunning.

It was pictures again this time, of course; photos of the food, the guests, Mick chatting with Theresa, who had shown up without Derek for some reason. Calen hadn't been interested enough to ask why, but he supposed Sam had gotten the whole story. Still, he felt a flash of disappointment at that photo. "He's probably straight," Calen muttered to himself, wondering how he'd not known that.

Then there were three photos of Sam and Rob. In one, Sam was tugging on the white ball at the end of Rob's dumb hat; in another, he and Rob were raising wine glasses for the camera. The third photo made Calen see red: Sam holding a sprig of mistletoe over their heads as he leaned in to give Rob a smooch on the side of his face, while Rob mugged for the camera with a coy expression.

"Asshole," Calen growled. He wanted to take his phone into the living room and shove it into Sam's face, screaming, "What the fuck?!" But that, he knew, wouldn't do any good; anyway, he was too tired. He decided to settle for that glass of scotch and opening one present instead, and then going to bed. He'd need to get some rest, after all, if he was going to get through the exhausting trials of Christmas Day.

***

Twenty-nine hours later, at 11:00 p.m. on December 25, having gotten through the day's trials and tribulations, Calen lay in bed next to Sam, grateful that the ordeal was over for another year. The day had started with a frenzy of unwrapping presents. Sam had given him twice as many gifts as he'd found for Sam, probably just to have an excuse to wrap them; Sam loved the look and mystery of gift-wrapped packages and always bought a dozen different kinds of wrapping paper. He didn't even seem to notice the disparity, and Calen was convinced Sam wouldn't have cared if Calen gave him nothing at all for the holiday. For his part, if the labor of finding suitable presents wasn't maddening enough (and Calen hated the whole idea of there being a day when he had to give presents to people; what a wasteful, not to mention tyrannical, custom), the effort that went into a show of appreciation for every gift felt like it took an enormous toll. Calen could have spent the rest of the day on the couch and been perfectly content, but then came the stressful process of dressing up, then the drive to his parents' house, and then another round of presents, followed by Christmas dinner with the family. If anything, it was even more excruciating and soul-draining than Christmas Eve with friends.

Sam had posted a host of new photos, of course: Sam with Calen's Mom and Dad in which even Dad was smiling; Calen swore his folks liked Sam more than they liked him, and part of him admitted that if that were actually true he wouldn't blame them for it, because Sam was always so nice, so attentive, and so interested in everyone. Even Calen's sister Janel like him, as did her husband and their three boys. The kids, especially, loved Sam, and why wouldn't they? He was more or less one of them. Calen sometimes wished he'd married a grownup, but at least Sam was there to keep the nephews occupied. It would have been an impossible task for Calen on his own.

After choosing the photos and using the phone's editing software to brighten them up, crop them just so, and add various holiday-themed effects (sparkles, cartoonish embellishments), Sam had given Calen a kiss and wished him Merry Christmas, then rolled over and fallen fast asleep.

Calen was too tired and wound up to get right to sleep, so he finished scrolling through the day's photos and then decided to look back through some of the older albums Sam had posted on the app.

Revisiting the pictures Sam had taken at the lake a couple months earlier, he cast his mind back to that day. It had been sultry, like an extension of summer. The water had lapped, crystal clear, on the shore, and he and Sam had skipped smooth, round stones. They'd also made a picnic in a grove of trees with bright yellow leaves...

Calen paused, frowning. He was looking at a familiar photo, and yet it was completely changed. Sam had taken a selfie of them on their picnic blanket; the afternoon light had been warm and golden and slanted at an autumnal angle, giving everything a soft, nostalgic look even in the moment. It was a photo Calen had loved from the first; the torrent of hostile laws the Theopublicans were passing, and the way that even people who claimed to be friends embraced those laws, made the country feel like a dark and sinister place these days. Any moment that seemed so bright, and so transcendent, felt like a lifeline to a more hopeful future.

But now that lifeline felt like it had been cut. The photo showed the same light, the same golden glow, the same lakeside setting... but the photo had changed: It showed Sam and Rob on the blanket with the picnic basket.

Calen felt his jaw tighten and his teeth clench.

"Sam," he growled, low in his throat. Then: "Sam!" he screamed, reaching over to shake his sleeping husband.

"What?" Sam sat up, looking alarmed. "Are you okay? What's the matter?"

"What's the matter? This!" Calen shoved the phone at Sam. "This is the matter!"

"Huh?" Same looked at the phone, not comprehending.

"Where was he hiding? In the forest? When did you sneak that photo, huh? What else did you get up to? Maybe a sly little fuck in the trees?"

"What are you talking about?"

Calen shook the phone at Sam. "You fucker!" he snarled.

Sam took the phone out of Calen's hand and looked at it. Then he handed it back. "That's our picnic at the lake. What's got you so mad?"

Calen snatched the phone back and looked down at the screen... and then froze in confusion. The photo was the same as it had always been, just him and Sam. No Rob in sight; no one else anywhere, for that matter.

"I... I thought this photo was... I thought it..."

"Did you have a nightmare or something? Are you sleepwalking?" Sam asked, looking concerned.

"I guess so," Calen said. "I'm sorry."

"Are you okay?" Sam asked.

"I said I'm sorry," Calen answered sharply.

"Okay," Sam said. "All right. I'm... I'm here if you need me." Sam got comfortable, then, with one last worried look at Calen, closed his eyes.

Calen set the phone on the bedside table and turned off the light. He lay awake for a long time, trying to figure out just when he'd fallen asleep and had the nightmare of Rob taking his place in the photo.

Was he really so jealous and worried? Did he have cause to be?

***

The day after Christmas was a Friday, and both he and Sam had it off work. The weekend passed without any drama, though Calen felt the usual touch of annoyance when Sam went off to church on Sunday morning – annoyance shaded with something else, something fear-tinged, knowing that Rob was going to be there, that Sam and Rob would be chatting and laughing together... and singing and worshipping together, too, which was somehow even worse. Calen spent the three house Sam was out of the house scrolling back to the Sam's FacePalm post from the previous October, looking at the photos from the lake again and again. They were as they always had been; happy and innocent, pictures from a perfect day.

The week between Christmas and New Year's was always slow for both Sam and Calen. Sam was clearly goofing off during office hours that Monday afternoon, because Calen's phone chimed several times. Finishing up his work on a spreadsheet, Calen decided to check out the posts Sam had made. It was probably, he thought, Sam's yearly pre-New Year's tour of the previous twelve months, when he re-posted his favorite photos.

That was exactly what Sam was posting; he'd put up a batch of pictures that retraced the year's first three months. Calen scrolled through the photos, starting with the stroke of midnight, 2031. They had stayed up late watching a long movie, and then Sam had coaxed Calen to join him as he danced around the table singing "Auld Lang Syne." The selfie he'd taken of the two of them made them look like madmen.

Calen grinned at the memory and scrolled through the next dozen photos. Then he stopped, staring in shock at a snap from their ski trip to Taos the previous February. Valentine's Day had fallen on a Friday, so they had taken a long weekend, leaving Thursday and driving to New Mexico along Oklahoma's long panhandle, which abutted Kansas and Colorado to the North and Texas to the South. They were on the slopes for Valentine's Day, and – ironically, perhaps, since this had been intended as a romantic getaway – they had made the acquaintance of a stunningly handsome man named Ted, whom Calen was instantly hot for.

They'd had hookups together with hot guys in the past; Calen suggested that they try to suss out whether Ted might be amenable to an adventure with them. Ted seemed like he might be gay, and seemed like he might be keen on Sam. Calen wasn't above letting any lust Ted might have for Sam propel him into bed with the both of them, where Calen could have a taste of Ted.

In the end it hadn't worked out, since Ted was straight – a fact that Sam brought out in the course of conversation, as the three of them had lunch on the ski resort's outdoor patio. The day had been bright and not too cold. Sam had been wearing his dark blue ski parka and a matching stocking cap. Both cap and parka had red accents. Calen had suggested he take a photo of the two of them, thinking that at least he'd have a visual keepsake of the handsome Ted, and Ted and Sam had obliged, throwing their arms over each others' shoulders and laughing as they looked at the camera.

Sam had posted that photo, and Ted – with whom Sam had, of course, connected on FacePalm – had given it a "like" reaction.

Now, here the photo was again: The same light, the same snowy mountains in the distance and brilliant blue sky, the same dark blue parka and matching stocking cap... but it was Rob in the photo instead of Ted. Rob who was throwing his arm around Sam's shoulders. Rob who was grinning from behind black-lensed sunglasses that gave him an evil, bug-eyed appearance...

Calen shut his eyes and willed himself to breathe slowly, calmly. His overwrought mind was making this up. He was seeing things. Sam hadn't even met Rob until last summer. The photo had been taken months before Rob joined Sam's church.

But when he opened his eyes after a long moment, Calen saw that it was still Rob in the photo.

Calen turned to look at the woman at the desk next to his. "JoAnne," he said, "take a look at this."

"Oh, is Sam posting his yearly roundup of pictures?" JoAnne reached over and took the phone. "He's so cute. I love that blue hat with the red puff on top... and who's this with him? He's cute. Did you guys..." She looked up, raising her eyebrows in a salacious way.

"Really, you think he's cute?" Calen said, accepting the phone as she held it out to him. "You like muscly red-haired guys?"

"Red? He looks like he has dark hair in that photo. And I'd call him more wiry than muscled."

Dark hair. Wiry. Like Rob. Not a ginger hunk built like a quarterback – not Ted.

"So, did you guys pick him up?"

"Nah," Calen said. "That was our Valentine's Day trip. Anyway, he wasn't my type."

"I thought you said there was a guy, though?"

"No, I said there was a guy I would have, but he was straight."

"No way that cutie there is straight," JoAnne said, glancing back at the phone with a grin. "My gaydar's never wrong."

Maybe not, Calen thought, trying to focus on his next time-wasting task. But something is surely not right.

***

Calen decided not to say anything about the Valentine's Day photo. But after dinner, as Sam cleaned up in the kitchen, he took another look at the Valentine's Day photo and changed his mind. The photo had not reverted to its original image; it still showed Rob and Sam.

Calen decided not to do any yelling this time. Not yet, at least.

"Do you remember this picture?" he asked, handing his phone to Sam when Sam came in from the kitchen and sat in his armchair.

Sam took the phone. "I posted these just today," he said. Then, smiling at the photo, he said, "That was a fun trip. Want to go again next year?"

"I don't think so," Calen said tightly.

"Are you sure? New Mexico's been a friendly place so far, but their state legislature is mostly Theopublican now, thanks to the midterms, and I read something about a push to make the state an 'LGBTQ-Free zone,' like the Southern states." Sam sighed. "Including my home sweet home."

"Does that photo look strange to you?" Calen asked.

"What do you mean? Strange how?"

"Does it look... different than you remember?"

"No," Sam said, offering the phone back to him.

"Look again."

Sam glanced at the phone's screen and shrugged. Offering the phone to Calen once more he said, "Nope, it's the same as ever."

"Except you didn't know Rob back then."

"No, not yet, but that's when we first met him."

"We first met him?" Calen asked. "We did not. You first met him at church, the day after the summer solstice."

"No, I didn't," Sam said. "We met him at Taos. Remember what a crazy coincidence it was? We started talking to him while we were eating lunch and he told us he had just moved to Stubbin. I recommended the church to him, and the first service he showed up to was on the day after the solstice."

"No, I..." Calen paused. Was that how it had happened? Suddenly, he wasn't sure. But one thing he did know was that Rob had not had lunch with them on Valentine's Day – that had been Ted. "Didn't we have lunch with that guy Ted, instead of Rob?"

"Ted? You mean that big guy you were hot for? No, and it was just as well. He was straight. Remember? But then we met Rob and he – " Sam hesitated.

"And he what?"

"Well, he's the one we ended up taking back to our room that night. You said it was a Valentine's gift for me. You didn't really like him that much, but I had been willing to try to pick up Ted, so..."

"No," Calen said. "No, that's not what happened."

"That's the way I remember it," Sam said. "Do you really not recall having some fun with Rob?"

"No."

"I sure do. It made things just a little awkward when I saw him again at church all those months later. He said it was that threesome that made him hesitate about coming to our church, but then as soon as we reconnected it was okay."

"Reconnected?"

"You know," Sam said. "In the spirit of fellowship."

"And you two don't... you don't ever want to..."

Sam laughed. "Well, maybe kind of. But no more than with anyone else."

Calen stared at his husband. "How many men do you wish you could sleep with?"

Sam frowned at him and then shook his head. "It's not about that. I like making friends – that's all."

"Yeah. Friends. Right."

"And that's all Rob and I are," Sam continued. "Though you sure act like you think there's something more between us."

"I wonder if there's not," Calen said.

"Well, you can stop wondering," Sam told him. "I'm telling you."

"Okay, and what happened to our picture of Ted?"

"Ted? Oh, you're talking about that ginger guy again. What about him?"

"The picture?"

"We don't have a picture of him," Sam said.

Calen was about to argue the point, but then realized how foolish and jealous he sounded. Well, he was jealous. But was he being foolish, too? That picture did exist – or it had – hadn't it?

Or had it?

"Sweetie," Sam said, reaching over with the bottle of scotch to refresh Calen's drink, "I think with everything going on... the election, all that hate rhetoric from the right-wing crazies... that it's been a hard year for everyone."

Calen tipped his glass back. A hard year? Maybe it had been. But what was happening? Where was this all going? What was next?

***

What was next was more of the same, fulfilling and sharpening Calen's growing anxiety. The following day was even more boring at the office, and he found himself without even busywork to do. As JoAnne fussed with her nails, he gave up looking for constructive work-related tasks and gave into his gnawing dread at what he might see if he looked at the new batch of photos from the past year that his husband was posting.

To his relief, Calen saw nothing out of the ordinary. All the photos Sam posted this time stayed the same as he remembered them. Rob didn't show up in photos from April, May, and June. It wasn't until the Fourth of July cookout that Sam had gone to with church friends that Rob appeared again in the Sam's photos, just as Calen recalled, and even then Rob was one among many people crowded around a grill in someone's back yard, or eating a hot dog among others seated at an outdoor table.

But then, as if driven by some deep and fearful suspicion, Calen started looking at Sam's photos from years past. That was when he saw Rob in photos dating back to 2028... including at the phone bank Sam had volunteered for in support of the Democratic candidate for Oklahoma's governor. She had lost, which had put Calen into a weeklong funk – all those evenings when Sam had been away, leaving Calen alone at home while he phoned strangers, many of whom screamed threats and obscenities at him – but Sam's optimism had not dimmed.

Was this why? Had Sam and Rob been carrying on for years, all without Calen knowing?

At home that night, Calen almost – almost – confronted Sam with the photos, but something held him back.

Maybe I don't want to know he thought. Maybe I just want things to seem okay... even if they're not.

"Are you all right, sweetie?" Sam asked, leaning over in his armchair and looking away from the movie they were watching. "You've been quiet tonight, and you're not laughing at the film."

"Should I be laughing?"

"Well, this is your favorite comedy," Sam said, nodding at the TV screen.

***

Sam had finished posting photos and Calen's phone didn't chime once. He resisted the temptation to scroll through Sam's FacePalm photos all the same. Luckily, his supervisor came up with an end-of-year task that kept Calen busy all day, or he might have driven himself crazy fretting over the photos he'd discovered.

At home, there was no such distraction. Calen and Sam cooked dinner, with Sam chatting away about friends, work, church, and even making mention of one of his estranged siblings. Sam's family had turned their backs on him when he came out; now, it seemed, one of his sisters had sent him an email saying that with the new year ahead, she was thinking they might reconcile.

"And it's not like she's actually changed her mind about gay people," Sam said. "She still thinks we all 'choose' to be attracted to people of the same gender, which, I mean, really? But... well, she's trying, right?"

"Right," Calen said. But are you? he mentally replied.

He wasn't even sure what that thought meant, but as the evening dragged by... New Year's telecasts filling the TV channels, concerts, stand-up comedy specials, the usual dreck-the-halls garbage... Calen kept coming back to it. Was Sam trying? Was he making any effort to put Calen at the center of his life, where a spouse belonged? Or was he just happily going about his social butterfly business, flitting from friend to friend and hardly thinking about what Calen might have wanted? If anything, Calen sometimes got the sense that Sam was put out when he forsook some social gathering or group road trip to a gay men's weekend with his pals.

Calen slumped in his armchair until nine o'clock and then, unable to stand another minute, told Sam he was going to bed. "Are you going to stay up until midnight?" he asked pointedly, his tone of voice communicating his wish for Sam to join him.

"Maybe not, but I'm not going to bed at nine on New Year's Eve," Sam told him. "I'll just hang out with the celebrities in Times Square."

Calen glanced at the TV and shuddered. The gender laws and family laws the Theopublicans were passing were draconian, but here they were, the usual A-gays, plastic and shallow and pretending that the country wasn't getting ready to come up with one, or several, excuses to arrest anyone who wasn't white, straight, cisgender, and in thrall to a very specific image of God.

"Have fun," Calen said, and stomped off to the bedroom.

Lying in bed, angry and anxious, he stared at his book. The sound of the TV from the other room bled through the walls. The sound of distant, muffled voices and music increased his sense of isolation. He could, he knew, get up and go join his husband... but why? To ring in a year that going to be worse, more frightening, more oppressive than the year before? To celebrate the passage of time as it sucked everything into a vacuum of darkness and hatred?

Calen sighed and put his book aside. Picking up his phone, he found himself going back to FacePalm... to Sam's page... to his photo albums.

Why am I doing this? he asked himself. It was only going to sharpen his fear and anger to go over those photos one more time.

But he couldn't help it. He had a perverse need to soak in his suspicions, to marinate in his own insecurities and to blame Sam for them.

Calen found his way to the oldest of the photo albums Sam had posted – an album that showed photos from his college days, from his first job, from his relationship with that guy, Jim, he used to date when he was just out of school.

Calen jumped forward to 2026 and then started scrolling back again. Back to 2020, back to 2016 – the year that had sent the country down this terrifying path – and then, finally to 2015... the year he and Sam had met.

Sam had posted a photo from that day. It had been mid-September, and they were both living in Chicago. Sam had been wandering around the Museum of Science and Industry, and had decided to clear his head by walking along the shore of Lake Michigan. Calin had been hanging out on in the park nearby, watching the sunlight on the water. They had started talking – Sam approached Calen, of course; Sam had been interested, and interesting, and charming, and so, so adorable. They had spent the rest of the afternoon together, bound by a mutual sense of reluctance to part ways. Then they'd had dinner. Then they'd gone to Calen's place, and they had been together ever since.

At one point early on, while they were still in the park by the lake, Sam – always wanting to photograph everything – had suggested they take a selfie. A woman walking by had offered to take the photo for them. It was a great picture: Sam with his big, happy smile, and Calen looking, as he seldom did, cheerful.

Calen thought about the photo often, but rarely hunted it down to look at it. He thought about it when he got down on himself for being a drag on Sam's life – that was how he imagined himself. In less distraught moments he understood that Sam didn't feel Calen was dragging him down at all, that his many friendships were simply a function of who he was and, if anything, it was sometimes nice to have a reason not to go out.

Sometimes, though – Calen was sure – Sam wished Calen had it in him to be a little more outgoing.

Calen picked his way through the photos with a growing sense of confusion and unease. Here and there, he was still seeing photos of Rob – years before he'd thought Sam had met him. What was going on with the two of them? How had Sam kept all these photos secret for so long? Or – had they been secret? Calen often dismissed Sam's stories about his friends, only half listening, not finding them interesting in the least. Had Sam been telling him about Rob all this time and he'd only taken notice since last summer?

But, wait. Hadn't Sam said something about first meeting Rob last Valentine's Day? If that really was their first meeting, why was Rob showing up in photos from years earlier?

Calen kept up the search, quickly moving past photos of Sam with Rob, photos of Rob by himself (which Sam must have taken?), photos of buildings and trees and animals that Sam had taken over the years. He had the idea that if he could only look at that photo from their first day together, if he could see that cherished moment, then he could set aside his fear and confusion. As long as they still had that first photo, that first anchor point, then he could feel that the years ever since were real and solid, and escape the growing sense that things were coming untethered... he was coming untethered...

With a sense of relief, Calen found the photo he was looking for. The light off the water had turned the two of them almost into silhouettes and given the light of the day a sepia-toned look. It seemed like a photo from a hundred years ago. It seemed like a photo out of time. They were both younger; even though they were backlit, it was obvious that they were still in their twenties, that they had a whole life to look forward to together...

Calen paused, then tilted the phone to look at the image from a different angle. He touched the screen with thumb and fingertip, and pincered them apart, enlarging part of the image – the part showing their faces.

The light sparkling on the water was the same. The sepia effect was the same. The posture and positions of the silhouetted bodies were the same, and yet one of them was not the same body; it was skinnier, more angular... As he enlarged the image and looked at the faces, Calen felt a thrill of fear and horror; it wasn't himself in the photo with Sam. It was Rob.

Calen sat still, in shock, for long moments, trying to understand what he was seeing, trying to work out how it could be possible.

It's me, he realized. It had to be. The photos couldn't be changing on their own; someone was manipulating them, substituting them... and that made no sense, because how? and Why?

It's me, Calen thought again, with fleeting clarity, almost seeing something that was larger than his life, and larger than his life with Sam. Something his hot, hate-filled, black moods touched and warped, melted and made different...

It was his own jealous rage that was erasing things past and rewriting what had come before. That, Calen thought, was what he had been doing: Rewriting his past with Sam, turning their time together into something it had never been, diminishing it with his possessiveness and his jealousy...

I have to stop pushing him away, Calen thought wildly. I should be in there with him right now, celebrating, looking forward to the new year... to everything we can still be together... instead of pushing him away, punishing him, unraveling us...

A sharp new fear lanced through him: That he couldn't put things right any longer; that a crucial moment had passed...

The bedroom door opened, and Calen looked up to see Sam staring at him –

And there, over Sam's shoulder... Rob.

The two of them had a charged air about them, an excited, happy aura that suggested two lovers rushing into a bedroom to tear off each other's clothes. But that changed quickly as Sam and Rob stared at Calen in what seemed to be shock.

"What's he doing here?" Calen started to ask, though he knew. Sick and regretful, weak with the knowing... he knew.

His halting question was drowned out by Sam and Rob, both of whom cried out and began shouting questions at Calen: Who was he? Why was he in their house? What was he doing in their bed?

Calen stared at them in shock.

"Get the fuck out!" Sam screamed.

"I'm calling the cops!" Rob shouted, disappearing.

Calen got out of bed, found his clothes, and pulled them on as Sam stood there watching him with apprehension.

"He's not kidding," Sam told Calen. "He's calling the cops. You better get the hell out."

"Sam?" Calen said.

"How do you know my name?" Sam demanded. It was absurd: A trite question, something that should have sounded rote and unconvincing, and yet Calen knew at once that Sam wasn't kidding around. He was genuinely panicked.

He thought Calen was a stranger.

And Calen understood perfectly well that whatever past he remembered, it was no longer the past that mattered. Sam didn't know who he was. Sam shared none of the memories he had of the two of them, their time together, their marriage.

And it was all, Calen knew, his own fault.

"I'm... I'm going," Calen said quietly. He paused for a moment, and Sam stepped back into the living room, making way for him to emerge through the bedroom door.

Everything in the air around him, everything inside his consciousness seemed to be driving him toward the door and the wintry darkness beyond. Through a haze of disbelief and horror, Calen heard a chorus of voices from the television chanting numbers backwards... counting down to the new year.

He opened the door and lingered for a moment.

"Wait," Sam said. "Don't you have a coat? Don't you have... shoes?"

Calen looked down and grinned foolishly, hopelessly, at his bare feet. Glancing back at his husband, he said, "No. I came into the world naked, and..." He shrugged.

"Three," the voices shouted from the TV. Behind them, on the phone, Rob was shouting about an intruder, about needing police to get there in a hurry.

There was a look on Sam's face – a look like he was struggling to place Calen, to recall who he was. "Do I know you?" he asked.

"Two," the TV blared.

Calen shook his head, wordless, a last sorrowful grin on his lips as he stepped into the night.

"One!" the TV cried.

Calen pulled the door shut behind him, the porch cold under his feet, the air an icy shock, the stars unbelievably brilliant and scattered across a sky of absolute blackness.

Happy New Year Calen thought, the image of his smiling husband in that photo from long ago lingering in his mind.

Next week we meet two unusual friends: Dusty is small boy who can see ghosts, and his grandmotherly new acquaintance has a spectral presence in her home – something that's evident to everyone involved except for "Ethel."