The Steps Back to Louis Freemont (Sam Berman)

1. The boy was born to nice, still, beltway parents.
2. Breastfed too much, or not enough.
3. When older, the boy loved another boy whom he played lacrosse with.
4. The boy that the boy loved and whom he played lacrosse with, asked if the boy wanted to smell his fingers after touching his girlfriend down there during their lunch period.
5. The boy said no. And the boy he loves said, “that’s fine, let’s just practice.” 
6. Then the boy quit the lacrosse team before their first game against the Eld Ridge.
7. Sad, the boy cried way up on a hill and then left for the city, for college, for film school.
8. He wrote and directed a movie in film school, okay.
9. He played the movie for his classmates and his film professor.
10. The professor, who’d sold a script or two in his day, said only, “Wow.”
11. Then the professor collected himself, quelling his jealousy, his wonderment. He adjusted his glasses on his nose and said, “Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s incredible.”
12. Later, in France, on stage, he thanked parents for listening to his endless recitations of Martin Scorsese scripts. An apocryphal little quip, but one he found charming. 
13. He wore a Louis Vuitton suit and Oliver Peoples sunglasses while accepting the Palm d’Or.
14. Storm clouds stacked in the distance and the entire world smelled like the wild, upset sea.
15. The red carpet lifted and a photographer fell over. 
16. Hair flapping in the wind, the boy’s publicist walked him towards the president of Fox Searchlight.
17. The boy shook the president of Fox Searchlight’s hand.
18. There was an eager smile, a wink and a forearm pat and a wink and a shoulder pat. 
19. In wide release, the film struggled; middling box office returns and less-than-stellar reviews. 
20. Critics found it, “Ponderous,” and, “Bereft of any real insight towards the queer experience.”  
21. The worst was that the critic from the boy’s hometown newspaper reviewed the film.
22. And the boy knew his parents would read it, and he knew it wasn’t going to be great. 
23. The review noted that all the extended lacrosse scenes seemed, “unrealistic.” 
24. On the phone, the boy’s mother said the only opinion that mattered was his own, and that if he liked his movie, then screw them all. Then she told him that nobody won the Powerball the week prior, and that they would draw new numbers on Wednesday, and that the boy needed to keep his head up, because there was always hope.
25. The boy smiled. 
26. The boy’s agent rented him a room at the Chateau Marmont.
27. He took meetings for two weeks straight.
28. Between meetings he enjoyed room service: sheep’s milk ricotta with fennel sausage, celeriac and parsnip soup, blueberry muffins. With the booze his hotel bill was just north of five grand.
29. The boy’s next project, a Netflix series, became a big, horrible hit.
30. He bought a house in the hills, a vintage Mercedes and a Noodles Hahn baseball card.
31. He held the sepia toned card in his hand and started sweating.
32. For some reason he thought it would be heroic to give the card to a homeless guy.
33. He found someone with nothing down by the river. 
34. The homeless guy said, “Cool, I guess.” Then gave the boy a little clear baggie.
35. The boy very much enjoyed the contents of the little baggie.
36. The boy was on a roll–the boy was rolling.
37. Enlivened by Los Angeles: its messy sidewalks, its purple nighttime, its cheap speedballs.
38. He spent every day for an entire week trying to teach his dog to say, “I ruv you.”  
39. He began to enjoy how good it felt to believe in conspiracies.
40. Closing the blinds, he watched a propeller plane fly low, taking photos of the Hollywood sign.
41. Unconvinced, the boy was certain the picture taking was a ruse, and that the pilot of the plane was using Russian surveillance equipment to steal files from his laptop.  
42. The boy ran outside dressed as though he was ready to fall off something: leather jacket and thick, rough jeans. 
43. He stood in the shallow end of his pool and fired the gun they’d let him keep after filming wrapped on The Jungle War: Origins.
44. The boy almost hit the plane.
45. The plane almost hit the power lines.
46. The police came and the boy claimed he could see their bones under their skin.
47. He screamed something about Ariel Sharon and ordered his sleeping dog to attack.
48. “In these tampering times,” the boy said, “I knew you’d come for me, eventually.”
49. Amongst the white capped mountains, in rehab, head shaved, the boy started to cry. 
50. “I loved a boy who asked me to smell his fingers,” the boy said.
51. “You’s a lie,” Renaldo, a fellow patient, an heir to a fortune, said.
52. “I’m not,” said the boy. It was snowing as he spoke. “Louis was my only love.”
53. “Really,” said Renaldo, crossing his legs in the white light of the gnawed and brittle morning.
54. “He’s the only thing that ever really happened to me, honestly.”
55. “Shit. Word. Okay, go off.”
56. But the boy didn’t go off, he just fell silently back into his chair and the group moved on. 
57. Outside, during free time, the boy sat in the shallow end of a heated pool and balled his fists.
58. The snow fell around him, the flecks dissolving instantly against the warm water; the artist part of him found the sight to be quite moving while the newly sober part of him found such ineffable beauty to be–if he was being honest with himself–very annoying.
59. He called his agent during phone time and explained he was feeling trapped. That he didn’t belong in such an annoying and beautiful place, that he didn’t belong with all the casino junkies, rich brats and tired actors trying one last time to fix things they couldn’t escape. 
60. “I need to work,” said the boy. “I know working will get my head right.”
61. The agent was quiet on the phone.
62. “Well,” he said after a long-like time. 
63. Then.
64. Wasted on set while filming the second season of his terribly popular Netflix show, the boy watched the stuntman flip his motorcycle over the guardrail of the Santa Monica Freeway.
65. There was a lot of screaming.
66. And either more or less blood than one might imagine, depending on how they were raised. 
67. The boy fell out of his director’s chair.
68. He yelled, “Cut!” But no one listened.
69. The only thing he heard was the screams.
70. The sirens. 
71. The stuntman moaning in this horribly tender way against the oily road.   
72. “Cut,” the boy said again, softer. Then he vomited on top of his little monitor.
73. The trades called the boy a “Bad Boy.”
74. The term, “Woeful negligence,” was used as well.
75. Moreover, he was dropped from his show and by his agency. His publicist left too.   
76. On the flight home he was coming down: his skin hot and cold and crawling and selfish. 
77. His hand shook as he raised the ginger ale to lips.
78. And even though he knew he liked ginger ale, at that moment it tasted like battery acid.
79. He put his head against the window as the plane began its descent.
80. The shrinking sky had turned dark.
81. His stomach ached, it squirmed. 
82. The boy tried to concentrate, fixing his sights onto things that he knew, places he’d been.
83. Even in the dark he could see so much. 
84. There was Bald hill, where he’d once attended a soldier’s funeral.  
85. The junkyard with the abandoned coil racks and dead cars sliding back into the earth. 
86. And those shiny white stores on Main Street: the ones with flags and flower boxes out front that his mother loved and had forced him to browse with her after church on Sundays.
87. The plane landed with a chalky sound like that of a motorcycle losing control.
88. The boy took a deep breath. 
89. His parents were waiting at the baggage carousel, like fans, like groupies. 
90. His mother held a sign that read: Welcome Home Superstar!!!
91. The boy, again, took a deep breath. 
92. He hugged them both as his backpack fell down his arm.
93. He was home.
94. Home.
95. And now he lives simply.
96. Now, on weekends, he helps his father bag leaves and turn the soil in the garden. And he talks to his cousins about how tall actors really are when they come over for Thanksgiving or Christmas. And when he needs a break, he volunteers to do the grocery shopping or goes to see a movie alone at Edwards 11 Cineplex, where the parking is free, and the popcorn is half-off on Thursdays with his Regal Card. 
97. Now he’s better, simple and kind and small. 
98. And mostly it’s all very boring to the boy, even though he understands why it’s good for him. But. But there are times that it is less boring. Some times. There are sometimes now when he cannot sleep, and so he drives to the home of the boy he once loved, Louis Freemont’s house, and stares at the darkened porch, and at Louis’ wife’s car with the sun nets in the windows so that their baby will not grow hot in the August sun. The boy turns off the headlights and imagines what it would be like to enter the locked house: the tightening in his chest as he found the nursery first, admiring the perfect roundness of Louis’ sleeping child’s body. He would quietly admire the soaps in the bathroom, smelling the yellow one. And soon, soon he would enter Louis’ room. And in Louis’ room, Louis’ wife would be in a deep sleep but Louis himself would be awake, having felt something odd–a change in the air, an energy he couldn’t describe but would somehow understand as the boy he once knew having come back to save him from his trapped and decent life. “I’m back,” the boy imagines himself saying. “Finally,” he imagines Louis saying back. “You finally came back to me.” Imagining the words makes the boy laugh. And cry. Imagining Louis taking him into his arms, explaining he’s watched from afar, watched everything, and now wants what the boy wants. Wants them to try. “Let’s just practice,” he imagines Louis saying, his wife snoring just beside them. And imagining Louis saying this makes the boy want to do something foolish. Like honk or burnout. Like crash his car into the garage. Like something. Something that might bring Louis to the window. Something that could make him see. But. No. No he doesn’t. The boy only laughs. Then wipes his nose against his sleeve and continues down the empty street. Because there’s nothing to be done now; because nothing is all he has left; because, really, the sun is almost up, and he needs to put gas in the car if his mother’s going to drive it to church in the morning.  

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Sam Berman is a short story writer who lives in Boise, Idaho and works at House Of Wheels, in a very nice warehouse with Wes & Peter & Whitney. They are terrific coworkers. He has had his work published in Maudlin House, The Masters Review, HAD, Illuminations, The Fourth River, Smokelong Quarterly, and recently won Forever Magazine’s Unconventional Love Stories competition. He was also selected as runner-up in The Kenyon Review’s 2022 Non-Fiction Competition. He has forthcoming work in Hobart, Expat Press and D.F.L., among others

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image: “Travelling:” Andrea Damic lives in Sydney, Australia. She has been published in 50-Word Stories and Friday Flash Fiction. You can find her on Twitter @DamicAndrea. One day she hopes to finish and publish her novel. In spare time she takes photos and creates Art.