Fade to Gray

Chapter 1 My name is James Rockton. I came on this cruise to honor my dead partner, belatedly, and then, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific, to join him. I booked a cabin with a balcony, near the stern of the ship, for just this purpose. He died quite a while ago, and I’d thought I’d be all right without him. We’d had a good run, for our age. We’d met at college back when it wasn’t safe or wise to be out and were very lucky to have found each other and to have been together so long, so comfortably. In the eighties, shortly after we met, he got AIDS. I had it, too, but only a very mild case. His wasn’t. Even so, he hung on decades past when the doctors thought he’d die, gone with the evil wind that blew out so many fine, bright young candles in that decade. But no, he’d weathered on, struggling from time to time, making me think it was over several times, too many, to where I didn’t think I could stay with him through another. Yet I couldn’t leave. We were two halves of one whole, and at our ages—at my age—I could not conceive of starting over. He was the one who’d always wanted to go on a cruise, a gay one, he’d specified, but I was too tied to work and too worried about his health. We had let the time go by, too much time, as it turned out. I miss him so much, I talk to him, well, write him letters, as if he were just away.