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It was almost a year before I saw him again. Fresh tears ran down the wolf's muzzle as he shifted on his rickety wooden throne - king of his castle and all the hundred-and-fifty square feet of bachelor's apartment that he surveyed. Pages and pages of paw-scrawl lay before him, and for what? He couldn't go back. He couldn't change anything. He couldn't un-tell the lie he went along with. And would it make any difference if he could? He tried to console himself that it didn't matter. But it did matter. A lot.

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Summer turned to Autumn turned to Spring, and though Arden saw Michelle and some of his other friends often, it was almost as if Arden had dreamed all the rest - as if David and his friends were mere figments of the black wolf's imagination. Every time he called the fennec, he got an answering machine. He always left what he hoped was a cheerful message - not too firm, not too clingy. He tried and tried to think if he had done or said anything to offend the fox. There was no point in trying to determine if he had offended the opossum - of course he had, though he still didn't understand how. He didn't have anyone else's number, so he couldn't call the twins, or Jenny, or Alison. But if something serious had happened, somebody would have gotten in touch with him, wouldn't they? For the longest time, he somehow thought it best to just let David come around on his own...

...until he realized one day that it had been almost ten months since he had seen or heard from the fennec. So, spurred by conscience and curiosity, one uncharacteristically gray Saturday in April, Arden made the familiar drive to the Valley, this time cold despite his thick fur and hermetically sealed car, a knot in his stomach the entire way. He reasoned that if he had offended the fox, he would do what he could to put things right, even if that meant admitting...well, he'd think about the possibilities later. For now, he just wanted to know why his friend had disappeared.

Not bothering to announce himself at the main house - he really couldn't bear the judgmental gaze of David's father right now - the wolf pushed open the gate through the weeds, which seemed taller and thicker than usual. Not bothering to close it behind him, and making his way to the pool house, he spied Tim puttering about in the detritus pile at the side of the structure. Taking a calming breath, Arden strode over to the opossum, who continued to pick through the bits and pieces strewn about in the undergrowth, making quite the show of ignoring the wolf's presence. Joan Collie had nothing on this guy.

Finally, Tim's spiteful resolve gave out before Arden's annoyance got the better of him. "He's asleep. I don't want you bothering him," he said, biting off the words like a piranha.

"Hello to you too, Tim. I'm fine, you?" Arden said, blandly.

The rotund man snapped his pointed muzzle up in a sneer.

"Oh, I'm just dandy! Doing my own magic! Powerful magic, the real thing, not like the play stuff you and David do," he hissed maniacally. Behind his glasses, the opossum's pupils seemed more dilated than normal, though honestly, that was a judgment call.

It was then that Arden noticed Tim had a chicken foot in his boney paw, the wolf having a difficult time discerning the one from the other through the opossum's wiry fur. Defying gravity out of the corner of his tight, scowling lips was his ever-present cigarette, smoke curling in a thin line into his eyes.

"So, you finally decided to come around, huh? Finally got bored with your faaa-bulous life and needed something to do? Well, David can't come out and play today, Mr. Wolf, so you'll just have to find someone else to blow down when you get bored," he taunted circuitously, nearly arriving back where he started. Although he kept his voice low, the opossum's vehemence was growing by the word.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Arden laid his ears back and raised his scruff - not something his mother would approve of, but he had had it. He didn't care if this sorry excuse for a scavenger was David's partner, he was not going be treated like this any longer!

"You have hated me since I met you, and I have absolutely no idea why. I tried to include you when David and I would talk shop - you hated that. I tried to just ignore you and let you do your own thing - you hated that. And all the while, you would make all these insinuations, like I was trying to steal David from you or some crap. Newsflash, you idiot! I don't want David, I don't want you, I don't want the twins. I'm not interested in anyone. I'm gonna say this so even you can understand it! He loves you! I sure as hell don't know why, and evidently you don't either. But there it is. So stop with all the hostility, and tell me why he hasn't returned my calls in months!"

At the best of times, Tim's comprehension of the world was cursory. He had never done well in school, nor had he tried particularly hard to do so. He had generally made his way on street smarts, and even then, he didn't have much of those. Say what you will about not judging a book by its cover, Tim's face quite ably projected his contents: blank acceptance. But now, after such a tirade from such an unlikely source, Tim could not get his face to work at all. He cycled through so many expressions in the space of thirty seconds, from rage through confusion to shame, until he finally settled on placid dismissal.

"Yeah. Well. Whatever," he said as he turned back to his garbage picking.

"No Tim, not whatever. I want an answer. I deserve an answer. Why is David avoiding me?"

Tim's beady eyes flitted quickly between the wolf and the side door to the pool house and back. Sighing, he beckoned the wolf to follow, as he plodded to the back of the yard, as far from the pool house as he could go.

"I thought you had abandoned him like all the others," Tim said hoarsely after a minute, his tone still somewhat tense.

"I have been calling for months, and neither one of you has returned any of the messages I've left. What the hell is going on?" Arden stared at the fur in front of him, almost daring him not to answer.

"HE'S DYING!" Tim said in a forceful and melodramatic stage whisper, not so much aghast at saying the words aloud, but not wanting to wake his sleeping boyfriend.

"Like, soon, or just in general?" Arden asked without so much as a blink.

Tim on the other hand, blinked several times before answering. When he did, he outdid himself for eloquent repartee. "Huh?"

Arden raised his paws in disgust. "I said, is he dying soon, or-"

"He has FIDS!" Tim spat.

It was Arden's turn to blink. "Yeah. I know." He quirked his brow, his tail perfectly still.

Tim peered at the black wolf for several seconds. "You knew?"

"Well, yeah. It's kinda obvious, don't you think? How could I not know? The goth act on stage only covers so much."

"You never said anything."

Arden rubbed his temples. "Tim, why would I say anything? David didn't. The twins won't even mention their diabetes, and there's no stigma around that, so why would I mention a friend's terminal illness if he never does? What am I supposed to say, 'So, David, how's the FIDS treating you?' Jesus, Tim."

Tim looked down at a small beetle scuttling across the ground for a couple of minutes as the two men stood there in silence. Somewhere in the distance, a crow cawed as the breeze picked up a bit, pushing milkweed and dust ahead of it, and invisibly animating the grasses at their foot paws.

"Well," Tim grumbled, "He thought you wouldn't accept him being sick. He's had so many friends disappear when they found out he was sick. They're worried they might get it or something just being around him. Or maybe they see him and see their future, and it scares them. I dunno. But it's hurt him a lot. And he's been doing worse lately. He gets tired a lot quicker. And there were a couple of times he wanted to call, but just didn't have the energy, so he didn't. And frankly I thought it was for the best."

Arden's anger flared again. "And yet you were gonna try to blame me for not keeping in touch or some crap? Because you're jealous? That's low even for you, Tim. I can't even stand this. So he's been avoiding me because he thought I would reject him? In essence rejecting me first?"

Tim stared at a ragged toeclaw. "Yes."

"Well, that's just great. How bad is he?"

"He's actually doing a little better now. They put him on a new medication, and it's helping with his energy. His T cells have rebounded a bit. There's no way to tell how things are gonna go, but he's better than he was last week."

Arden closed his eyes and exhaling, put his nose to the breeze. For as long as he could remember, this was something he did to calm himself and feel connected to the world. All the scents floating on the wind - the wolf imagined that simply by sampling them as they wafted by, he was experiencing them; like he was truly there; like he was actually connecting to genetic memory and the heritage of his non-sentient forebears back to the beginning. People, places, events, things - everything wrote their signatures on the wind. And all he had to do was breathe, and he became them, or so he liked to believe. But nothing he ever had imagined that he had experienced, nothing that he had ever thought he felt connected to, nothing had prepared him for this moment, this event, this place, these people. As he sniffed the air, he realized that he did not feel connected here, as he once had thought. He did not feel safe. He could not be himself.

No. He had to be better. He had to put away his wants and needs and problems. He had to stand up for a friend who desperately needed him. He would figure out the rest later.

"I don't deserve him." The voice was so faint, and Arden's reverie so deep, that he almost thought he had imagined it. He looked back at the opossum, who for the first time since they had met, seemed deflated and powerless. Tears were streaming down his sharp snout.

"What do you mean?" Arden asked, moving closer to better hear the muttering man.

"When I met David, I was living on the streets. I was turning tricks for food. Two, three, ten a night. For years. I'm a drug addict. I've shot up. But I never got it. I didn't care if I lived or died, but _I_never got it." The tears were flowing unabated now as he kept repeating himself. "I never got it. But he did, from one encounter. It's not fair. It's not fair."

Arden's heart broke in his chest. The anguish in the opossum's voice was palpable, and yet again, he found himself with no frame of reference, no life experience, nothing to tell him what to do.

"Of course I saw you as a threat. You're smart, you connect with David in a way I can't. You made him happy." The resignation in the miserable marsupial's voice cut through the susurration of the wind in the weeds in a way that all the previous shouting could not.

"Tim. For god's sake," pleaded Arden in exasperation, "Listen to me. You haven't lost anything. Not yet. You still have time to reconnect with him. He's your boyfriend. He relies on you. If you've lost your connection with him, I think it's your duty to re-forge it, don't you? He's dealing with a terminal illness. He needs you."

Tim looked up. And for perhaps the first time in his life, didn't say anything.

"Look," continued the exhausted wolf, "I'm gonna go. But I need to talk to David. This has gone on far too long, and it's not OK. So, are you gonna let him know I was here and that I want to talk to him, or do I go and wake him up right now?"

Tim visibly shrank under the stern wolf's steely gaze. "I'll let him know. He'll be really glad you came by. And...I'm..."

Arden waited for the words he thought impossible for the opossum to form with his thin lips. After a moment, he repeated, "And?"

Tim composed himself, and glanced at the wolf as he turned to go back into the house. "I'll let him know. He'll call you."

So close, Arden thought as he made his way back to the car. So close.