Prelude:
He'd been quiet since he'd gotten home. It unnerved his sister in the hospital, and on the way home. She'd used the cab to pick him up but he only managed to give her a smirk. She'd tried to make conversation on the trip back to the apartment, but he'd responded in one-word answers, if they were words at all. Mostly, he just stared out the window at the passing streetscape of New York. She hadn't touched the topic of Jude being deported, but she knew when the time came that he asked the question, she'd have to tiptoe through it.
Max had gone right to bed when they'd gotten back to the apartment. He didn't look around, didn't notice that the apartment had changed or that people were scarce. She watched him curl up on the mattress and felt the familiar sting of tears in her eyes. Vietnam had chewed up her brother and spit him out a different person than she knew. She'd lost Jude and now Max was fading away.
His didn't do much. She watched him move from his bed to the couch in the main room with glazed over eyes and slow movements. Lucy could never tell if Max was high or if he was just vacant from his lack of sleep. Finally, after two days the question emerged.
"So where's Jude?" He said, lounging on the couch with a beer.
She hesitated. "There was a riot just before you got back during a protest at Columbia…"
He perked up only slightly, his eyes getting a bit wide. "What happened… did he get hurt?"
"Yeah…" She reluctantly nodded. "He did… because of me. And then he was deported."
He gave her only a nod before getting up and going back to his room. She figured the combination of booze and marijuana would put him to sleep, at least a few hours. When he woke, he'd go out in the cab. Max never slept more than a few hours at a time. He drove the cab at night, in the late hours, because he couldn't sleep without thinking about Vietnam. The best way to keep his mind off it, he'd told her, was to pick up drunks and prostitutes.
A week later she found the note. It was simple and she couldn't help the smile that invaded her lips. It was a small glimmer of the Max she thought had died on the battlefield in Vietnam. It said simply:
Luce,
Went to Liverpool.
Love, Max.