These Violent Delights

by Micah Nemerever

  Paul didn’t really follow, but he knew he wasn’t meant to, particularly; Julian talked himself through this game whenever he wanted a distraction, and Paul could hardly begrudge him for needing one now. He let Julian’s voice wash through him, pleasant and familiar even in the absence of comprehension, just as it was when he spoke French.

  “Kazlauskas does everything right. Everything, I can’t find a single flaw. Playing black against him should be like trying to climb a sheer cliff. So why is he doomed? Where does he go wrong?”

  As Paul steered the borrowed car around a curve in the road, the rust-streaked mass of a steelworks emerged from behind the hills. He noticed with a jolt that he had been given far more power than he wanted, and for a moment he wasn’t certain he could stop himself from using it. He could slam the accelerator and swing the car off the road into the ravine alongside the steelworks—smash it into a tree and kill them both. There was nothing Julian could do to stop him.

  “Maybe he doesn’t do anything wrong,” Paul said, tightening his hands around the wheel. “Maybe Kaplan’s just so good that white is doomed no matter how perfectly Kazlauskas plays.”

  “That isn’t how it works.” Julian held the book between his knees as he peeled the wax paper back from a tomato sandwich. “No. Jury’s still out on whether he wins or draws—it’s a big debate in chess theory—but in perfect play, white doesn’t lose. That means somewhere in there, no matter how good each move looks, Kazlauskas made a mistake. Something is imperfect, and I want to know what it is.”

  “Or it’s just less perfect than black’s game, rather than being imperfect.”

  “There are degrees of perfection,” said Julian airily, “the same way there are degrees of being dead.”

  They fell into an amiable silence. Julian finished his sandwich and rested his head on the window, watching drowsily as the landscape grew wilder. The steelworks faded into the distance, and with it the remnants of the industrial smog. Paul sometimes forgot how blue the sky could be outside the city, especially in the moments before sunrise, when it was just barely too translucent to blot out the stars.

  Just over the state line they passed a roadside stall where a few sleepy hippies were peddling anemic apricots and bunches of crumpled arugula. By then Julian was asleep, arms folded loosely around his waist. Stillness and vulnerability were so foreign to Julian’s body that sleep looked unnatural on him. Awake, he was all edges, from the aristocratic line of his nose to the stark, eerie contrast between black eyelashes and light green iris. It was only when he was sleeping that Paul could tell how much of the sharpness was a performance.

  When they paused at a railway crossing and the roar of a coal train failed to rouse him, Paul finally yielded to the impulse to wake him. He brushed Julian’s hair back from his face; Julian’s eyes opened just slightly, but the alertness didn’t return.

  “We’re almost there,” Paul said, but Julian’s eyes had closed again.

  He saw the sun crest the horizon just briefly, searing and merciless, before the car slipped into the park and the light was swallowed by trees. He was fully and fiercely awake by now. He rolled down the window as he drove and breathed in the damp clean smell of dewy earth and new leaves. For a moment after he parked he sat still and alert. Then he shouldered his bag and stepped out onto the gravel.

  Julian was slow to stir, so Paul leaned back into the car and punched his arm before grabbing his net and thermos from the back seat. “You coming or not?”

  “I’m going to push you off a cliff, you fucking Boy Scout.”

  “Well, hop to it, then.”

  Anticipation was almost indistinguishable from panic. The speed of his pulse, the tightness in his tendons—the anatomy of it, by any objective measure, was the same as the anatomy of fear. The difference lay in the sense of purpose, which reshaped the nervous tension into something electric. This was how he imagined Julian feeling all the time, free from fear, able to regard the world with a predator’s detached fascination.

  The parking lot was empty except for the loaner car and a solitary Park Service pickup truck. Julian finally joined him at the trailhead, moving a little stiffly. He threw a glance back at the car before turning to face the woods.

  As they descended the path, the forest tightened around them, the heavy organic quiet broken only by the occasional far-off trill of a bird. Julian had dressed slightly wrong—canvas tennis shoes, a shawl-collared pullover with a tiny anchor embroidered at the breast, the sort of clothing Paul imagined you were supposed to wear on a sailboat. He slipped once or twice on the carpet of rotting leaves, so when they reached a fork in the trail, Paul chose the easier path for Julian’s sake. The park punished him for it. All they saw before noon were a few flickers of false hope, whites and buckeyes and plain little sulphurs, never worth the effort of pursuing. Midway through the morning Julian pointed out a potential target, and he was so pleased with himself that Paul didn’t tell him spicebush swallowtails were so common he’d often practiced on them in the backyard as a child. But even this was a disappointment; the butterfly seemed to sense danger before he had even lifted its net, and it flew up out of reach.

  They followed the path to a creek bed at the bottom of a shallow ravine. Julian crept along the water line, his tennis shoes blackening around the edges. Paul watched him pause to gaze down at a clutch of tadpoles, delicately fascinated, as if he hadn’t actually seen them before outside of a cartoon. Jagged walls of bare limestone and shale followed the creek’s path back through the forest. The sun was higher now, its light filtering down from the canopy in mottled green.

  “They can always tell when I’m trying to impress someone.” Paul leaned against the ravine wall and rifled through his knapsack for a sandwich. “All the interesting ones hide, so I look like I’m out of my mind for enjoying this. We’re taking a break, by the way, so smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.”

  “Nah, not out here.” Julian picked his way along the creek bed, grinning, and plucked the second half of the sandwich from Paul’s hand. “You are out of your mind, in a charming, Caspar David Friedrich sort of way. But I can’t tell which butterflies are interesting in the first place, so I’m enjoying myself just fine.”

  Julian’s lungs were still buzzing faintly from the hike, so they made no immediate move to return to the trail after finishing the sandwiches. They sat together at the base of the low cliff, watching the skittering paths of birds overhead.

  In lieu of smoking, Julian took up the restless, Sisyphean task of trying to unmoor a rock that was embedded in the earth. Like many of his movements, it looked so careless and kittenishly destructive that it took Paul a while to recognize it as nervous at all. It unnerved Paul to see him appear out of his element, fidgety and short of breath in his ill-chosen shoes. He was about to ask if Julian was sure he wasn’t miserable—if he wouldn’t like to go back to the city and do something else with their last few hours, even if they just lay on the grass at Schenley Park and did nothing at all.

  But at the edge of his vision, tiny and nearly imperceptible, he saw a flutter of movement. It was small, about the size of a half-dollar coin; he should never have been able to see it. But against the murk of the creek bed, the butterfly’s underwings were bright as a misplaced brushstroke. Sea-glass green, soft and cool.

  It fluttered from rock to rock, low over the shallow water. It picked its way toward a lonely shaft of sunlight; when it settled there, it basked, opening and closing its small wings as if to drink in the warmth.

  Paul picked up the net and got to his feet slowly, casually careful. Julian kept very still, watching; he didn’t try to follow.

  Most insects didn’t have more than a rudimentary ability to feel—his father had asked, once, and Paul looked it up to assure him that they didn’t. Fear was too complex an emotion to attribute to them, so it stood to reason that pleasure was the same, too sophisticated for a neural structure so simple it could scarcely be called a brain. But as Paul watched the butterfly l
inger in its patch of sun, pulling the light into its tiny cold body, it was impossible not to feel an echo of sunlight in his own skin, and to imagine, against all he’d been taught, that it enjoyed the sensation as he would. Human consciousness was more animal than its arrogance liked to pretend; perhaps the opposite was true. Perhaps somewhere in the microscopic folds of its ganglia, the creature felt something akin to joy.

  He was ready when it vibrated its wings and rose to fly away. It was dull brown on its upper side, the same muddy color as the creek, and for a split second he nearly lost sight of it—but his movements were so fluid and practiced as to be all but instinct, and he never truly feared that it would escape.

  He had to work quickly after he trapped it, before it could destroy its wings in the net. With his thumb and forefinger he took hold of its bristly body through the fabric and squeezed it, just tightly enough to push the air from its thorax. When it stopped moving, he looked more closely, examining its underwings through the mesh. It was a gem of a specimen, nearly every scale pristine; the shimmering light green was scalloped with hazel that glinted gold when the sun touched it.

  Julian finally approached, a little hesitantly, Paul’s knapsack slung over one shoulder. “Is there a jar?” he asked, eyes flitting from Paul’s hands to his face. “Should I—”

  “I don’t use jars for this. It’s already dead.”

  Julian’s eyes returned to Paul’s hand, to the tiny corpse in its mesh shroud. There was a peculiar look in his eyes, too elusive for Paul to name.

  “Can you open up the zipper pocket?” Paul said. He retrieved a triangle of folded glassine from the pocket and sat on his heels. “Thanks—anyway, jars work great for beetles, but the specimens go ballistic inside the jar before the poison kicks in. Beetles are pretty durable, but leps are delicate, they ruin their wings trying to escape. Better to make it quick, so they don’t have time to panic. A little squeeze to the thorax kills them instantly.”

  Julian watched as Paul transferred the butterfly to its paper wrapping, then rested it in the box of cotton gauze and camphor that would keep it safe until he could relax it. He shut the lid, but Julian lifted it again to look inside.

  “What was he? Or was it a ‘she’?”

  “Juniper hairstreak. Male.” Naming it was what made it feel as if it belonged to him; it had a place waiting among the other Theclinae in his third-highest specimen drawer, and an acid-free blank label waiting to be inscribed in Latin. “They’re not that uncommon, but they can be a little tricky to catch. I’ve been missing a male for ages.”

  Julian lowered the lid, with a sharp exhale that turned into something like a laugh. Paul carefully returned the box to his knapsack. “Unlucky bastard,” said Julian. “A noble sacrifice for science—or was it for science? Is there even a scientific end to justify the means?”

  “Science just helps me do it.” Paul steeled himself before admitting what he had never said aloud before. “I kill them because they’re beautiful, and it’s the only way I can keep them.”

  Julian didn’t laugh. Paul belatedly understood the odd look he’d given him earlier. Apprehension was so foreign to him that Paul barely recognized it.

  “I don’t know how I can be the first person to notice how twisted you are.” Julian smiled coolly as he spoke.

  “You’re the only one who’s never wanted me not to be.”

  They returned to the path, back the way they came, and the ravine sank away behind them. Julian walked ahead, nearly silent. It might have passed for pensiveness, if not for the way his every movement carried a charge.

  When they reached the fork in the trail, Julian didn’t continue toward the car. He turned to follow the steep second path, then stepped away from it after a few yards and disappeared behind an ancient oak tree. Paul hesitated before following him. He set his knapsack down beside the trail sign, moving slowly so as not to jar a scale loose from the specimen’s wings. His pulse was violent and quick—now it felt much closer to fear.

  Julian was standing with his back to the tree trunk. His eyes were unreadable and cold; not for the first time, Paul wished intensely that he could touch them.

  “Take off your glasses,” said Julian quietly. When Paul had complied, he spoke again, fiercely serene, every human part of him out of reach. “Make me beg you to stop.”

  A current of compulsion moved through Paul’s hands. He let them fall and hang at his sides—not because he was uncertain, but because it frightened him that he wasn’t.

  “I don’t . . .”

  Julian looked at him down the fine planes of his cheekbones, the cool arrogant look that Paul was usually spared. “Yes, you do.” He didn’t smile. “You’ve wanted to all along.”

  He wanted to believe Julian didn’t know what he was really asking. He wanted to believe that some part of him was still impossible for Julian to see. Because it wasn’t as if they’d never hurt each other before—between them it was a kind of tenderness, writing themselves onto each other’s bodies with every mark they left. It was a promise; I’m here, I’ve always been here. Pain was a necessary consequence, but that was all it was.

  Paul knew all the vulnerable places on Julian’s body, and when he’d touched them before, it was with a gentleness born of fear. He could decide to be gentle now. He could bare Julian’s throat and kiss the thin skin between his collarbones; he could follow the ragged scar tissue with his lips and pretend as he always did that he felt no desire in his teeth.

  Only fear had ever held him back. He wanted to tear through Julian’s skin and map the shapes of liver and lungs, to memorize the path of every artery with his fingertips. He wanted to break Julian’s body open and move inside it alongside him, rib cages interlaced around a single heart. There was an emptiness inside Paul that would take and never stop taking. He should never have believed that Julian couldn’t tell it was there.

  Paul told his body to move. He took a cautious step closer and lifted Julian’s chin as if to kiss him, watching the green glaze of canopy light slide over his face. Paul wanted him to waver, but he didn’t—there was no trace of doubt in his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” said Paul quietly, and he hit him as hard as he could.

  It was sickening, watching Julian instantly regret it. Paul had forgotten the way the shock of a blow rang through the entire body—that sudden unnatural snap of movement, fear fanning outward like a wave of radiation.

  Julian was slow to turn back toward him. After a long moment he wiped his mouth with the side of his thumb; the blood came away in a sweet, bright line. All Paul could think of was pinning Julian to the tree by his throat and biting his lip until his blood was all either of them could taste.

  When Julian met his eyes again, he smiled, as if in defiance, but all his arrogance had left him.

  “Keep going,” said Julian. Paul couldn’t move. He felt a spasm inside his chest, almost like wanting to cry, and he hated Julian for making him feel it. He hated himself even more for not wanting it to end. “What are you waiting for? Do it.”

  “I can’t.” Even before he said it, he knew it was a lie.

  “I’m not asking.” Julian didn’t seem to realize his voice was shaking. “Do it, fucking do it, don’t be such a girl—”

  The world went blazing white. Paul was barely aware of hitting him again until he realized he wasn’t stopping.

  Julian couldn’t pretend it was a game any longer. It didn’t matter anymore whether he still wanted it, or if he ever had. Paul didn’t let himself listen too closely to Julian’s voice—the way he strained for an authority that wasn’t convincing, then slid into an insistent “Paul, I mean it, stop” whose panic he could tell was real by how fiercely Julian tried to hide it.

  There was nothing left of Julian now but the parts of him Paul couldn’t take apart—he was sharp hipbones, white strings of nerve, muscle and soft tissue. Paul couldn’t tear him to pieces with his bare hands; he wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t pull Julian’s scar open and peel the
skin back with his fingertips. He couldn’t bite hard enough to reach past flesh to bone. He still tried.

  Julian’s protests faded away. He stopped attempting to squirm free. When Paul pinned him down, he fell back, still as a corpse against the base of the tree trunk, blank-faced, arms limp. Here at last was the passive acquiescence that for so long had been all Paul had allowed himself to want. For all his pathetic ill-formed ambitions, for all his eager desperation to be better, this was still all he deserved.

  Paul couldn’t feel his hands. All he could feel was the slim fragile line along the edge of Julian’s rib cage, the promise that if he pressed hard enough the bones would snap. Desire moved through his body like a shudder. He could barely breathe for it. He’d never been more repulsive.

  When Julian met his eyes, he was glazed and unfocused. He brushed his hand experimentally along the inside of Paul’s thigh, up between his legs. It was only at his touch that Paul finally let go.

  “Don’t,” Paul said. He pleaded with himself to recoil, but the need was too savage to overcome. “Don’t, please, I’m sorry—”

  Julian looked up at him as if all he could feel any longer was distant curiosity. He held Paul’s waist and gently coaxed him to stand. As he sat up straight and unfastened Paul’s belt, he never looked away from his eyes.

  “This is how you want me.” Julian’s voice was toneless and quiet. “Just take what you want.”

  He tipped Julian’s head back by his hair and pushed hard into his mouth. He shut his eyes tight, but he could still feel the artery-warm film of blood on Julian’s lip.

  It was as if he’d stepped out of himself and settled three inches to the right, just barely enough to remember he was still there at all. His body’s every response was purely mechanical; any pleasure he took from it was remote, barely worth feeling, like the unconscious relief of breathing. I won’t stop you, anything you want and I’ll let you—Paul hadn’t seen it for the threat it was.