These Violent Delights

by Micah Nemerever

  “Good god, that’s—”

  “Amphibians have very porous skin.” Paul wished Strauss would walk away from him midsentence; he wasn’t certain he could shut up otherwise. “It makes them unusually vulnerable to industrial pollutants, so they’re often sentinel species—the working theory is that there’s some sort of mutagen in the runoff from the Coke-processing facility upriver. That class makes me so angry”—a sharp, nervous laugh, anger and panic burning inside him—“because—it’s just—I’m getting plenty of empirical evidence toward my hypothesis, that the worst damage humans do isn’t rooted in malice but in thoughtlessness.”

  “I do remember that notion of yours. Moral laziness as the root of all ills.” Strauss appeared grateful that Paul had given him something to argue against, but there was a wary concern in his face all the same. “I also remember trying to push back against some of the assumptions on which you’ve based it.”

  The girl, whoever she was, had gone while Paul wasn’t looking. By now the crowd was beginning to thin. Paul was dimly aware of Eddie Koenig and his mother at the periphery of his vision, watching through the gaps between bodies and pretending not to listen in.

  “For instance, as rigid as your definition of ‘moral laziness’ is, I did notice a tendency for it to expand conveniently to encompass every moral framework you don’t agree with.” Strauss stood with a hand on his hip, the way he did when he felt he’d written a particularly salient point on the chalkboard. “To the Milgram example, for instance—I was troubled by your refusal to accept any counterarguments grounded in the subjects’ humanity, no matter how well considered the ethical framework underpinning them. You seemed almost to interpret the very fact of a colleague’s compassion for the subjects as a confession to sharing that moral laziness, which is a very dangerous assumption not to question.”

  “If an ethical framework doesn’t hold people accountable for their thoughtlessness, it isn’t well considered—if the framework is objectively wrong, it doesn’t matter if it’s well argued or internally consistent—”

  “‘Objectively’?” Strauss looked uncertain whether it was safe for him to smile yet. “And who determines that, Mr. Fleischer? Not you, certainly?”

  Paul felt as if all the blood in his body had rushed to his face.

  “There’s such a thing as right and wrong.” Mortified as he was, he couldn’t make himself let it go. “Anyone can determine the difference if they’re actually willing to think for themselves. If what they talk themselves into believing is objectively wrong, then they weren’t thinking hard enough.”

  “And that’s another place where your theory becomes conveniently all-encompassing,” said Strauss. “It’s one thing to blame moral laziness for sins of obedience, but I don’t think you can stretch that to encompass the deliberate damage committed by true believers.”

  “How much damage can they actually do without other people to obey them?” Paul countered, but he would never get Strauss’s answer.

  “Starting the new year off right by arguing with people?”

  Paul couldn’t tell how much his grandmother had heard, but she wouldn’t be so teasing and cheerful if she’d heard anything she didn’t expect. As her thin hand settled in the crook of his arm, Paul chipped away at himself until he was small again. The abruptness of the change nearly made him light-headed.

  “My grandson,” she said to Strauss, “is deeply opinionated. I of course have no idea where he gets it.”

  “I’ve noticed, believe me, I used to be his philosophy teacher.”

  Strauss was still stranded in their original conversation; he watched Paul with a slight frown, less intellectual engagement than parental unease. Then he shook himself and smiled, and both he and Paul focused their attention on Paul’s grandmother.

  “Manners, Paulie,” she said to him quietly, her hand tightening just slightly around his elbow. “This is the part where you . . .”

  Then he remembered and introduced them to each other, and the conversation was given over to small talk—the real thing, executed properly, by nice people who knew how it was done. Paul barely said a word until Strauss made one last, disastrous attempt to include Paul in the conversation. “Are you still in touch with Mr. Fromme? I remember you two having something of a rapport.”

  Strauss saw instantly that he had made a mistake, though he also clearly had no idea why. Paul’s grandmother tensed beside him, sharp as a splinter of glass. They didn’t dare look at each other, though her hand was still cool and firm against his forearm. Paul tried to sand down his last few spurs of honesty; he tried to narrow himself completely to what his grandmother wanted to see, awkward and friendless and naïve to everything outside his own head.

  “Not that much, lately,” he answered, and Strauss, somehow, knew better than to acknowledge the lie.

  5.

  The walls of Julian’s apartment were painted French yellow, sickly as a fever. In late afternoon the Indian-summer sun swelled through the windows and warmed the brick outside until the air pulsed. It was maddening for their bodies to be so close. The sticky warmth made his skin cling to Julian’s wherever it touched.

  “I like asphyxiation,” Julian said against his shoulder.

  They had barely moved in at least an hour, even to disentangle their hands, but Paul was awake to the point of agitation. The rest of the apartment was a clash of clutter, even without his glasses. In turning its narrow confines into a home, Julian had distilled himself to an unbearable intensity.

  “It’s clean,” Julian was saying, “like you said it’d have to be. It’d be sort of pathetic to do someone in with a pillow or a laundry bag or something, but strangling them—it’s appealingly dramatic.” When Julian spoke, the vibrations echoed in Paul’s chest.

  “It’s messier than it sounds.” He shut his eyes, but the sunlight pressed scarlet against his lids; there was no escaping it. “It takes upper-body strength, even if you use a garrote. It takes longer than you’d think, longer than in the movies.”

  After the clinging warmth of Julian’s body against his back, the shock of his absence felt like a chill. Paul turned to follow his retreat. Julian was just near enough that his edges were distinct; everything beyond him was a haze.

  “Show me.”

  It was inhuman, the way the light touched him. The shimmer of sweat on his freckled cheekbones and at the hollow of his throat, the luminous blood beneath the thin skin of his lips. He looked like a peasant boy in a Baroque painting.

  “You’re sick.”

  “So are you.” He was smiling, just barely. “I know why you fuck me like you wish you could kill me. I know everything that gets you off, you can’t help but show me, there’s no part of you I can’t see—”

  He shoved Julian onto his back and straddled his waist. His self-control had snapped so suddenly that he couldn’t keep track of his own movements, but Julian didn’t even blink. He watched Paul’s face, serene and fearless.

  “Doesn’t that feel better?” said Julian. “Go on. Show me. Don’t be a coward.”

  Paul had no chance to think better of it. He traced his thumb up the line of Julian’s throat. He only pressed lightly, just above the curve of his Adam’s apple, but between his knees Paul could feel the breath seize in Julian’s chest—muscles tensed, scarred skin frighteningly still.

  After a few seconds he relaxed his hand, and Julian drew a sharp inhale.

  “I’d need both hands, with my whole weight behind them. It takes so much pressure that the bone in the subject’s throat will probably snap.” He brought his other hand to Julian’s neck. Something flashed through Julian’s face, too quickly for Paul to tell if it was fear, but even the possibility was dizzying. “Three minutes—that’s how long the human body can survive without air. Maybe the subject will die a little sooner from constriction of the carotid arteries, but I can’t count on that if I want to be thorough.”

  Julian’s face was more opaque now than calm. When Paul tightened his g
rip again, this time he pressed harder. He could feel the ribbed curve of Julian’s windpipe through his skin.

  “He has maybe a full minute,” he heard himself say, “before his central nervous system starts to shut down. I have to be able to hold the subject in place for sixty seconds while he’s fighting for his life—”

  A shiver passed through Julian’s body, and Paul let go and recoiled. He was terrified that he’d asked too much of Julian’s ravaged lungs—there was a discordant note to his breathing, as if it hurt him to inhale. Julian shut his eyes, and when he opened them again, he wouldn’t look Paul in the face.

  “I’m sorry.” A lock of damp hair clung to Julian’s forehead; Paul pushed it back so he could kiss the skin underneath. “Julian, I’m sorry, I thought you were all right.”

  In the moment before he met Paul’s eyes again, Julian summoned a teasing, impatient smile. It was almost convincing.

  “I’m fine, dummy.” He took firm hold of Paul’s hands and brought them back to his neck; his expression didn’t change, but Paul could feel his tension. “Try again, I’ll do better this time.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Of course you do.” He was doing such a close impression of being in control that it was all the more frightening that he wasn’t. “You liked it, I knew you were going to. Should I fight back like you said? I’ll do anything you say, I want whatever you want—”

  “I don’t.” Paul withdrew his hands as soon as Julian let go. “I don’t want to hurt you, please don’t let me.”

  Julian’s face quickly shifted to conceal something he didn’t want Paul to see. He couldn’t tell whether it was frustration or relief.

  “You’re ridiculous sometimes, but that’s all right.”

  Julian plucked a cigarette and ashtray from the dresser and lay back against the pillow; Paul didn’t dare touch him at all, much less join him, until Julian pulled him down impatiently by his arm.

  Julian hadn’t quite relaxed, but he pretended he had. He was retreating into their usual pattern, the one that called on Paul to need reassurance and on Julian to forgive him for it. The performance was comforting, though it had never felt more like a lie.

  “I love you.” Julian spoke without looking at him. He was watching the ceiling fan slice uselessly through the thick air. “I really do. I wish you could tell.”

  Paul was startled by the force of his self-disgust. “You shouldn’t say that,” he said before he could stop himself. Julian didn’t answer; he drew a deep, slow breath and shut his eyes, and it was only by the set of his jaw that Paul could tell how furious he was.

  They didn’t speak for a long time. There was no sound but the occasional sigh of a passing car and the tinny click of Julian’s wristwatch beside Paul’s ear. He felt sick from the heat, but he couldn’t make himself leave.

  “You’re probably right, about my idea for the game,” Julian said. “It’s messier than I thought.”

  6.

  It would be the last time Julian came to pick him up at the research station. Paul never had to ask why. He could tell afterward that it had shaken him, and he wished he couldn’t. He didn’t like to remember that Julian was capable of fear.

  As always, Paul was the last student to leave, too precisely attentive to his notes to rush out the door with the others. “I’m nearly done,” he insisted whenever Julian tried to hurry him along. But the pressure to move quickly just made him second-guess himself more, until he was so mired in doubt that his pace slowed to a crawl.

  “It’s good enough,” Julian told him. “You’re going to get an A anyway, you might as well leave it.”

  He had a light scarf tied at his throat, though Paul knew that by now the bruises had faded to almost nothing. Paul idly contemplated strangling him with it.

  “It’s not about grades. I want my data to be useful.”

  “I’m sure it’ll make all the difference,” Julian answered with a pointed yawn. “With all your undergraduate might, you’ll single-handedly save the world—”

  The door clattered and scraped and Sullivan stumbled inside. She was rattled and grim, her ponytail coming apart in loose dark threads.

  “Couldn’t wait around for a park ranger,” she said when she saw him. “Here, help me.”

  Paul registered the animal shape in her arms only after the scarlet flash of the wound in its flank—the hanging pelt, matted fur, bright raw flesh. It was a young gray fox, not much larger than Laurie’s cat. Sullivan held it firm, one arm braced beneath its body while the other hand held its head still. Paul thought it was dead until he saw the small pained breaths that moved its chest. As if it could feel his observation, it shuddered suddenly in Sullivan’s arms, wild-eyed and snapping.

  “—Need to sedate him,” said Sullivan, while Paul grabbed a pair of gloves and hurried to help her move the fox to the lab bench. “Mammals, Christ—sorry—the dosing formula is different for mammals, let me think—hon, we need you over here.”

  When Sullivan addressed him, Julian shrank back and shut his eyes tight. “No,” he said, though he wasn’t arguing with her; he didn’t appear to have heard her at all. “Please don’t, I can’t, he’s going to die—”

  “He’s not going to die.” Sullivan spoke very patiently, the way she might have coaxed an anxious child. “He’s not, but I need you to help us, okay, hon? Just for a few seconds.”

  After a long moment he obeyed, though he looked as if he might faint. Gingerly, he pinned the fox at its neck and hip. She hurried over to the supply cabinet, wringing her hands in her shirt. When Paul took Julian’s place he could feel the harsh patter of the fox’s heartbeat in each hand, one at its chest and the other around its throat. It thrashed again, frantic, too strong for how small it was. The curve of its bony spine scraped against Paul’s chest; the spasm of movement threw off a thick breath of smells, earth and greasy fur and iron-thick blood. Paul nearly lost hold of it, but he was also stronger than he should have been. He had to be.

  Julian hadn’t closed his eyes again. His gaze was turned toward the gash in the fox’s side, but he was looking through it rather than at it. “Julian,” Paul said, but he didn’t react.

  Sullivan set a vial on the bench and carefully measured the dose into an oral syringe. Paul had suffered enough ear infections as a child that he remembered those syringes vividly, his mother filling them with a sickly-sweet pink medicine that he always tried to refuse. He knew the fox would clench its teeth against the intrusion because it was what he had always done.

  “Good boy.” Sullivan nocked the nose of the syringe in a gap between the teeth and pushed the plunger, then held the fox’s snout until it choked down every drop. “Good boy, it’s all right . . . god, where are all the rangers hiding, they’re always underfoot until you need one . . .”

  It only took a few minutes for the sedative to hit. When the fox relaxed in his arms, Paul moved to arrange it on the table, but the moment he loosened his grasp, he realized it wasn’t unconscious. Its toenails clicked on the bench as it tried to stand. When it couldn’t stay upright on four legs it sat instead, as agreeably as a dog. The fox looked between Paul and Sullivan with dim interest, as if it had forgotten it had ever been afraid. Then Sullivan pushed gently on its neck until it lay down and rolled onto its side.

  It gave Paul an idea for their game, but he let himself forget it for now. He knew it would be a while before Julian would be able to appreciate it.

  “Someone got you good, huh?” said Sullivan to the fox. She dabbed its wounded flank with disinfectant. The fox didn’t move or make a sound. “Looks like just a flesh wound, though, so hopefully . . .”

  Julian had silently drawn up beside him. There was a blot of blood on his scarf, still gleaming red; Julian wouldn’t notice it until they were nearly home, and they would have to pull over so he could be sick. But for now he was much calmer. He was moving with such cautious languor that he might have been dreaming. Without asking if he could, Julian pulled off his gloves and
petted the fox’s ears and forehead. One glassy hazel eye turned upward to follow the motion of his hand.

  “Poor thing,” he said. “He doesn’t understand.”

  Paul observed Julian’s compassion with more unease than fondness. The kindness was sincere, but so was the fascination. Julian could witness suffering and endure it, so long as it was under enough control that he could tease apart how it worked. Once he knew the shape of someone else’s pain, he could break off a piece of it—claim it as his own, keep it as a memento under glass—and know they would be grateful to him for taking it away.

  7.

  There were signs before it happened, but Julian never allowed him to see them. Paul only recognized them after it was too late.

  Of course money was part of the problem. For all that Julian had claimed it was under control, it clearly wasn’t. His attempts at budgeting were so haphazard and naïve that Paul couldn’t imagine they did him much good—whatever money he saved on food or clothes must have been devoured again by books, and after the start of fall he took to leaving the heat running in his apartment rather than come home to a cold house. He had to be burning through his savings, and the money his brother periodically sent from North Carolina must start to dwindle almost as soon as it arrived.

  Paul gave up on trying to broach the subject. When Julian was in a good mood, he assured Paul it wasn’t as bad as it looked, with such breezy confidence that he even seemed to believe it. “Rich-people money is complicated,” he said. “There are still a few trusts and bonds and things in my name, it would take an act of god for them to take those away. I just can’t touch them until I’m twenty-one.” Paul never asked what he would do until then, and certainly didn’t dare offer advice. Few things made Julian snap faster than having his financial expertise questioned—he’d grown up taking money for granted, and apparently believed that was the same thing as understanding it.