Swipe Right for Murder

by Derek Milman

  “Smoke? Not now, man!”

  I turn around. The two bikers, still wearing their helmets, are inside now, moving toward us through the crowd. The lights reflect off their visors, making them gleam in a really off-putting way. They look like hostile aliens in black leather biker gear.

  “Jackson!” I scream, pointing at them.

  “My friend thinks he’s being chased by Daft Punk,” says Jackson, pretty cavalier about it all, and everyone laughs, sips their drinks. “He thinks they’re trying to kill him.”

  “What’s your name, sweetie?” says a girl with kinky red hair, who appeared out of nowhere and is rocking this white-and-blue zipped-up jumpsuit thing with a matching purse. She gently cups Jackson’s elbow.

  “Aidan,” I tell her.

  “I’m Corinna,” she says. “I’m in from San Fran. I work at Clarium Capital.”

  I nod, distantly.

  “For Peter Thiel?” she explains.

  “He’s gay,” says Jackson, indicating me, sipping his drink.

  All the girls nod as one, and take an almost imperceptible step back, because I’m suddenly off the market, something they can’t have. Corinna smiles warmly at me, though, stirring her drink once with her little finger. “I have a friend here I’d love you to meet… if I can find him. He works in Chelsea. The David Dorbean gallery?”

  I shake my head. She looks over my shoulder and giggles, hand to her mouth. “Are you really trying to kill our friend?” she says.

  I turn around, slowly, and see she is addressing the two bikers, who are now standing right behind me like grim reapers.

  I freeze. Sweat beads on my brow. They could kill me at any second, and there is too much going on in this space for anyone to notice or care. If I try to run, they could just grab me, break my neck, stab me, inject me with something… This whole place—where they’re ironically now playing trap music—is a fucking trap.

  The biker dudes don’t move or react. They both wear black gripping gloves—probably deerskin leather. Good for strangling.

  Jackson downs his drink, throws down his cup. “Yo, what is up?” he asks them. “Do you have a problem with my friend?” He moves in. “Do we have a problem here?”

  But I’m with Jackson, I remind myself, my superhero best friend.

  The biker dudes don’t move. Their silent stoicism is deeply unnerving.

  “What do you want?” Charlotta asks them. “When is your next album dropping?” But Jackson’s already made that joke and it isn’t as funny the second time, especially in an unsure, drunken Swedish accent.

  After a moment, the biker dudes turn in unison and walk away.

  “Yeah! Go on!” says Jackson. He gives me a look like: See?

  “This isn’t over,” I shout in his ear. “They’ll probably be waiting for me outside, where I’ll be more isolated.”

  Jackson frowns at me. “Who did you piss off? How real did shit get?”

  “Pretty real,” I tell him.

  “Okay. Let’s go out the back way. C’mon,” he says, leading me through the crowd, breaking away from the throng of fancy ladies who have no idea we’re underage. Jackson probably told them he was the world’s youngest venture capitalist. He does shit like that.

  Every room we pass by in this insanely huge warehouse—Jackson tells me it’s called the Rocket Factory; they once manufactured rockets here, or whatever—is playing different music, different DJs, catering to an entirely different subset of reveler.

  I almost want to linger in the room decorated with glow-in-the-dark sculpture-monsters made out of orange yarn, where the DJ is playing a deeper cut from the Clash’s Sandinista! album, but I follow Jackson out to a wide courtyard, where people are gathered in tight groups vaping and chugging PBRs.

  “I need a minute,” says Jackson.

  “Jacks, we really need to get out of here.”

  “I need to clear my head.”

  He leads me over to a bunch of hammocks strung between trees, and soft round chairs hanging from chains. We nab a swinging chair after two girls with pink hair depart, blowing us a kiss as they melt into the party. Jackson sucks on his vaping pen, the light on the end glowing like a comet, then hands it to me. I take a long drag because at this point, why the hell not.

  “You know I love you,” says Jackson, exhaling, staring up at the sky.

  “I love you, too, man,” I say. But my words sound strained. Jackson is more in touch with his emotions regarding other dudes than I am. But he has less of a past in that regard, too. He doesn’t bear the same handprints.

  Dirty paws.

  Jackson wanted to be friends with me precisely for the same reason I wanted to be friends with him—we remind each other of nothing we’re familiar with from back home. We’re in the same residence hall—Welton. He was the first person at Witloff who I came out to because we just started talking one day after our American Lit class. Know what he did? He put his hands on my shoulders, gave me a big kiss on the mouth and said: “Well, I guess we know for sure I’m straight now ’cause ya sure are pretty.”

  “I need your phone,” I say.

  He hands it over. I remember the numbers tattooed on Benoît’s arm: 6 28 69. I google them.

  The first hits I get are dates. There was a Grateful Dead concert that night, in 1969, but I have a feeling that’s not relevant. The next date, however, makes me gasp.

  The Stonewall riots.

  I know about the Stonewall riots because I know about history, and the gay civil rights movement, which I read about on my own, because they don’t teach that stuff in school. LGBT people fought back against a police raid at a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in New York City that night. That one event pretty much started the modern-day movement for gay rights and equality. Those people were heroes. And no one from my generation probably knows or cares. They’re too busy taking pouty selfies for hookup apps.

  The man on the phone said: It all begins with a number.…

  And he said something else, too:

  That night. When it all began.

  He must have been referring to Stonewall. Benoît was gay, obviously, but the guy on the phone was, too. It was the way he spoke to me: his tone, the way he called me “hun.” A little bit flirty and a little bit judgy.

  “We are the Swans,” he said. And Benoît had a tattoo of a swan along with those numbers curving around it. It’s a link, but I don’t know what it means yet.

  And I don’t have a good feeling about it.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” says Jackson.

  I hand him back his phone, tell him about meeting Benoît.

  He shakes his head at me. “Dude.”

  “I wound up in his room only because things didn’t quite work out with Darren Cohen.”

  Jackson gives me a wide-eyed look.

  “You didn’t know about Darren?”

  “No,” he says, “but I guess it doesn’t shock me.”

  “Anyway. I woke up and he was dead.”

  “Darren’s dead?”

  “No, the older guy. Benoît.”

  “Shit. What? How did he die? Was he really that old?”

  “He was shot in the head! There was a bullet hole in the window. There was a laser sight crossing the room, trying to find me.”

  “That’s so fucking scary! This just happened for real?”

  “Like an hour ago, maybe a little more? What time is it even?”

  Jackson checks his watch. “Around one-thirty. You walked into something bad?”

  “No. That’s the thing. It’s like it walked into me.”

  I tell Jacks about the photos of me I found on Benoît’s phone, the strange conversation with the voice on the phone, the cash in the suitcase, the murderous bellhop, how everyone started calling me Mr. Preston, the Stonewall riots.

  Jackson just blinks at me, like, Do I get a break before you delve into Season Two?

  I take the flash drive out of my pocket. “I got this from Benoît’s laptop. We should p
robably see what’s on it.”

  “All right, keep that shit in your pocket.”

  “And I need to charge my phone. I’m supposed to meet my parents tomorrow! And now the cops and these bad guys are all after me.”

  Jackson puts his hand on my shoulder. “Do you want to go to the police?”

  I shake my head. “The Swan guy said they’d go after my family if I don’t give them what—”

  “I’m sure the police would protect your family, Aidy.”

  “How sure are you? They’re watching my every move. I don’t know how many of them there are. If it was you…”

  He sighs, cracks his knuckles. “I don’t know.”

  “I want to find out everything I can first. I’m afraid, man. This is heavy.”

  Jackson looks around. “All right, we should get you out of here now.”

  “Where?”

  “Well, I’m staying with Leo at his cousin’s place in Crown Heights.”

  “What? What place?”

  “Some co-living startup called Kibbutzeteria. I said I’d crash with him tonight after Tats and I got into a fight.”

  “Dude, I didn’t even know Leo’s in town.”

  “Yeah, yeah he is. He just didn’t have time to meet us for tea earlier. He’s sorry.”

  I stare at a loose pattern of cigarette butts on the ground. “It’s like you and Leo have your own thing going on without me.”

  Jackson sighs again. “Do you want to do this now?”

  “Yes,” I say, as the pot soothes my nerves, and stokes an appetite I’m rarely aware of, while churning my feelings of outrage. “Our relationship is important to me and I want pretzels.”

  “It’s important to me, too.”

  “It’s the only relationship in my life that’s ever worked.”

  “No one is excluding you,” says Jackson. “You get paranoid and obsessive.”

  “Is that what Leo says? Is that why he avoids me?”

  “No one is avoiding you. You should probably not smoke pot right now.”

  “You have to admit you don’t tell me shit.”

  “What? What don’t I tell you?”

  “Like, why are you even crashing with Leo tonight? What happened with Tats? Why don’t you ever tell me shit?”

  “Dude, I DO. Relax. There was no time. Shit’s been getting weird with her for a while. I don’t know. I just don’t think I’m in love with her. I’ve been as far down this road with her as I can. I don’t envision us moving forward from where we are. I want to see the world and experience different shit.”

  “You mean, like, more poontang.”

  I get a sharp look. “That word does not look or sound good coming out of those pillowy lips.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And her parents piss me off. There’s all this pressure with them and they’re kinda judgmental. Like I’m not good enough. I get the sense they think I’m a player.”

  “You are a little, though.”

  “They want me to commit. Like, now. They act like they’re all impressed with me, but keep asking about our plans for the future. And yeah, I get it, I guess. They don’t want to see their baby get hurt. But what am I supposed to do, propose? I’m not even in college yet. It’s too much, too soon. We want different things. We’re in different places. I’m not ready.”

  “Yeah, but are you treating her well? She’s home asleep and you’re out partying.”

  “I told you shit got weird. I needed to get out for a while.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Boy, get your ass up.”

  I stand up, brushing off my shorts. “Sorry.”

  “Seriously, I’m done. I told you to behave yourself. You didn’t. Now the whole world’s after you, you’re dragging me into this shit, and you want to judge me for Tats?”

  “I’m not judging. I like her.”

  He narrows his eyes. “My game is tight. How ’bout yours?”

  I wipe my brow with the back of my hand. “I’m a mess. Obviously.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m still trying to understand this self-destructive side of you. I know where it comes from—”

  “Do not bring up my brother right now,” I say icily, through my teeth.

  Jackson holds his hands out, defensively. “I wasn’t. Wasn’t. I was just going to say… I don’t know how to respond or deal with you sometimes. Okay? You don’t listen.”

  I stand there for a second, tapping my feet, taking in this whole night like a rainstorm pouring over me. “You really think I’m self-destructive?”

  “There’s that side to you, dude, you know there is.”

  The side of me that meets random middle-aged men in hotel rooms? Wipes fingerprints, steals ten grand from a crime scene? Chats with a stranger who wants to kill me about running from tornadoes in apocalyptic dreams?

  “I think I am a lovely young man with a good head on my shoulders,” I say primly, “all things considered.”

  “Okay, then.” Jackson stands, pockets the vape pen. “I just think you should shut your ass up sometimes. Especially when someone’s trying to help you. And look—no one excludes you because you like dick, and I know that’s what you think sometimes. We’re your best friends.”

  “I didn’t think that. I don’t! I mean I do like dick… a lot, yes, but that’s not—”

  “You do think it. I know you do. You got a persecution complex on top of everything else.”

  “Okay. Wow. How much are you charging me for this therapy session?”

  “Not enough. There’s no use going into all this now, though. There’s obviously bigger fish to fry tonight. C’mon.” He wraps his hand around my neck. “Let’s ghost.”

  “I just hope you know how lucky you are,” I tell him. “Everyone loves you and you get away with everything, there’s never any consequences to—”

  “I am a black boy in America. I do not get away with everything. I’m looking over my shoulder, too, more than you know—”

  “Shit, I know, I know—”

  “We all got problems,” he says, whipping out his phone. “I ain’t perfect.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Very.”

  There’s no way out the back. We’re kind of trapped. So I follow Jackson back inside the warehouse and onto the main dance floor, where things have gotten progressively weirder. This is not helped in any way by the fact that I’m now a little stoned. Jackson has his phone out, the Uber app pulsing. I overhear snippets of conversation.

  A woman in a black Prada bucket hat points to a group of her friends: “Tick tock, motherfuckers, if you want to lose weight for fashion week, you better start yesterday.”

  A gay dude to a girl he’s with: “All you ever do is talk about how much you hate Saoirse Ronan.”

  All other conversations get swept away as the music segues into a thunderous deluge of dance rock. The crowd seems bigger now: more druggy, pumped. Jackson brushes away thickets of bubbles that a guy dressed as a robot is blowing through a large wand. Through a bobbling bubble, I see one of the bikers, distorted and rainbowed, standing at the far corner of the dance floor. The other biker stands at the other side. They’re clearly hoping to nab me as I leave. I pat my pocket. I bet they want that flash drive back.

  I point them out to Jackson. He looks back at me and nods—he sees them, too.

  But then we get lucky.

  Some people dressed as zombies are wreaking havoc by jumping onto the dance floor and “tagging” random dancers—slapping a thick red sticker with a biohazard symbol onto their backs. This throws everyone’s rhythm off, and the crowd sways to the left after a zombie boy gets shoved.

  And then a deer scampers through the warehouse.

  A freakin’ live deer.

  People hoot and holler, not realizing they could probably get full-on gored by the panicked animal that some hipster fucktard just let in here.

  Jackson grabs my shoulders and pushes me forward, and we follow the sprinting deer
, leaving screams and chaos and spilled drinks in our wake. People race to open the front garage doors of the warehouse. The deer darts out into the night, its antlers framed by the dirty moon, the color of cereal milk, a perverted marriage of the urban and the pastoral, all wrong, something I think I’ll always wonder if I really saw.

  Jackson dips us into the crowd of partyers. Sweaty bodies jab into us, sharp elbows and knees, pushing against us, stepping on our feet. Everyone spills outside, desperate for the perfect Instagram shot of the deer bucking, terrified and confused, in the middle of the street, bringing traffic to a screeching halt.

  Jackson guides me sharply to the right. We tumble into a black Chevy Suburban, which is waiting calmly by the curb, and speed off.

  CHAPTER 6

  Kibbutzeteria

  We arrive at a sleepy-looking brownstone a few minutes later, after making sure we weren’t followed. I don’t hear motorcycles anywhere in the vicinity.

  “Was there really a deer in there?” I ask Jackson quietly, as we step up to the door and the Chevy Suburban drives away. I look over my shoulder sixty times.

  “There really was,” he says, his phone out.

  “So Leo’s staying here?”

  “This is the address he gave me. We should be safe here. There’s security. Everything is accessed by an app, which I’m now trying to—”

  The door clicks open.

  “There we go,” says Jacks, leading me inside. The lights flick on automatically. We walk past an indoor bike rack, completely full, in the foyer.

  I have never been to a co-living start-up before. I’m not entirely sure what they are, but it’s super-posh. Jackson explains they’re like dorms for busy young professionals—people who work long hours on Wall Street or at Google or whatever, who want to live together, be around other people, and have everything taken care of for them.

  There are hardwood floors, Moroccan shag rugs everywhere; the overall décor is modern but comfy, Swedish-functional, everything the color of oatmeal. Flat-screen TVs perched over a wooden banister inform people of packages waiting for them and provide a schedule of the week’s activities. There’s a movie night in a basement screening room, a meditation class in the third-floor flex room, cooking lessons in the downstairs chef’s kitchen, a reading group taking place tomorrow in the backyard hot tubs. Dang.