by Derek Milman
“Wait here,” says Hardy Boy Joe. “Stay in that chair.”
They close the door behind them as they leave.
I hop right up, run over to the door, but it’s locked. There are floor-to-ceiling windows framed in dark wood, but outside I see only leaves tickling the glass, like we’re in the middle of a jungle. Antique lamps—one of which is on a drafting table made of blue glass, littered with various papers and stacks of high-end art magazines—cast the room in sepia light.
In the distance, suburban sounds I recognize: leaf blowers, buzzing bees, chirping birds. It’s as if I’ve been yanked through a portal back into my own childhood, but in a backward sort of way, from the other side of a frayed curtain, so everything feels wrong.
I hear the sound of a motorcycle getting closer.
Expensive-looking photography books line the wooden bookshelves, along with books on philosophy and a few novels that look like rare editions. There are drawings and photographs framed in glass of moody boys with bangs and bedroom eyes on the bookshelves and on the floor leaning up against the walls, which are covered with patterned wallpaper. Closer up I see the pattern is twisty vines and grapes in faded greens, violets, mustard yellows.
I think about breaking one of the windows, but the glass looks pretty thick.
I don’t even see a pen anywhere. The only thing I find is a butterfly paper clip at the edge of the table. I unbend it and furiously scratch the tip back and forth across the metal edge of the table until it’s warped and snaggy. I put it in my pocket just as the door is flung open.
“I said: stay in that chair,” Hardy Boy Joe bellows. He grabs me by my hair, hard, and throws me back into the chair, whiplashing me.
“Ow!” I say. “That hurt, you pecker.”
“Easy, easy,” says a muffled voice from behind him, out in the hallway. A voice I recognize right away. “He’s in here?”
“Yeah,” Hardy Boy Joe fumes. He glares down at me, flexing his hands, then stomps out of the room. “Where you wanted him.”
A slim man of about medium height enters the room. He is dressed entirely in black leather. His jacket is zipped up to the neck, and he’s wearing one of those motorcycle helmets with a mirrored green visor.
Standing against the wallpaper, which makes kaleidoscopic shapes in my eyes, there’s something disconcerting about the way he just stares at me, his gloved hands at his sides, unmoving. He lifts up the visor, exposing a patch of his face—clean-cut with cloudy, jade-green eyes.
“Do you have it on you?” he asks.
“Do I have what on me?”
“Let’s not play any more games, Mr. Preston.”
“You must know by now I’m not this Mr. Preston.”
He shrugs. “What should I do, ask for ID? You’re a runaway teenage cyber-warrior who uses a multitude of them.”
I am? Fuck, that sounds kind of awesome.
“Your identity is always in flux,” he adds.
I cough into the crook of my arm. “Well, it is now.”
“That’s the downside of working with mercenaries,” he hisses, but more to himself. “You took the money, I assume?”
“I took some of it,” I admit. “No choice, dude. You called the cops. I was on the run. I’m not a hacker. I don’t know how to hack drones.”
There are voices outside and inside the house, footsteps on wooden floors. There are lots of other people in this house, I realize.
He gazes out the window. “And if you’re not Mr. Preston, how would you know what we were after?” he says, striped by light and shadow.
“I looked at the contents of the flash drive Benoît had on his laptop.”
He nods. “Shrewd of you. May I have that back?”
I take the flash drive out of my pocket. He moves a little closer, arm outstretched, and I place the flash drive in his leather-gloved palm.
“I want to go home now. I’m supposed to have dinner with my parents.”
He cups the flash drive in his palm gingerly, as if estimating its weight, before saying anything. “Tell me about them.”
“My parents?”
He nods.
I breathe slowly through my nose. I want my voice to sound stable, so I don’t give away my escalating terror. “Why?”
“Because I want to know all about you.”
“But why?” I repeat, cautiously. “You’ve threatened my life, you threatened their lives, you kidnapped me…”
“I just needed to get you here so we could have a little talk. Mission accomplished.”
I don’t believe him. I open my mouth without speaking, but only for a second. “Would you hurt them?” My voice squeaks and bends. I’m having trouble maintaining composure.
After a tiny pause: “That depends.”
“On?”
“You had a brother?”
I get a nice jolt right there. This is the second time he’s done that to me.
I swallow, and nod.
“I’m sorry,” he says. He sounds sincere.
“How do you know these things about me?”
“It’s a gift.”
I run my tongue along my lower teeth, considering that, trying to make sense of this. “Are you going to let me go home?”
“There is something bruised about you. That interests me. Your wounds.”
I shift uncomfortably in my seat.
“You don’t see yourself that way?” he asks, curious.
“I don’t see myself as anything.”
“A cipher, then. Someone with a mercenary’s morals. Sell to the highest bidder. You didn’t even know—or care—who we were.”
I shake my head vigorously. “You obviously aren’t as gifted as you think you are if you still think I’m a mercenary cyber-warrior named Preston.” I laugh a little. “Give me a break.”
He takes a step toward me and sits on the edge of the desk.
“How did he die?”
It’s called dilated cardiomyopathy, or DCM. It’s a type of enlargement of the heart that can cause sudden death with absolutely no symptoms. Young people can have it. My brother collapsed in the middle of his high school basketball game. He was fifteen. I was eleven. It can be congenital, which is the real reason my mom freaked out over my EKG.
To think I’m older than him now, older than my older brother, who was always there first, guiding the way for me, weirds me out so much. His name was Neil. And he was a great guy, and a perfect older brother—sweet, gentle, kind, sensitive, just all good things, and I miss him every day.
It sucks so hard that I lost him, that our family lost him, that the world lost him, because I think genuine sweetness is such a rare, underrated virtue, and Neil had that in spades. I’m not as sweet as he was. But I think losing him is why I can be snarky sometimes. I’m just masking pain.
I’m fine admitting that. It’s the truth.
It also sucks because I’m muddy on the last time I ever spoke to him.
I wasn’t at that game where he died on the court. I had something else that morning. I wish I had said something supportive at least, something loving and kind, because you never know, obviously. That it’ll be the last time.
I have a sister, too. Her name is Nicole (I call her Nicks, after Stevie) but she’s way older than me—twenty-eight now. We were never all that close. And she tends to be a little… high-strung.
It runs in the family.
After Neil died, two things happened: I stopped being afraid of things. I wasn’t exactly reckless, not like that. I didn’t do hard drugs or take up parasailing. But death meant less to me. I guess I figured if something awful happened and I did die, then at least I could see Neil again.
The other thing that happened was a perceptible shift with my parents. I was briefly in therapy about this, we all were, blah blah, but that was a waste of everybody’s time, ’cause nobody can bring Neil back. What happened with my parents was harsh, yet I get it.
With my sister out of the house, I think they saw me as just ano
ther Potential Tragedy. If something dramatic (like my heart, or my burned-up aunt) happens, my mom will totally unspool from her shell and freak on me for sure. But, overall, my parents became detached. I think that’s a big reason they had no problem sending me to Witloff, with not too many questions asked. I think the general attitude was: let’s get this Potential Tragedy out of our faces.
When I came out to my parents at thirteen, they weren’t ho-hum about it, nor were they particularly accepting. I mean, I hear stories about kids who come out to their parents and a cake gets baked, there’s a party, they go to PFLAG events, all this gippity-goppity gay shit. With my family it was the type of conversation where someone has to sit on the bottom step of a staircase. They were pretty stolid, fists pressed to foreheads, nodding furiously but remaining silent, like they had expected something along these lines.
A day later I get a handwritten letter on my dad’s stationery. The medical letterhead just made it seem that much more frosty and official.
In that letter was my dad’s Darwinian deconstruction of how homosexuality is pretty much an unnatural state of being in the continuum of human evolution. “Human beings are engineered to reproduce,” he argued. “What’s the purpose of sperm?” he mused. Because if there’s one thing you want your dad to bring up, it’s definitely sperm.
He stopped short of calling me a total aberration, but he condemned the “hedonistic culture of gays,” which propagates HIV, he said, and asked if I “really wanted to play with fire.”
You hear about the biblical shit. How the Bible dictates that homosexuality is a sin. I think you can laugh that stuff off for the most part. Or at least I can, but I’m not religious; never was. What I got, instead, was this bullshit scientific treatise on how I’m basically a human error—from my own father—which was so much more chilling. Mostly because he asked questions I couldn’t really answer yet and presented his points thoughtfully, even if they were totally wack. He ended the letter saying: “Of course we love and accept you no matter what.”
No matter what. That was the part that really got me.
I get that my dad hasn’t been totally right in the head since Neil, and fine, whatever. But he shouldn’t have projected his own fears and ignorance onto me. And no one has all the answers. No one.
I realize I’m talking about Neil, fully and freely, which I never do. I am telling this man, who may or may not be murdering me in the next few minutes, shit I never talk about.
I’m legit impressed. “How did you get me to do that?”
“I simply asked,” he replies. “Maybe you just needed someone to listen, Aidan.”
I sit back, my eyes fluttering. “You do know my real name.”
“Of course,” he answers, blithely. “But that’s just another name.”
Not really. It’s mine.
He’s never going to believe I’m not some mercenary homicidal black-hat cyber-warrior. He clearly needs to cling to this narrative that I’m some kind of lost boy who went over to the dark side, someone he can save, or make use of. Or just dispose of without feeling much about it.
“Aidan, Aidan, Aidan,” he hums, relishing the sound of my name.
I think of my mother knocking on my door.
I’d never heard her crying like that before. Deep, deep sobs. “Aidan… Aidan, baby, something’s happened… Aidan!”
“You hold on to so much,” he says. “You figured out so early how unfair and brutal the world really is. What does that do to a boy?”
I stare at him. I say nothing.
“It feels good talking about him, doesn’t it? Almost like you can bring him back in brief little flashes.”
It’s like he can see into the darkest parts of me, like seeing through onyx. He gets that side of me, the side of me everyone pretends isn’t there, or softens with euphemistic language like: Makes bad decisions; plays with fire; can be self-destructive; heedless; impulsive; gets too attached; gets obsessive…
He doesn’t just see it, though. It thrills him. I can tell.
I have to get him to trust me.
“I didn’t kill Benoît.”
His eyes are smoky, fascinated, unblinking. “Then who did?”
“A third party,” I say, echoing what Leo and Jacks were saying. “I just fell into this.”
I sense hesitation, his interest piqued. His eyes are on me, searching. “Aidan,” he says almost gently, “you know who we are now… where we’re based. I have to protect our cause. That’s my priority. You understand that.”
I try to swallow but I can’t. “So what do you want?”
“Knowing who we are, and what we do… would you want us to stop?” he asks.
I grip both my arms. “Stop what? Killing homophobes?”
After a moment, he nods slowly.
The world would be better off without people who hate gay people. But what the Swans are doing is illegal and vicious. It’s murder.
However… maybe sometimes that’s how you have to make real change: fight wars. Wage revolutions. Rise up.
Yeah, but these people are terrorists—and terrorists always see themselves fighting some stupid invisible war.
It’s not that invisible, though. It’s hardly stupid. We are under siege.
And truthfully? I’m glad those homophobes are dead.
Even though… I don’t condone murder.
I can’t have it both ways, though. I get that.
But… pushing gay kids to suicide by encouraging society and their own families to reject them? Isn’t that a form of murder?
The easy, lazy answer is yes, I want this all to stop. The harder answer is no, I want to see what they can accomplish—because I’m intrigued. And because the Swans seem disturbingly good at splitting me in two, triggering a dormant part of myself I’ve never been in touch with—this desire to fight back against injustice, hypocrisy, and the cruelty of the world. They see some kind of rage in me. But it’s not just that.
They see potential.
“I won’t go to the police,” I tell him.
He seems disappointed. “That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” I reply, sounding more confident than I expected; I have to survive the present circumstances. “I don’t think you should stop.” There we go. Better.
I can’t tell if he’s satisfied by my answer. I can’t tell if he believes me.
He pulls the visor of his helmet back down. I can see my squirming reflection. I look so small, lost, insignificant.
Without another word, he tosses the flash drive in the air, catches it, and leaves the room, shutting the door behind him.
Two minutes later, Hardy Boy Joe comes in and pulls me out of the chair. I try to wriggle out of his grip, but it’s iron tight—when he’s not solving local mysteries involving haunted garages and missing clocks, Hardy Boy Joe clearly spends time with a well-paid trainer.
“What’s happening?” I ask. The panic is so fast, a liquid almost, filling my throat.
“He says you can keep the money,” he growls, leading me out of the room, holding me by the scruff of my neck.
I feel like I didn’t hear him correctly. “What? Why?”
Did I actually convince the biker dude I’m one of them?
He shoves me down a long hallway: parquet floors, more framed photos on the walls, splashed with afternoon sun, tall windows on the other side, overlooking a courtyard with a pool. There are people out there.
At the other end of the hallway, another man turns a corner, stops, and stares at us. It takes me a second, but then I recognize him:
It’s the homicidal-looking bellhop from the Mandarin Oriental.
He’s wearing white cotton trousers that look lost in time, like when you see old photos of a young Marlon Brando in front of his house in Hollywood. He’s shirtless and totally ripped, with a white towel around his neck. His long blond hair is unkempt and he’s a day or so unshaven, which makes him look even more like a scheming soap star. You could slice cucumbers on his jawl
ine.
“Do you want a tour?” Blond Bellhop asks me. His voice is ominously deep and husky and doesn’t go with his sneering face.
I have a PTSD reaction to seeing him again. I instantly start to shake. My stomach cramps. Every part of my body wants to run, but I know I should hold my ground and stay very calm. “Not really,” I respond, breezily—too breezily, maybe.
“I’m sure you want to see the pool,” he says.
I shake my head. My pulse is racing at a speed where I wonder if I may collapse. “I’m good,” I say, stiffly. I feel like if I attempt to walk or move my brain won’t know how to fulfill the action.
Blond Bellhop comes toward us.
Hardy Boy Joe loosens his grip on the back of my neck and pushes me toward him. Blond Bellhop, grinning in his oily way, swings his arm around my shoulders and thrusts open one of the glass doors. He guides me out into the courtyard. I try to free myself from his grip, but his arms are super strong, his grip viselike. The pool, surrounded by potted plants and flowers, is narrow. Low-hanging trees create a canopy over the sapphire-blue water. The calm, sylvan setting throws me.
Like frightened birds, about seven or eight boys sit up from bronze-colored lounge chairs where they were sunning themselves. They’re all a bit waify, generically cute, pouty, most of them with auburn hair, probably a couple of years older than me. They all wear identical sunglasses—tinted green—and white bathing suits in a vintage style, like Blond Bellhop’s billowy pants.
At first I can’t put my finger on what instantly weirds me out about them. But then I get it. I look just like them—like we all showed up for the same casting call. Something about the synchronicity of their movements, their outfits, everything, is also really off-putting. Blond Bellhop merely has to look at them and grunt, and they all scatter. Magazines flutter down. Bare feet whisper off. Glass doors open and slam.
I can’t escape Bellhop’s grip. All my mental alarm bells are ringing. I need to shake him off, and get in a position where I can kick, punch, scratch.
“So this is the pool,” says Blond Bellhop, his tone detached, but his hold tightening like a python.
“Cool,” I respond, looking around for an escape, “it’s very n—”