Boulevard

by Jim Grimsley

  He lives in faith, as anyone would in his place, and he accepts my hands, my slapping and pinching, when I hoist him into the sling and fuck him, sweat running under my mask, him lying chained and fetal, his body drinking me into it, his face calling, his soft voice making me shiver, whenever he makes a sound. He lives in faith that his life will all make sense, that he is making sense of things a moment at a time, that each moment when I twist and bite his nipple is a reason to survive to the next.

  Here he is sagging forward, exhausted, having given himself, with me tired behind him, harsh breathing and sweat, watching, because it is like a movie to watch him, a silvered image, a surface.

  It will seem holy to have my arms lift him so tenderly, to bind his feet in the shackles and raise him up slowly, gently, not too fast so the blood to the head doesn’t kill him, to raise him up slowly with the cold sound of the ratchet and tackle and have him shackled that way, spread like a bird in flight, a cloud of terror shining out of him.

  I have this boy to remind me that Paradise is coming, and I shall use him for that, until he is all used up, like all the rest, and his burnt-out husk will drift away from me into the air, and I will scent him on the breeze as he dissolves, and I will carry the smoke from his fire inside me, walk down to the river, drift away.

  Newell was hardly sure where he was at first, there was only a light, high in a wall of vague shadows. His body hurt, his backside burned like fire, his joints were stiff.

  Jack was coming back. He’d said so. Where was this place? Some room in one of the warehouses?

  He stood. He found he could. He’d fallen asleep on a pile of rags, filthy.

  The cuffs were still on his hands, but when he checked they were open. He took them off.

  Now he could see, a bit.

  He found his jeans. Not much left of his shirt. One shoe, not his.

  Sound, someone coming. He went to the door, found it locked. But there was a window and a table underneath it, and he climbed on the table and opened the window. He knew he was making noise, but as far as he was concerned it didn’t matter anymore. He thought Jack would let him go if he asked, but he wasn’t going to ask, he was going to leave now, through the window, and when he got it open, sore as he was he climbed out, into a wide gutter between two roofs. He pulled the window closed and ran down the gutter, every footfall making the tin clammer like thunder. A dead man could have heard him running away, but he didn’t care about that either. He had seen enough.

  It was true he had said yes to everything Jack wanted to do. This was what made it all right, made it possible to think about. But to remember, now that the night was over, terrified him, and he was shivering at the end of the gutter, leaning down to the branch of a baby oak, grabbing it without thinking and swinging toward the trunk, his shoulders with a feeling of tearing, then his bare feet on the solid tree, leaves yellowed.

  He climbed to the ground. He was in an alley and headed toward a street. He looked up and saw, now, that he was near the old brewery on the river, maybe that was even where he had been all night, with Jack.

  When he stood still, he was shivering, but when he moved he was all right, so he headed home, down Decatur Street toward the lower Quarter. Stepping gingerly, shivering. Feeling for his apartment key in his pocket, relieved to find it. Early yet, nobody was awake.

  When he turned the corner for home, though, there were police cars everywhere, two in the street and two in the carriageway, all with blue lights blazing, and a cop standing at the entrance to the carriageway. Newell could see police in the junk store, in Louise’s office, and in the store rooms. Searching through her files and her desk, but Newell only glanced that way, he wasn’t entirely certain what he saw, the cops on the street were watching him. “You got any business here, son?”

  “I live here. Up there.” Newell pointed.

  The officer stood aside and said, “You rent from this woman, Louise Kimbro?”

  “Yes sir.”

  He nodded. “Well, you can go on up, I guess. Stay out of the way back there.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing to concern you, son. Now, go on.”

  He headed along the passage, wondering if something had happened to Louise, but when he reached the loggia he saw her, surrounded by two officers in uniform and two other men in shirts and ties, maybe officers, too; Louise was red-eyed, face impassive, and stared at the ground, refusing to look at Newell at all, though he was sure she could see him.

  On the back gallery he lingered a moment, watching, Louise answering questions in a quiet voice, too quiet to hear.

  So Millie had talked to her dad.

  It seemed appropriate, to Newell, to be packing while the police searched Louise’s house and business, to be packing his own belongings. He had meant to have a bath but suddenly, with the flashing blue lights washing over his room, he was afraid he would turn and find Jack in the doorway. The fear of what it meant to say yes to Jack. So Newell packed some of his clothes, not all of them, because he wanted to take only the bag he had arrived with, and he left all his books since he had read them, and everything else he had bought here, which he would not need when he went back to Pastel, and he got his money out of the four hiding places he had used, counted the three thousand dollars he had saved and divided most of that into two folds, which he put in his shoes. Astonishing how little time it took.

  He checked his face in the mirror. No black eyes, no split lip, only a slight puffiness to his cheeks. No one would think anything except maybe he looked hungover.

  When the courtyard was empty, he walked down the stairs with the bag, out the passageway and down the street. In a couple of blocks a taxi cruised past and he waved it down, still expecting at any second to see Jack. Or Mark. Or someone.

  “To the bus station,” he said to the driver, who chewed on his cigarette filter and stomped the accelerator.

  He bought a ticket on the next bus to Jackson, figuring to make the connection there to Pastel, figuring the Jackson buses would leave most frequently. Even so, for an hour and a half he waited for the bus with his bag beside him, nervous as a cat. Seated in a corner of the tiny station, trying to stay out of sight. Not even sure why he thought Jack would be looking for him, not even sure why he had decided to leave, not needing to think it through, sensing the rolls of his money in his shoes and the fact that he was in motion. Nobody in New Orleans could ever find him, he’d never told anybody very much about himself. Only Louise had Flora’s address, and she was headed to someplace deeply unpleasant. Nobody would ever go to that much trouble, track him all the way to Pastel, and anyway, it wasn’t likely that Newell would stay there long, was it?

  He had stopped shivering. The sun poured through a window, and he sat in it, the tropical New Orleans sun, still vivid even on Halloween morning.

  Last night, when it had been happening. When he had been in the midst of the beating, the sex that had turned into a beating, the terror that followed, the look on Jack’s face, and Newell afraid to ask him to stop, even though Jack had promised he would stop at any point; Newell afraid to ask, in case it wasn’t true. When Newell felt himself losing consciousness and wondered if he would ever wake up again. Maybe in the midst of that he had come to some decision.

  This has gone too fast, he thought, when the bus pulled up and he realized the time had come and he was getting on it, going home. But I made it fine, for a long time, and I can do it again, somewhere else. As he settled into his seat, watching the other passengers board, the bleak street beyond them, he felt a sudden relief, to be leaving all this without a word, and thought how surprised Flora would be, when he called her from Jackson to tell her he was coming home. Though he’d have to make it clear to her he didn’t intend to stay long. There were so many other places to live, now that he had lived in New Orleans.

  Miss Sophia, still walking the streets after another bad night, found herself ambling along Canal, the fabulous boulevard making a space large enough to con
tain her restlessness, when she halted at the intersection of Royal and Canal. A taxi pulled up, and a face swam toward the window, Newell’s. He only glanced out the window and reclined out of sight once again, but she saw his face, in the taxi, so that later, when she heard the rumors, she was certain that in fact Newell had escaped. No one had murdered him at all. That morning, standing on the corner, she figured he was gone for good, because he was in a taxi, because he had a duffel bag beside him. She watched the taxi turn on Canal, join other traffic. The news cleared her mind. She decided to head home again, have a strong cup of coffee and a piece of king cake. Another boyfriend gone, she thought, and headed for the bus stop.

  Published by

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

  Post Office Box 2225

  Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

  a division of

  Workman Publishing

  225 Varick Street

  New York, New York 10014

  © 2002 by Jim Grimsley. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. No reference to any real person is intended or should be inferred.

  ISBN 978-1-56512-711-1

  ALSO BY JIM GRIMSLEY

  Winter Birds

  Dream Boy

  My Drowning

  Mr. Universe

  and Other Plays

  Comfort and Joy