One Life to Lose

by Kris Ripper

  There really were a lot of people. I recognized many of them from previous movies, some by name, some only by face. The group stayed much later than I expected, and I dismissed as much staff as I dared let leave.

  I only saw Hugh and his family as they were leaving. He kissed my cheek and told me he was proud of me, then melted into the night as most people were now doing. It was only right, but part of me mourned the loss of the film festival, as eager as I was for it to be over, for my Saturdays to be my own again.

  When only a few people were left, I clapped my hands and told them I looked forward to seeing all of them at the Rhein in the future, but for now we had to close up.

  This time I didn’t single out Josh and Keith to stay inside, but passed them my apartment keys. They smiled, I smiled, they walked away, and I locked the door behind them. Closing went fast and soon enough I was setting the alarm, walking across the lobby in the dark, letting myself outside.

  All so perfectly mundane. That’s the genius of filmmakers like Hitchcock, of course. You start with a party, and it’s so mundane it seduces you a little. The guy sitting in silhouette in the foreground may be the hero, or he may be the villain. You aren’t always sure until the end.

  “Sorry,” someone said as I was pulling out my phone to text Keith to come downstairs and let me in. “I’m so sorry, I know you’re technically off the clock, but would you mind if I asked you one more question?”

  “Sure.” I’d seen him before, one of the film-festival regulars. I might have talked to him, though I’d talked to so many people. “What can I do for you?”

  He smiled. Cute smile. My mind dismissed him as “too young,” though he had to be Josh’s age at least. My mind had let go of some of the rules when it came to Keith.

  “Okay, so, like, I read this story that this movie has the longest onscreen kiss for its time. Is that true or just, like, the internet making stuff up?”

  “Yes and no. The Hays Code restricted kisses to three seconds, but Hitchcock skirted the letter of the law, prolonging ‘the kiss’ by having a phone call interrupt it.”

  “Oh! In the hotel room, or whatever, right?”

  I paused. Anywhere he would have read about the kiss in Notorious would have surely told that story. “Exactly,” I said, and focused on my phone.

  Cameron: Knock knock.

  Keith: Omw.

  “Thanks so much for coming to the movie tonight,” I said to the young man, walking over to the door to the vestibule. “I’m glad you liked it.”

  “Oh, I did, like, so much! It was great! And that last scene, wow, he just, like, disappears into the house never to be seen again. Right?” He laughed.

  “Well, good night.”

  “I know I’m bothering you, sorry, do you think maybe I could stop by sometime when the theater’s open and ask you more questions?”

  “Sure,” I said, grateful for the out. “Of course, yes, though the internet has a lot of really fun old trivia, if that’s what you’re after. You can’t necessarily be sure it’s true, but if you like the stories—” The door opened.

  Josh, not Keith. “Hey.” He held the door and the three of us stood there for a moment in a strange tableau.

  “Well, good-bye!” the excitable stranger said, starting to turn away.

  “Good-bye. Thanks again for coming to the movie.” I passed Josh in the doorway and began up the stairs.

  Keith grabbed me the second I was inside and pushed me toward the sofa. I opened my mouth to say something, but then we were kissing, Keith half kneeling over me, my head against the arm of the sofa, his hand in my hair. I arched up into him, and he smiled against my lips, finally pulling away. “You were so hot up there tonight. I kinda wanted to maul you, but Josh said probably I shouldn’t.”

  Josh laughed, watching us from the doorway like we were the main attraction.

  I licked my lips. “I don’t object to mauling.”

  “I only objected to the timing,” Josh said. “I mean, the theater seemed a little—”

  The next thing we heard was a thud, and then everything happened very fast.

  Laughter, strange and wrong. “I can’t fucking believe that worked. Fuck yeah!”

  Josh’s body on the ground, crumpled.

  Keith’s voice, far too loud: “Josh, oh my god—”

  And the gun. I’ll never forget the gun. It was small, not at all flashy, and even in that moment, when I was staring it, part of my brain wanted to tell me it might be a toy. Small, metallic, looking more like a scale model than the real thing.

  In that moment you don’t care if it’s a toy because it might be capable of killing you and that’s the only thing your mental triage team will let through.

  I clutched Keith harder and said, “Stop screaming.” When that didn’t work, I put my hand over his mouth and he stopped, eyes wide and white and terrified.

  The young man who’d wanted to know about the Hays Code stood in my doorway over Josh’s body, teeth seeming far too large in his mouth, gun seeming far too small in his hand. He kicked Josh’s body, suddenly, for no reason, and Josh didn’t move. Keith tried to get out of my grip, but I wouldn’t let him and the intruder with the gun made a tsk sound.

  “Oh, he’s not dead. Where would the fun be in that? I just had to take him out first, since he’s the big bad alpha.” Another kick and Josh’s body jolted. “Fucking alpha males, am I right? They’re always such douche bags.” The gun waved toward Keith, who shrank back. “I thought this was gonna be a lot harder, but so far three isn’t harder than one. He would have been a challenge, but I knocked his ass out! Man, did you see that shit? I’m fucking unstoppable.”

  He bounced from foot to foot like an excited child waiting in line for Disneyland. An excited child with a gun.

  “What do you want?” I demanded. I was afraid, but I was also enraged. This was my home. And that was my friend on the ground.

  “What do I want?” All motion stopped. He stared straight at me, as if astonished by the question. “Shit, Cameron Rheingold. I’m the La Vista killer. What do you think I want?”

  Keith tried to break away again, but another kick at Josh’s stomach stopped him.

  “Kind of a feisty little twink, aren’t you? Sorry, we haven’t been introduced. I’ve seen you, of course. And I know where you live.” He smiled, that appalling parody of happiness stretching across his face. “I tracked Cam over there one night, and he did stay awhile. Naughty.” The gun motioned, indicating us. “Sit up. Slowly. Both of you. I want you sitting on opposite sides of the couch with your hands on your thighs so I can see them.”

  Keith started to struggle again, but the young man kicked Josh and used his gun to gesture to us. “If you want him to stay whole, you’ll do what I say.”

  The words La Vista killer ricocheted through my brain, but I forced Keith’s face to mine. His eyes were the only color left in the room. “We have to sit up now. Okay? I’m going to let go of you and we’re going to sit up and everything’s going to be fine, Keith, okay?”

  Cary Grant would talk like the happy ending was right around the corner, even if you could see he didn’t believe it. I didn’t know if Keith could tell I was lying, but he nodded, and I let go of his mouth.

  The gun wavered between us as we moved, and only when we were sitting perfectly still did the young man step all the way inside and shut the door. “That’s good. Let’s all stay calm and have a nice little talk.” He nodded to Keith, as if they were at a bar. “I’m Joey.”

  Keith stared uncomprehendingly back at him.

  “You know, you and I could have been friends. I get hooking up with the alpha male. I understand the attraction there.” He glanced down at Josh’s body, which still showed no signs of regaining consciousness. “I guess maybe he wasn’t as tough as I thought, but I bet you don’t feel the same.” He laughed, a short, ugly sound. “Yeah. You like being his little bitch, right?”

  “Go to hell,” Keith said.

  The smile fr
oze. And the gun lowered until it was pointing at Josh’s head. “Maybe I should shoot him right now, get him out of the picture. As long as he’s still breathing, he might wake up and disrupt my fun.”

  “No—no, please don’t.”

  “If you really loved him, you’d beg me to shoot him.” Now the smile dropped. “If you really loved him, you’d give me anything to spare him what he has coming.”

  Keith shifted, maybe about to rise, but Joey squatted down to press the gun right against Josh’s temple. “Don’t.”

  I sucked in a breath, trying to pull his attention away from Keith. “Why do you hate us?”

  “Hate you? I don’t hate you, Cameron Rheingold. You shouldn’t take this personally. Think of me as . . . pest control, that’s all. It’s my job to get rid of you, like it was my job to get rid of them, and I’ll do it.” A flash of that smile again as he popped up from the floor. “I’m lucky enough to love my work.”

  “Pest control,” I echoed.

  “Here’s the thing.” He took up a more casual post, leaning against the wall like he had all the time in the world. And why wouldn’t he? No one would come looking for me. Josh—and Keith by extension—wouldn’t be missed until it was time for church in the morning.

  Hours. All night. He could hold us all night, and as long as he had a gun on one of us, the others would do what he wanted. Until he decided he’d had enough and started shooting.

  “It’s like this. The way things used to be, everyone knew their place. Everyone stayed separate, and that was best. We’re like different species, you know? We’re not meant to mix. The gays, the lesbians, the mongrel in-betweeners. The fucking gender benders, whatever the hell they call themselves.” He shook his head. “I’m just removing the outside influences, that’s all. That ‘drag king,’ with her fucking attitude, like she was so much better than me. I showed her exactly where she was meant to be, didn’t I? At my feet. And that fucking travesty, that she-male horror show. That can’t be tolerated. You understand. There are lines that shouldn’t be crossed, and they crossed them.” Joey, gun loose in his hand now, started pacing, never turning away from us completely. “We fought for decades to get here, and suddenly all these fucking people come out of the woodwork, want to be included, want to take the rights that we bled for. You know what I’m talking about.”

  I could feel my chest getting tighter as he continued to talk. The worst of it was how rational he sounded, as if everything he was saying made perfect sense, when it didn’t even make historical sense. Drag queens had beaten back police at Stonewall. Lesbians had nursed dying men in the early AIDS quarantine wards. And Joey, voice disturbingly sane, had erased everything that didn’t fit into some lost ideal of gay male nirvana.

  “Club Fred’s should be a place for us, but every time I’m there I see too many freaks. Listen to me. This is important: there are too many people.”

  Maybe he wanted to talk. Maybe I could start a conversation with him, convince him to let us go. I glanced at Keith, whose face was pale and expressionless, teeth digging into his lower lip. We had to get out of here. I had to come up with some kind of plan to get us out of here.

  Joey cocked his head to the side, as if making a vital point. “They had to die. You understand.”

  My heart plummeted. Be Cary Grant. Be unperturbed. “You mean people like Honey Jansen.”

  The gun swung toward me. “I don’t care what their names were,” he said sharply. “But you don’t get it. Of course you don’t. I thought, maybe, you could be saved.”

  Such a small gun. I’d always imagined guns as imposing, heavy items in a room, as if the potential violence in even the smallest derringer would impact the space. But despite the fact that I felt certain this gun could kill me, it still looked bewilderingly tiny and inconsequential as Joey pushed away from the wall.

  “But I’ve been watching you, Cameron Rheingold, and you corrupted them. It was bad enough when you sat there at the bar and read a book. Like you were above it all, like you were better than everyone else. But then you touched them, and I watched it, I watched the way you pulled them in, the way you tainted them with your stain.”

  My heart thudded distantly in my chest. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You. You, Cameron.” The gun slid to the side, settling in Keith’s direction. Joey didn’t look away from me. “You’re the reason they have to die. They were perfectly normal until you, and now I can’t be sure you won’t spread your—” he hesitated “—your poison to them.”

  “Cam isn’t poison!” Keith’s voice was high and offended.

  Joey advanced on Keith. “That’s the problem. You don’t see it. He has some pull over you, and now you can’t see what’s right in front of your face. We were made to fuck. We were made to defy the whole fucking world just to be together. And what does he do? He goes to a bar and reads.”

  “You want to kill Cam because he likes to read? Jesus. You’re sick.”

  He was fast. He was so fast. He swiped the side of Keith’s face with the gun, and I wasn’t even quick enough to think about lunging for him before he’d turned it on me. “Get back. I will shoot either or both of you and still have my fun with him unless you fucking behave.”

  I should have tried something while he was distracted. But by the time I was thinking that, he was already backing away again. He kicked Josh in the gut, maybe to make sure he was still out, maybe because he wanted to.

  Joey looked back at Keith, grinning, and kicked Josh again. “I can’t wait to torture your boyfriend until he prays for death. I can’t wait until he wakes up so I can kill you right in front of him.”

  Keith inhaled a sob, a thin trail of blood trickling down his face.

  I never imagined that I would be a hero, but I’d never imagined having the opportunity. Now I was there, and the best I could do was hope that Josh would start moving. If Joey got distracted again, I would do something. Anything. Anything that wasn’t sitting here waiting to die.

  “You don’t fucking understand, okay? This is my job. I was put here to fix what’s wrong, to cleanse the community of the unclean.” His movements were more jagged now. The gun hand cut through the air, no longer controlled. “Like that little prick, that boy, acting like I was a fucking leper just because I came on to him! Acting like I was some kind of monster, when he’s the one who came with me, isn’t he? He wanted it, he wanted it so fucking bad, and then, ‘Oh no, no, I can’t, I’m scared.’” Joey sneered. “I showed him what to be scared of, didn’t I? I showed him what fear really was.”

  My vision, all dull grays and lackluster blacks, narrowed until all I could see was the gun. If I could get the gun away from him, we might have a chance. He was good at fighting, but there were two of us, and if he didn’t have the gun we might be able to overpower him.

  It was the only chance we had. I tensed my muscles, studied the angles, and got ready.

  The next time he turned halfway I went for him, but he was fast, so fucking fast, and he had me on my back with his foot on my chest, pressing down so I could hardly breathe.

  He didn’t point the gun at me. He pointed it at Keith and looked right into my face.

  “I only wanted you. You were the plan. I used to watch you sitting at the bar, so fucking smug, like you were above it, like you were better than everyone else there.”

  I gasped, struggling for breath, trying to wrench his leg away. “Let them go, then! They didn’t do anything wrong, let them go. Please!”

  “Oh, it’s too late for that. I saw you. I saw you, when you thought no one was looking. You were there the whole time thinking you were better than us, and you’re not, you’re not better than me. And now you’ve gotten them killed, too.” He leaned down harder, so hard I thought he’d break my ribs. “You’re not better than me!”

  The weight on my chest disappeared, and I didn’t have time to be grateful before he was kicking me. Again, and again. “Why can’t you be normal, like me, like they were before you
?” I curled instinctively, trying to absorb the blows, when suddenly I heard a shout.

  The gun fired. I ducked my head and covered it with my arms, but the gun fired again, and I couldn’t lie there while some madman shot up my home. I raised up my head, and Keith— Oh god—

  He was lying by the dining room table. No pool of blood, but it was such a small gun. I scrambled across the floor—

  “Don’t fucking move!”

  I froze, fingers inches away from Keith’s body. He was breathing—I could see his chest rising and falling—but he was very, very still.

  “You fucking whore! You little twink bitch!” This time Joey wasn’t kicking or hitting someone else; the gun waved precariously while his other hand, fisted, slammed into his own head. “Goddamn it, goddamn it, fuck! You don’t understand!”

  Keith had gone for him with a candlestick, which now lay just beyond his body. The seconds it had taken him to grab a weapon were probably why he hadn’t managed much more than seriously pissing Joey off, but something had shifted; Joey’s energy, which had been solely externally focused before, was now wildly unbalanced.

  “I’m making things better, damn you! I’m fixing it! I am a proud gay man and I’m sick of seeing the fucking freaks everywhere like they’re normal!” He was shaking, and the barrel of the gun had me transfixed. He’d shot twice. Did a gun that small have six bullets, or was I making that up from too many TV shows? Could I get him to shoot more if I jumped at him? Probably, since he was so unstable, but I couldn’t guarantee he wouldn’t hit Josh or Keith.

  I really wanted to touch Keith, who was so close. Was he unconscious? I couldn’t rule out that he might have been shot, but his breathing was even and rhythmic and fast.

  He was awake. And lying there.

  If this were a movie, what would happen next? One of us would be the distraction while the other would attack. What would Cary do? I tried to breathe slowly and brace myself, waiting for an opening.

  Joey’s rambling was getting more intense, with interjections of fuck and unnatural at varying intervals. He was a monster with a plan, with a code, with a goal in mind.