In the City of Shy Hunters

by Tom Spanbauer

  Rose. Beloved Rose. My eyes on his face felt good, felt finally open.

  Rose put his hand on my butt cheek.

  Miami? I said.

  Rose rolled over onto his back, put his arms up, hands under his head.

  Miami Beach, Rose said.

  Why didn’t you ask me? I said.

  I was smiling. Stopped smiling.

  Elizabeth and I always go alone, Rose said.

  Why didn’t you tell me you were going? I said.

  Spur of the moment, Rose said.

  That was the moment, right then, when just like that, spur of the moment, I jumped up, threw my leg over Rose, sat down hard on his thighs, put my hands in his armpits, pushed Rose’s arms back.

  Rose karate-chopped me in the neck, and threw me off the bed. I was a smashed bug on the wall.

  But it’s not the truth.

  Christ, Rose, I said, I was worried about you. Why didn’t you call? I had no idea where you were. I didn’t know what to think. You could be dead in a ditch. Or in the hospital. Did you take your meds? Did you eat well? Did you drink a lot? Did you kennel the dogs? Hell, I would have taken care of the dogs.

  Rose, I said, Are you ashamed of me?

  Rose’s hands were on my face, his thumbs across my cheeks. He lifted up, kissed me on the sore bone between my eyes.

  Then: The scared stallion, Rose said. Is that how you’re feeling?

  My belly, my chest, went down on Rose, my face in his armpit.

  Yeah, I said.

  My dear William of Heaven, Rose said.

  Rose’s arms, his legs, all around me. Rose’s inside color of his lips full open onto mine.

  Who knows how long we kissed.

  JUPITER WAS RED-yellow, and Saturn too with its rings. Pluto was purple. Mars, Venus, all those planets of the Known Universe up on Rose’s ceiling, all the stars.

  The raw smell of Rose, his armpit hair against my mustache, my mouth. Up my nostrils down to my balls.

  Only a body can know another body.

  I kissed Rose’s rosy lips, kissed his eyes, the purple bags under his eyes, his nose, down his neck, his chest, my tongue around his nipples. Pushed my body up next to his body, next to his heart, his big arms around me. My hand into the crack of his ass. His legs spreading. I licked down his belly, around his heavy balls, up the shaft of his extra-lovely cock. Rose’s body and my body a maze of black and white, rose-colored in the flicker.

  My dear William of Heaven, Rose said, bracelets clack-clack, This white horse is definitely a stallion.

  Now you say it, Rose said.

  This white horse is a stallion, I said, And he ain’t no ordinary horse.

  Rose and I kissed again. I couldn’t get close enough to him.

  The rubbers and the KY are in the top drawer, Rose said. Just be careful.

  * * *

  MY HANDS WITHIN Rose’s hands. Rose’s still-huge legs draped over my shoulders. The mass of muscle of his thighs. His thighs together at the crack, at the spot, to the soft warm hole beneath his sagging balls. The entrance to the underworld. My lovely erect pink penis at the cave, inside slowly slowly, inside dark loam, inside Rose. Fucking Buddha, fucking dark earth.

  The meteor inside me, getting bigger, closer and closer.

  My hands were under Rose’s shoulders, my feet curled around Rose’s feet, my lips at his ear. I pulled on his shoulders as I pushed myself in. On every backstroke, the sweet pull against the crown of my cock.

  Rose was pushing his cock up and down against my belly. Up and down, up and down. Under the stars of the Milky Way, I was a tiny pink boat on a black raging sea.

  So much like crying, cumming.

  Who knows how long we lay there, just the candles, our breath.

  My body was still, my mind was still, and only Rose was holding me up.

  I wiped my mouth and nose, pushed up, rolled over, and lay on my side.

  Between me and Rose, one big love strand.

  I reached down, touched the end of Rose’s cock.

  No! Rose yelled, grabbed his cock.

  Stop that!

  The cum on my index in the votive candle light shined tiny illuminations in the dark.

  I rubbed the cum between my thumb and index, then opened both my hands, palm up, drew a line of cum on my left palm, along the lifeline.

  How did this start?

  I flushed the rubber, washed my hands, took a leak in Rose’s fuchsia twalette, got the Dwight D. Eisenhower ashtray, and brought it to the bed. Rose was propped up on his elbow. I sat cross-legged on the bed and rolled a cigarette, one for Rose, one for me. Lit Rose’s, mine.

  Rose lifted his leg up like the Sistine Chapel God, laid his hand on his knee, pointed his cigarette at Buddha.

  There was this one time, Rose said, In the third ward in Houston. My family moved close to a white neighborhood and there was this big grocery store we sometimes shopped at: Weingarten’s. One Christmas, Weingarten’s was raffling off a bicycle. It was the coolest bike. A Pee-Wee Herman bicycle, green with a yellow star on the ridge skirt. The bicycle was on display above the cash registers. Sometimes, I’d go into Weingarten’s and just stand there and look up at the bicycle—not for too long, mind you. You got to put your name in the raffle box when you bought twenty dollars’ worth of groceries. I must have had my name in that box ten times. But I didn’t use my real name. I didn’t write down Roosevelt Washington King. What I wrote down on the raffle slips was R. W. King. So one day, the phone rings and it’s Weingarten’s. The guy says, R. W. King, you just won yourself a bicycle. I hung up the phone—didn’t stop to tell my mother or my brothers and sisters—I just ran to Weingarten’s, ran to the green bicycle with the yellow star on the ridge skirt.

  When Mr. Weingarten saw R. W. King was Roosevelt Washington King, when Mr. Weingarten saw I was black, instead of the bicycle, I got a three-dollar gift certificate for candy.

  How’d you get here, Rose, I said, All the way from Houston?

  How’d you get here from Idaho? Rose said.

  Instinct for survival, I said.

  But tell me the story, I said. You know just about everything about me. After the cops beat up your father, after the blood stain on the whitewall tire of your father’s Buick, after you got three dollars’ worth of candy instead of a bicycle, what did you do? Where did you go?

  Rose put his cigarette out, crawled over me, went into the bathroom, closed the door. When he came out, his extra-lovely naked body made me take a deep breath. Rose walked long strides to his stereo. Ronald Reagan and Nancy were standing next to the speakers. Pretty soon it was Maria Callas, “Norma.”

  When Rose got back into bed, he lay on his side and pulled me into him, my back to his front, his extra-lovely arms around me, his massive thigh and leg draped over my butt.

  My father wasn’t a preacher, Rose said, He was a janitor. We were raised Catholics, Rose said.

  So you’re reupholstering too? I said.

  Tuck and roll, Rose said.

  Mother died of breast cancer, my father a heart attack. My brother Calvin joined the army, lost his legs, and got a purple heart in Vietnam. L’lrah makes computer chips in Kentucky and has two children, a boy and a girl, Jason and Michelle. Magnolia married a cop, and moved to Dallas. They had one daughter who’s going to art school in Minneapolis. Elnora, she’s a bigger drag queen than me. Big as me too. She lives in San Francisco. Run through the wringer with drugs and rehab. Last I heard she was on methadone.

  I got a scholarship to Brown in ’64. Got my B.A. in English literature. Got my doctorate in Theater Arts. Then, Rose said, Merriweather College, a small college in Portland, Oregon, hired me. Everything went lilywhite fine for two years till I came up for tenure. The committee said my teaching was excellent, my faculty participation was excellent, but the students didn’t like me. I kept trying to tell them the students didn’t like me because the students were spoiled dope-smoking rich white kids who’d never even met a black man, let alone called him
Doctor. My tenure application was refused. I got an outside evaluator to come in, a professor from Cornell, and this guy couldn’t find one speck of dust on any of my records. He even sat in on a week of classes. His recommendation was that I be granted tenure. The tenure committee revoted and they were tied three to three, so it went to the Dean—a white woman, cochairman of the Democratic party. She voted against me.

  I swear I was born to be insulted, Rose said, I figured fuck it. It was best to get out of academia, go somewhere safe.

  So I moved to New York, Rose said, And became a drag queen.

  LATER IN THE night, Rose’s cock was hard and up and down against my crack.

  I jumped out of bed, both hands over my butt hole, threw my clothes on, ran down the stairs, and locked my door behind me.

  But it’s not the truth.

  The KY, the rubber.

  I pushed my ass into Rose’s cock. Prayed for the space in between to get big enough. Put my hands on the bedposts, tying my fingers around them.

  Then it was white light, unrelenting, and pain so deep it was everywhere.

  Who knows how long the unrelenting, the pain.

  When I opened my eyes, there were stars, the planets, red Jupiter, purple Pluto, Saturn’s rings, the moon, and Rose inside me, way deep inside me rubbing against everything, my soul, the Known Universe.

  I was riding high, bucking bronco. Fucked up the ass gorgeous. The Hippodrome Stand. Why birds like to fly so much.

  The cry inside we have all our lives.

  The scream we all live for.

  Rose’s scream.

  Mine.

  I LEFT MESSAGES on Fiona’s phone for days, knocked on her door every morning, knocked on her door before I went to work. Then one night, after work, late, almost three o’clock, I knocked on the door of Stranded Beings Searching for God. Knocked again. Then I pushed on the door and the door opened.

  The Conran chairs were all stacked up against the wall. Fiona was sitting on the couch, smoking, with the stand-up lamp on low.

  Fiona’s hair was a bushel of black in the shadow the light cast against the wall. The way she moved was the first clue, how she moved forward and flicked the ash off her cigarette.

  But like all first clues, you don’t pay attention to them.

  Slow, she moved slow, but slow isn’t the word. It was like the world for her was thick and she was floating through it.

  A black cat jumped up on Fiona’s lap. Slow, Fiona’s hand rubbed the cat’s back.

  Is that Green Date? I asked.

  Fiona didn’t say anything. The way she was staring ahead, I wondered if she’d just shot heroin.

  Then: Madonna, Fiona said, and inhaled on the cigarette. Harry named her Madonna, Fiona said.

  Fiona blew out the smoke.

  The other morning, Fiona said, The cat was scratching on the door so Harry let her in.

  The way the light was hitting the side of Fiona’s face, the shadow was the scar on Fiona’s lip. She sat stiff, propped up.

  Slow, Fiona put the cigarette to her lips, inhaled, exhaled.

  Next to the couch and stand-up lamp was a suitcase and a duffel bag and Fiona’s red leather purse, all standing next to each other.

  Going somewhere? I said.

  I walked to the couch, sat down on the couch, slow like you’d sit down next to a murderer.

  How’s Harry? I asked.

  Fiona didn’t turn her head. She was looking at something just in front of her—at a flame in front of her just out of her reach.

  He’s dead, Fiona said.

  The silence. So much silence and then in the silence in the rooms, Fiona’s rooms, in Stranded Beings Searching for God, I heard my words.

  Harry’s dead? I said.

  He was in a lot of pain, Fiona said. Yesterday morning I gave him the whole bottle of morphine.

  I put my hand on Fiona’s hand. Fiona’s whole body an electric shock. The cat yelled and jumped off her lap.

  Never touch me.

  It’s all an... illusion, I said, Death is a door, I said, Harry just stepped through the door.

  Fiona sucked on the cigarette, and as she sucked she blew smoke out her nose.

  The scar of her lip was a swollen wound.

  Death, Fiona said, Is a motherfucker.

  I pulled the filter from between Fiona’s fingers, put it in the ashtray.

  I called you, Fiona said.

  Fiona reached for the pack of Camel straights on the coffee table and pulled another cigarette out, lit the cigarette with a Bic, and threw the Bic on the coffee table.

  I got the machine, Fiona said. I didn’t want to leave the message on your machine.

  Fiona still stared at the flame.

  I was on the couch, Fiona said. I woke up and went in and Harry was sitting up in bed. Madonna was sitting by Harry’s pump that pumped medicine into Harry’s heart. Madonna was sitting by the pump. The blind was drawn. The only light in the room was the amber night-light, the Christmas-tree kind you plug in the socket.

  Harry said this, Fiona said, her lips rubber around the words. I’m the luckiest man. Life is absolutely, mysteriously beautiful. Life has always been here all around me, in me, of me, has always been this fascinating mystery, but it wasn’t until now that I have been present, completely present, been aware enough to witness. I am here now in this room in this light with the sound of the pump and Madonna watching the pump and listening to the pump, and just now, Fiona, you were in the other room snoring and I realized I was alive and I was aware.

  Harry said, When you’re thirsty, water is so beautiful.

  I got up from the bed, Fiona said, went to the kitchen and poured Harry a glass of water, took the glass of water to Harry. I sat on the bed and helped Harry hold his head up. One by one, Harry ate the whole bottle of pills I fed him. When he finished the water Harry said, Beautiful, just beautiful. All at once, Harry was staring at me. And then his eyes rolled up and Harry wasn’t present, wasn’t with me anymore.

  SO STILL IN the room. I got up and knelt at Fiona’s feet, parted her legs, and laid my head in her lap. Fiona’s heartbeat. My heartbeat. Lost, stranded.

  I was getting snot all over Fiona’s T-shirt, so I sat up and snuffed up, but when I looked at Fiona, into her eyes, her eyes looked through me to the fire in front of her she couldn’t reach. My chin started quivering and I started in all over again.

  Fiona handed me her handkerchief.

  Thanks, I said.

  Where is he? I said. Is he still in your bed?

  Fiona listened to my words like they were French.

  Yesterday, Fiona said, I sent Harry’s body to Connecticut. He’s probably being cremated right now. I called and told his father. His father hung up on me.

  Fucking asshole, I said. His own father.

  Fiona bent down, put her arms around my head. Her arms were heavy.

  We’ll bury Harry in the family plot, Fiona said. Next to my mother and my brothers, Fiona said.

  With her heart beating and her arms close around my ears, I waited a moment so I could know for sure what she said.

  Fiona? I said, and lifted my head up. My face, my eyes, my nose, my lips right up against Fiona’s eyes, nose, lips.

  Gus and Hunter always did things together, Fiona said. They even died together.

  Fiona’s lips, the snarl, the quivering lower lip, her mouth the first time speaking the words.

  When? I said.

  Today, Fiona said.

  Shit themselves to death, Fiona said.

  The stillness. My God, the dead quiet. I thought times like this would be loud and bright and full.

  But you said your mother? I said.

  Fiona lifted the cigarette between us. Her red lips inhaled hard and mean on the cigarette, exhaled into my eyes, my nose, my mouth.

  A bottle of diazepam, Fiona said, And a bottle of sixteen-year-old Macallan single malt.

  I put my arms around Fiona, my hands on her back.

  My God, Y
our poor father, I said.

  My God, I said. Fiona, What is happening to us?

  I PUSHED MY face deep into Fiona’s crotch. Just like that, the words were out of my mouth.

  Don’t ever leave me, I said.

  I’m going to four funerals, Fiona said.

  Don’t leave me, Fiona, I said.

  I raised my head up. Fiona and me: wet faces, tears, snot. And we kissed, a sweet long dark kiss. I pulled up her T-shirt, put her nipple in my mouth, then went to the other. Fiona slumped down on the couch, the stiffness out of her and into me. I thought the cat was on my back the way Fiona was scratching. I got her pants and panties down and was face deep in her wet poon. Fiona pulled my white shirt up over my head. Something ripped. I stood up, Fiona stood up. Then clothes went flying every which way, the whole time I was apart from her it hurt, everything hurt, and when I lay down on top of Fiona, she was so soft, so alive, so completely real. I watched her eyes, her lip, as I pushed into her, slow. My God, I wanted to eat her up. Then it was the slap-slap of fucking hard and fast and mean that hurt the way you wanted it to hurt. Fiona was slapping my face and crying and kicking her feet against my back. I slapped her back once and she grabbed my face and squeezed my face and bit my lip till it bled. And when her body started the deep come I was coming too and Fiona and I, face to face, nose to nose, eyes to eyes, lips to lips, screaming screaming screaming.

  THE NEXT DAY, when Fiona left from Penn Station, before she got on her train, she kissed me like in war movies.

  Both of us were the soldier.

  No steam and whistles, just an electric hum.

  Standing on the platform waving waving, I knew I would never see Fiona again.

  But it’s not the truth.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  There was an inquest. Lou Racing informed the Pocatello police, and Charlie and I had to go into the police station and tell the cops where we had gone with Bobbie on Fifth Street in the narrow house with gray siding that was supposed to look like bricks, but when the cops went to the house, no one was there, not even the orange couch or the yellow sheets on the windows. The cops took finger-prints and stuff in the house, and Charlie and I had to look through a bunch of photographs, but neither one of us could find the guy who did Bobbie’s abortion.