Survivor's Guilt and Other Stories

by Greg Herren

  Everywhere he turned, Ricky was there in some kind of sleeveless T-shirt and those damned droopy-drawer baggy jeans and a baseball cap turned sideways on top of his head.

  And whenever their eyes met, there was no recognition in Ricky’s. He would just turn away and go about whatever it was he was doing.

  It was frustrating, infuriating. He wanted to scream at Ricky, How dare you not know who I am?

  And every time he saw Ricky, he’d come back home and pour himself a glass of vodka, watching television but not seeing or comprehending what was on the screen as he slowly drank the vodka down, letting it cool his body and his temper, settle his mind down and let him relax.

  And yet somehow he always found himself on Coliseum Street, walking slowly along while his music played into his earbuds, his eyes glancing every so often to the big fuchsia house, wondering what Ricky was doing, if he was home, sitting on his couch planning on destroying someone else’s life.

  He certainly had an aptitude for it.

  Three weeks after Barry saw Ricky that first time on the streetcar, he began frequenting the coffee shop at the corner of Race and Magazine. He would get a cup of coffee and walk back up Camp Street to the corner at Melpomene. Some mornings he’d stop in front of the big fuchsia house and stare at the green door, wondering if Ricky was awake yet, if he was drinking coffee inside, wondering what he would say if the green door opened and Ricky came out suddenly and unexpectedly.

  One morning he walked up the sloping driveway and looked into the parking lot behind the big wrought iron fence, wondering if any of the cars back there were Ricky’s—but reminding himself that it was unlikely—hadn’t he first seen Ricky on the streetcar?

  But maybe his car was in the shop—mine was, wasn’t it?

  He heard a door opening in the rear of the house and he hurried back down to the sidewalk, glanced down the street, and ran across to the park on the other side, sitting down on a cement bench in the shade of an ancient live oak tree. He watched as a young woman with reddish-blond hair climbed into a green Honda about the same age as the live oak, opened the gate with a remote control, and drove down the slope and out onto Camp Street. She gave him an odd look when she stopped at the foot of the drive, and he panicked for a moment.

  He got up and walked back home, deciding it was time to forget about Ricky Livaudais.

  That was the smart thing to do, after all.

  He went about the business of living his life for three days before Ricky invaded his world again. Barry’s routine was always the same: He got up every morning and went to the gym, worked out, came home, ate breakfast, and went to work. He then came home every night and fed the cat, relaxed without the vodka, and was, in general, feeling rather pleased with himself when he ran into Ricky Livaudais in the most unusual place.

  It was a Friday, and his boss’s birthday. “Meet us for drinks tonight,” his boss insisted. “You never do anything with us anymore. It won’t kill you.”

  He agreed, not really wanting to but figuring it would do no harm to go to the Brass Rail. He met his coworkers and their friends there at nine, and at nine thirty on the dot the door back behind the pool table opened and several young men wearing only underwear came out to peddle their wares and dance for dollars. He’d never really cared for the Brass Rail—he knew it was snobbish to feel the way he did about the bar, but he couldn’t help it. There was just something enormously sad to him about the place, the dancers, and the patrons who parted with dollar bills to grope the lithe young bodies of the dancers. In other bars the dancers didn’t get to him the way the ones in the Brass Rail did. There was something seedy and sad in their neediness. They didn’t turn him on—rather, they made him feel kind of sad.

  But he was relaxing and having a good time when he froze with his vodka tonic halfway to his lips.

  Ricky Livaudais was climbing up onto the bar in red bikini briefs.

  At first, Barry was certain he was seeing things. It couldn’t be—not Ricky Livaudais, surely not. But as he watched him start shaking his narrow hips from side to side on the other side of the bar, he saw the sunburst tattoo at the base of his neck and knew it was him. There was another tattoo—the word Destiny written in blue ink and old English lettering—across his lower back just above the waistband of the red bikinis. And there was the tattoo on the inner forearm.

  Yes, it was most definitely Ricky Livaudais.

  Ricky slowly started moving across the top of the bar, making way for another, more muscular young man to climb up where he’d just been dancing. Beyoncé began wailing through the speakers about divas being the female version of hustlers, and he couldn’t take his eyes away from Ricky as he coaxed and teased dollar bills from men around the bar.

  He wasn’t the handsomest stripper, nor did he have the best body, nor did he have the biggest package neatly wrapped up inside thin cotton underwear.

  But there was just something about Ricky.

  Barry couldn’t look away, no matter how much he wanted to.

  He wasn’t sure what he would do when Ricky made it to where he and his friends were standing.

  “That’s hot,” he heard his boss say as Ricky stepped over several drinks on the bar until he was standing just above them, moving his hips from side to side.

  He swallowed and looked up.

  His eyes locked on Ricky’s, and Ricky looked confused.

  Ricky knelt down. “Do I know you from somewhere?” he said above the music, which was now Lady Gaga bitching about getting a telephone call on the dance floor. Ricky’s knees were spread, only inches away from Barry’s arms on either side. Ricky’s head was tilted to one side, his eyebrows furrowed together.

  You murdered my boyfriend, Barry wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. Instead, he shrugged. “Maybe.” He managed to sound calm and nonchalant, just another gay man in a gay bar talking to a stripper in red underwear. “You do look kind of familiar to me.”

  A smile spread across Ricky’s face, and Barry was sickened to realize how handsome he actually was. The green eyes lit up, and the stern, angry-looking features relaxed into the face of a good-looking young man, the kind of young man you’d want to wake up next to every morning. “You shop at Zara’s!” Ricky said excitedly, snapping his fingers, delighted with himself for remembering. “You live in my hood!” Ricky placed both hands on Barry’s shoulders. “I knew I recognized you!”

  The hands on his shoulders burned him through the tight T-shirt Barry was wearing. They felt like acid devouring his flesh, insidiously eating their way into his nervous system. He swallowed, resisting the urge to throw Ricky’s hands off him, to toss the cheap vodka tonic in his face, to shove him hard enough to knock him backward off the bar and maybe even crack his skull or snap his neck when he hit the floor. “I do live in the lower Garden District,” Barry replied slowly. “I guess maybe I’ve seen you around.” He was amazed at how calm and even his voice sounded, now that contact was being made. He thought he’d be more nervous, that his heart would pound so loudly others could hear it. He was proud of himself, more proud than he perhaps should have been. His hands weren’t even shaking. His only reaction was the sudden dryness of his mouth and throat. He took another sip of his vodka tonic.

  Ricky leaned forward and pressed his lips against Barry’s ear. “How long you gonna be here?” His breath felt hot against Barry’s neck, as one hand slid down Barry’s torso. “Maybe you could give me a ride home?”

  Barry swallowed. “How late you going to be working?”

  Ricky looked around. “I can leave in an hour if I want.” He swallowed. “There’s too many guys working tonight for me to make much money, anyway.”

  “Okay,” Barry replied, looking into the deep green eyes just inches away from his own. They are, he reflected, really beautiful.

  “I’ll be back.” Ricky smiled at him, and stood back up to his full height on the bar, and started dancing his way down to the next group of men.

  His coworkers teased
him about his “encounter,” but their jaws dropped when Ricky came walking up a little over an hour later, a bag slung over his right shoulder, ready to leave. Barry said his goodbyes to his openly envious coworkers and headed out the front door with Ricky.

  “I didn’t mean for you to leave your friends,” Ricky said finally, when they were inside Barry’s car and he was pulling away from the curb.

  “I don’t mind,” Barry replied. “It was my boss’s birthday. I don’t really go out that much. I don’t much care for it.”

  “You don’t?” Ricky looked out the window.

  “Since I quit smoking the smoke bothers me,” Barry said with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “And I don’t really like to drink all that much anymore, either. No, if it hadn’t been my boss’s birthday, I would have probably stayed home tonight.”

  “And we wouldn’t have met.”

  We’ve kind of already met—you just don’t remember me.

  Ricky laughed. “I don’t know your name, I just realized I didn’t ask.”

  “Barry.”

  “I’m Ricky.”

  They smiled at each other while stopped at the light at Canal Street.

  “It’s so weird that we live in the same neighborhood,” Ricky went on when the light turned green. “And that we shop at the same places and all. I knew as soon as I saw you tonight that I knew you from somewhere—oh, turn here. I live on Camp Street, close to the corner at Melpomene.”

  “So I should go down to Magazine?” Barry asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Ricky didn’t speak again until after Barry turned onto Camp Street. “Pull up here—oh, good, there’s a spot right in front.”

  Barry maneuvered the car into the spot in front of the fuchsia house and cut the engine. “Well, here you are.” He smiled brightly.

  “Oh, come on in.” Ricky smiled back at him, opening the passenger side door. “I know you don’t smoke cigarettes, but I’ve got some awesome weed that’ll blow your mind.”

  “Just for a little while.” Barry hesitated with his hand on the car door handle. Maybe he does remember me. What if this is some kind of trick? To get me inside? And he has friends waiting, so they can do to me what they did to Thomas?

  He looked back into Ricky’s green eyes and chided himself for being so paranoid. He opened the car door and got out, following Ricky through the gate and up the front steps. Ricky fumbled in the darkness for his keys, apologizing—“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked them to fix that damned light”—and finally getting the door open. He flicked on the lights and shut the door behind Barry.

  Almost immediately, Barry felt sorry for Ricky.

  The place was big, but it was empty. There was a tiny television mounted on top of milk crates, and the furniture—originally intended to sit on a nice suburban patio—was now threadbare and decrepit. The whole place felt unlived in—transitory rather than a home. There was a battered and scarred plywood coffee table in front of what passed for a couch. There was a paper plate with chicken bones and a big grease spot sitting on it, with a dirty steak knife and fork on either side. He sat down on one of the rusty patio chairs and felt it give a little under his weight. Ricky tossed his bag into a corner and went into the kitchen, coming back with a joint and a lighter in his hand.

  “The place is kind of a dump,” Ricky said as he lit the joint, sitting down in a chair next to Barry’s. “I’ve been here a little over a month.” He inhaled and offered Barry the joint. He blew the smoke out with a hacking cough. “It’s harsh, though.” He choked the words out as Barry took a dainty hit from the joint. “Be careful.”

  Barry didn’t hold the smoke in. “Where were you before?”

  “Prison.” Ricky took another hit and pinched it out when Barry refused to take it from him. “Don’t freak out, man. I made a mistake—a major mistake—when I was a kid and I went to jail for eight years.”

  Barry looked down at his hands. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t know that I really want to talk about it yet.” Ricky leaned forward in the chair and pulled his T-shirt over his head.

  “You killed someone?”

  Ricky stared at him. “No, no, I didn’t. My friends did. I was driving that night.” He swallowed and closed his eyes. “You have no idea how many times I’ve wished I stayed home that night. No idea. I thought—you know, I just thought we were driving around wasting time, throwing back a few beers—I didn’t know they wanted to—” He slumped down. “Can we talk about something else?” He swallowed and opened his eyes again. There was a sad, almost repentant look on his face. He looked like nothing more than a sad little boy who’d done something wrong and was terribly sorry. “I can still hear that guy screaming as they beat him to death…” He winced and his eyes filled with tears. He wiped at them, closing them again.

  Barry reached over and touched his arm. His skin was damp and hot. “The guilt must be really terrible,” he said softly. “I’m not sure I could live with it, you know? I mean, the pain the guy must have suffered…the people he left behind.”

  Ricky’s eyes remained closed. “Every night I can hear the guy screaming.” He shook his head and a greasy tear slid out from his right eye.

  “That must be so awful for you,” Barry whispered as he picked up the steak knife sitting on the plywood coffee table and shoved it into the soft skin underneath Ricky’s chin. “I’ve heard him screaming every night since you and your bastard friends killed him, you know.” Blood spurted, and Ricky’s eyes opened wide for a moment. He gurgled, trying to reach for Barry with both hands.

  Barry moved out of his reach and watched as Ricky’s eyes went glassy with death.

  Barry stared at him for a few moments as the blood pumped out and gushed down Ricky’s throat, soaking his T-shirt.

  He went into the kitchen and found some charcoal lighter fluid underneath the sink. He squirted it all over the body and the floor of the living room, and paused at the front door for just a moment before lighting a match and tossing it onto the couch.

  The flames danced over the body.

  “At least you won’t hear him screaming anymore,” Barry said, as he closed the front door behind him and walked down the front steps.

  He got into his car and started it, driving off without a backward glance.

  An Arrow for Sebastian

  “So, just how did you two meet anyway?” Lorita Godwin asked into a sudden silence that had dropped over the dinner party. Her words were only slightly slurred. She was on at least her fourth glass of red wine since we’d sat down at the table. She’d had a couple of whiskeys before dinner, and God only knew how much she’d drunk before her guests started arriving. Her eyelids were starting to droop a bit—which didn’t go particularly well with the bad facelift she’d had since I’d last seen her.

  Bless her heart, Lorita’s parties were always rather ghastly—a fact I always seemed to forget. It was like there was some kind of curse on her. She hired the right caterers, got the right flowers, and always invited interesting people. Yet somehow things never seemed to come together properly for her. The food the caterers were serving us at this party, for example, seemed to be either undercooked or overcooked. The salad seemed wilted, and the vinaigrette seemed to be mostly vinegar.

  But she always got the liquor right.

  I turned my head from her to the couple she was addressing. Jake Lamauthe and his young companion, Sebastian Dixon, were sitting to her left, and directly across the table from me. I hadn’t really paid much attention to either of them, frankly. Lorita always insisted on eating by candlelight, and I really couldn’t see them through the long tapered red candles in the center of the table. I’d spent most of the evening listening to Lorita ramble on about this or that. The woman on my right was a bore, so I’d ignored her for the most part.

  Jake was just as used to Lorita’s awkward conversational gambits when she was drinking as the rest of the condemned unfortunates gathered around her dining table.
He merely smiled in that strange way he had and said, “You know, Lorita, I was after him for quite some time but wasn’t getting anywhere. Finally, I just had to hit him with my car to get his attention. That did the trick, and we’ve been together ever since.”

  Everyone laughed at this, and conversation around the table started up again. From the corner of my eye, though, I’d noticed that young Sebastian’s laughter seemed a bit forced. As soon as everyone’s eyes had turned away from him and Jake again, he compressed his lips into a tight little line and looked down at his plate before taking another gulp from his own wineglass.

  Curious, I thought, and even while I participated in the mindless small talk I find so tedious yet effortless to keep up, I kept stealing glances at Sebastian, watching him and what he was doing. He seemed extremely uncomfortable, but since everyone else at the table was a stranger to him that wasn’t surprising. He was a very beautiful young man. He looked like a teenager, maybe in his senior year of high school, but I figured if he was here with Jake he had to be in his early twenties. He had a rather large forehead and short-cropped dark hair over gorgeous green eyes framed by long, curling dark lashes. Most of the time, his face was empty of expression, and he only spoke when he was directly addressed, flashing a nervous smile before giving a very short answer that ended rather than advanced the conversation. His skin was pale, but his cheeks were rosy with spots of color that looked almost feverish. I assumed he was Irish, given the combination of dark hair and green eyes and pale skin. He sat very erect in his chair, and I also noticed he wasn’t eating much of Lorita’s food, but was just pushing it around on his plate with the wrong fork.

  At one point he looked across the table at me. Our eyes met for the briefest moment before he averted his.