Afterlife

by Paul Monette

  “I’m freaked out. There’s a spot on my leg. I think I’ve got a fever.”

  “You don’t get a fever with KS.”

  “Will you please come look at it?” Vulnerable, but not whining.

  “Sure. Ten minutes.”

  He hung up and went directly to the garage, not realizing he still had the carton of butter pecan in his hand till he got in the car. He hadn’t asked for the address, because he knew it from the computer. Hadn’t asked directions, because he’d driven there so often in his head. He took the back way, winding through the hills to Laurel Canyon.

  They had no contract for this part, the call in the middle of the night. As he tore up the pass to Mulholland, Steven could have been seething about being taken advantage of. After all, he never would’ve called Mark with a spot, he would’ve called Margaret. Well, he would call Mark now. It went without saying that the spot would be nothing. Steven would not countenance another case of KS.

  From Mulholland he saw flashes of the plain of lights below, but when he took the turn onto Skyway, the full candlepower of the Valley swept the night to the far horizon. He pulled into the brick driveway at 2200. The house was more woodsy than he would’ve expected, shaded by Chinese elms. As he came to the front door, he wondered how he looked, besides fat. He lifted a hand to the knocker, and the door swung open.

  Mark stood there in baggy white boxer shorts, wincing as if he had a toothache. Nobody said hello. Steven strolled in, manfully keeping his eyes in the middle distance, looking at everything else but Mark. House very tailored, country pine. Terra-cotta floor scattered with Indian rugs. Steven was on the brink of observing something banal about Santa Fe when Mark grabbed his bicep and led him over to a pool of light. “Look at this,” said Mark, propping his foot on a table. “Tell me it’s not.”

  As if from a very great distance, Steven leaned forward to study the flank of Mark’s inner thigh. Jewish jock indeed: leg muscles hard as a diver’s. The spot in question was about four inches below the baggy cuff of the shorts. It was purple, all right. “But it’s not raised,” said Steven, reaching out a forefinger and rubbing it gently. “See, it fades when I press it. It’s just a bruise.”

  “You can’t be sure,” retorted Mark, his voice tight and accusatory. Yet Steven could hear the relief behind it, the grasping at straws. A palpable shudder rippled across Mark’s bare torso as he ran his hands through his hair. “Man, this is driving me crazy. I can’t live like this.”

  Mark reached out, his hands shaking—not reaching out for anything, but somehow it was the easiest thing in the world just then to embrace him. Steven enfolded him in a bear hug—no nonsense, nothing sexual, not even sentimental. Just two guys. Mark let it happen, sagging against him, head on Steven’s shoulder, first time he ever noticed Steven was two inches taller. Steven stood there mute as a redwood, cradling Mark’s ribs in his open palms.

  It couldn’t have lasted five seconds. Nobody tipped his hand. “So when did you first start working as a paramedic?” Mark asked playfully, leading the way to a wide-hipped leather sofa by the windows. He flung himself down on the sofa—Finnish, about four grand—with a slap like a wrestler hitting the mat. He punched the cushion beside him to indicate Steven should sit down. Which Steven did, curling in the opposite corner, one leg tucked under him.

  “Look at all the shit he sends me,” Mark declared with contempt. “I feel like a fuckin’ game show.”

  He waved across the room toward an improbable clutter of toys: a stationary bicycle, a VCR, a stork-like Italian desk lamp, a video camera, a telescope, all heaped by the window as if waiting for a Christmas tree. This was the booty with which Lou Ciotta was trying to woo Mark Inman back to work. A new gift arrived every third day. For no one believed that Mark was seriously retired. It was just a matter of soothing his ego, time for another absurd raise. They thought he was being coy and temperamental.

  “How much of a raise?” asked Steven, blunt as a visiting nurse. When Victor was sick the nurses would ask the price of everything.

  Mark shrugged. “Fifty, a hundred grand. Lou made sixteen mill last year. I figure I’m worth the moon and the stars to him.” He was mocking himself and the system both, but there was an undertone of bad nerves, as if self-disgust alone were not enough to distance him from the folly of his former life. “Every day I don’t take his calls, my price goes up. Lou’s a very superstitious man. He thinks it’ll all go away if he loses me.”

  “I don’t watch television,” Steven observed as politely as he could.

  “I wish he’d get AIDS. I’d like to see that on the cover of People.”

  “Don’t wish it.”

  But Mark wasn’t listening. He was hyper after the fear, tensed and ready to spring. His muscles twitched with crossed signals, as if he wanted to beat himself senseless. He glanced out the window and down the mountain, the Valley like a fallen galaxy. “How do you stop waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

  “My therapist told me I had to live for today and cut out all the bullshit. So I fired him. I think he was a closet Scientologist.”

  “Do you believe anything?”

  “No.”

  The moment of silence that followed was like the opposite of a prayer. Steven stared at Mark’s heap of toys; Mark continued to gaze out the window. If it gave them any comfort to be godless together, they made no show of it. Mark turned from the window and lolled his head on the back cushion, fixing a look on the other man’s face. His arm stretched out along the back of the sofa, but didn’t quite reach Steven.

  “So is that what you do?” asked Mark. “You live for now?”

  “I guess. It’s what—ten o’clock? By eleven-thirty I should be in bed with Ted Koppel and a package of Oreos.” Steven smiled puckishly. “That’s what I live for.”

  Casually, off-handedly, Mark let his hand fall from the cushion to Steven’s knee. “Doesn’t sound like you leave much room for the unexpected.”

  Steven stared at the sudden connection, trying to ascertain if the knee maneuver was a comrade thing. Then he looked up and made a last stab at irony. “Hey, I’m open,” he said, California earnest. “I mean, we could have an earthquake between now and eleven. I could get pinned in the rubble.” He shrugged. “Fuck Koppel.”

  Mark brought his other hand to rest in the crotch of his shorts—a gesture that may have been neutral but, coming right after the knee, narrowed the options considerably. Mark wasn’t exactly playing with himself, but the nervous scowl of a sick man had vanished. His eyes were unnervingly still, his mouth a trifle surly. It was a dare now.

  There wasn’t time to wonder what was predetermined, whether it started three weeks ago or three seconds. Perhaps it depended on who was counting. One thing was certain: though Mark had made the offer, it was Steven who had to cross the distance. It felt like a kind of surrender to physics, inevitable as falling. He rolled forward across the field of butterscotch leather, closing the distance, grappling his way into Mark’s embrace.

  They didn’t exactly fit. Their bodies groped and tangled, torso to torso and throwing heat, but there was an instant suspicion that nobody was in charge. Steven’s mouth fell mutely against Mark’s neck, in the vampire spot. The stubble of their beards rasped together. Once more Steven found himself cradling the armor of muscles that played across Mark’s back—this time gripping him close, almost lifting him off the sofa. Why did it seem so tentative, then? They were locked as tight as wrestlers, yet somehow Mark wasn’t touching him.

  They meant well enough, but that was not the same as desire. Five seconds into it they had already flailed too long. Steven clamped his mouth to Mark’s as if he needed oxygen, or maybe to keep them from saying the wrong thing. And knew right away: Mark didn’t kiss. He let it happen, even put his tongue into play, but he didn’t want it. Steven should have known from ancient times that the ones who don’t cry don’t kiss. It was the kind of thing Victor would have understood instinctively.

  Worse, they didn�
��t know each other well enough to stop and reconnoiter, but too well to cut and run. They were beached here now, no way to turn back. Like the last man in a long race, the best they could do was finish. Steven tried not to be sad, also not to think, but felt an awful weariness in his limbs. The kiss was plainly a small truce, stalling for time. It looked as if one was trying to save the other from drowning, but it wasn’t clear who was the lifeguard.

  Somebody had to say something, give it some kind of direction. Finally Mark gripped Steven’s hair and pulled his mouth away. “Go down on me,” he whispered, pushing him underwater.

  At least it got them off the dime. Obediently Steven’s tongue slicked down across Mark’s belly, a snail’s spoor on the skin. He tugged the waist of the shorts, yawning it wide enough for Mark’s dick to spring free, something unambiguous at last. Steven bent and took the head of it in his mouth, tasting salt, as he tucked the waistband under the balls. Mark’s hand never loosened its grip on his hair, guiding him but also holding on, not sure if he was the driver or the rider. As Steven crouched forward and swallowed him whole, Mark hissed a sharp intake of breath. Then for a moment no sound at all as the first wave carried them out.

  Easier now that they didn’t have to face each other. They got into a rhythm fast, Mark heaving deep into Steven’s throat, groaning for both of them, a spill of wordless obscenity. In short, the generic blow job. Ten years ago it would have been over in two minutes. Even now there didn’t seem to be any room for languor. It was all heading in one direction, the only thing still up in the air being the matter of fluids, whether to come in or out. Then suddenly Mark was swimming back to shore. He stopped pumping, put his hands on either side of Steven’s head, and lifted him away. “Wait—just wait a sec, okay?”

  Steven was embarrassed to look him in the face, as if he might find out he was doing it wrong.

  Mark grinned at him playfully. “Get naked,” he said.

  Steven sat back on his haunches, breathing hard, and blinked at the man lying before him. Curiously he felt more shy than before they had tumbled into this. “That’s all right,” he replied in a husky voice, his throat still thick from the workout. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Mark didn’t quite get it. More than anything he wanted not to be selfish here, though that was precisely how it worked between him and the likes of Ted Kneeland: You do me, maybe I’ll do you in the morning. As if to prove he could do better, give equal measure, he reached out a naked foot and tapped the front of Steven’s jeans. “Come on,” he demanded impatiently. “Now. Before the earthquake.”

  Steven was almost somber pulling the sweatshirt over his head, like a kid ordered to go to bed too early. It wasn’t that he was tentative about his body. He looked rock-solid enough as he tossed the gray sweatshirt aside, snagging it on the Italian lamp. His big shoulders and hairy chest were as brute as a fullback’s. Even his belly had a certain working-class demeanor, redolent of beer in a sawdust tavern. Yet he seemed almost professorial as he stood up from the sofa and tugged the front of his 501’s, undoing the buttons.

  A young man might have mistaken Steven’s tense self-consciousness for carnal heat, but there was no way to tell what Mark was feeling beyond the tautness in his groin, which he stroked idly to keep it in gear. Steven kicked off his shoes, then bowed to remove his jeans. In his brick-red Jockey shorts he looked more like a kid than ever. He opened his mouth to speak, then seemed to think better of it. With a swift yank he whipped the briefs down and tossed them aside.

  His dick was as respectable as the rest of him, but not engaged. It swung there, pendulous and bloodless, a slight flare at the head. Peacefully asleep. It was Mark’s turn to look in the middle distance. A gentleman doesn’t point and always assumes a gun is loaded. Up was understood. For decency’s sake alone, it was Steven’s move. To his credit as a warrior—that quixotic mix of bullet-biting and Zen calm—he hardly missed a beat. With nothing further to hide, he clambered back onto the sofa, moving to bury his head once more between Mark’s legs.

  Mark hitched up onto his elbows, watching with dismay. The nervous scowl was back. “What do you like?” he asked, affecting a smutty undertone. The question posed the whole world over, to try to get pleasure to work. What he couldn’t say—it would’ve sounded too much like an accusation—was: Isn’t this what you wanted?

  “I want to eat your balls,” retorted Steven coarsely, snuffling close to the objects in question. The subtext being: You guys go on ahead, I’ll catch up later. The valiant lie of the wounded soldier.

  The spoken lines they’d learned in other places, from other men who’d passed them on like a secret language. Somehow the old forms were better than nothing. If you’re all dressed up and the band is playing, as Victor used to say, then you might as well dance.

  They even enjoyed it a little. Steven was hungry enough as he tongued the scrotum, unleashing the funk of locker rooms all the way back to the seventh grade, beyond even Daryl Sawyer. Besides, he didn’t have to be hard himself to feel a pang of intimacy, especially knowing Mark was groaning on his account. And the groans were real: Mark wasn’t performing here like he did for the kiss. His dick didn’t care about Row G.

  Admittedly, the final engagement was automatic, two minutes at best. But if now was all they were after, they got it right enough. Steven’s cheeks were fat as a squirrel’s, tugging the ball sack till it ached with heat. Mark straddled him like a motorcycle, worked himself to the top pumping with both hands. When he got very close, he didn’t cry out but swallowed it, deferring perhaps to Steven’s sleeping tiger.

  And there was a moment at the end—at crest of tide—when they would have done anything to stay like this forever. It didn’t matter that they were out of phase, as long as they could be out of time. For an instant anyway, they felt more than they thought. Mark arched his hips, pulled by the moon, and the spurt of white spilled across his belly to his breastbone, a line of liquid pearl retracing the downward trail of Steven’s tongue.

  Immediately after, they probably wouldn’t have minded being two men in the bushes again—if only to facilitate surfacing and escape. Steven released him and slumped to the side, his cheek against Mark’s thigh, covering where the spot was. Mark rested a hand on his head, making no move to disentangle. It wouldn’t do to let the silence go on too long. Always best, even after a minor tremor, to check for survivors.

  “Thanks,” said Mark. “I thought I’d forgotten how.”

  Steven chuckled amiably. “Hey, it’s like riding a bicycle.”

  “What about you?”

  “I think my bike got stolen.”

  “No, really. You want to get off?”

  “Sometimes. In the morning when I’m half-awake, so I hardly notice.” He shifted uncomfortably, but perhaps he was just trying to shrug. “Oreos are simpler.”

  Mark pulled him by the shoulder, thinking to bring them face to face again, but Steven veered away and reached to the floor for his shorts. Cleanup wasn’t urgent here, since neither one was a fallen Roman. It wasn’t as if Mark was acting sticky or squeamish. But there was something very tender in the gesture as Steven moved to contain the spill. In one neat swipe he cleaned Mark’s belly, then briskly dried the head of his dick, even as it lapsed to half-mast. Steven balled the shorts and tossed them down again.

  Then he scooted up so they were lying side by side. Curiously their bodies seemed to fit better now, with the hard part over. Steven settled his head against Mark’s shoulder. “I don’t think I could go through what you did,” said Mark. Then, as if this might be misinterpreted to refer to the rigors just completed: “I mean last year.”

  “You just do it,” said Steven.

  “I don’t even know what to say to you half the time. I feel stupid.”

  “Mark, you don’t have to apologize. You’re fine.”

  With the evidence all expunged, not including being naked, there was no way of telling they’d made love at all. Pillowed side by side, they were more like a pair
of combat vets in a foxhole, between shellings. At least they weren’t so afraid of silence. After a long moment of looking out at the inland sea of light, Mark wondered aloud: “Don’t you think we’ll make better friends than lovers?” Steven didn’t answer right away, but that was fine. Undoubtedly he would have said yes after a decent interval, even if he was wrong, even if he was lying. But then the phone rang, making them jump a little. The second ring kicked in the answering device, informing the world at large that Mark was never home.

  “I never answer the phone,” said Steven.

  “But I just called you. You picked right up.”

  “A mere fluke,” he replied as the beep sounded.

  “Hey, Tiger, it’s me,” purred Lou Ciotta, his bedroom voice echoing off the tape. “How come you don’t wanna talk to me? How many times I gotta apologize? Angela’n me don’t care who you sleep with. You’re my goom-bah. What you want from me, huh? So I’m an asshole sometimes. Don’t mean I don’t love you. Why don’t you come out to the beach, have a steak?”

  “He’s coked to the tits,” said Mark dispassionately.

  There was a clunking sound, as if Lou had dropped the phone. Then another voice came on, raw and charred like barbecued meat. “Yeah, Mahk,” murmured Angela, half in a slur, “we’re family, right? Lou and me, we got more money than brains. Widdout you, hey, we’re in the toilet. I got your chart right here. You got long life, good health, success—if you stay with the family. This is not bullshit. You come here and I’ll show you. Bring your boyfriend.”

  Imprecisely, blind and in the dark, she hung up the phone in Zuma Beach. Mark and Steven—containing the laugh throughout her spiel, fearful her radar might pick it up—now let spill. They rocked nicely against each other like a couple of co-conspirators. They didn’t need to speak about any of it, they shared it so completely.

  And the laughing gave them just the right transition. There was nothing clumsy or tentative in Steven’s rolling away and off the sofa. He reached for his sweatshirt from the lamp, sending it teetering like a whooping crane. Mark seemed willing to let it end here, grateful that they’d managed to come through with such light casualties.