These were cuts. Thin and almost elegant, they probably had to have been made with a razor.
What had he done? What had been done to him?
He looked around his apartment. The dull, midday light revealed a few spots of blood on the floor, a smear of it near the door: crimson fingerprints on the wall, turning black. His own blood.
He felt bile rising up and scampered on his ass backwards, collapsing on his damp mattress, rolling himself into the loose sheets and shivering. Did he really not remember what had happened?
Or did he just not want to?
He lay back, trying to breathe slowly, deeply, to quell the quaking that seemed to be veering close to seizure. There was a wall in his mind, one he had erected, and he was afraid to peer over it. Yet flashes assailed him.
Terence looking up at him from beneath Edward’s spread thighs, his face smeared with blood.
He is smiling.
Edward turned and—as he did when he was a child and afraid of the monsters hiding in his bedroom closet—pulled the sheets over his head. But the sheets were not thick enough to keep out the memories, flooding in, quicker now that he had opened the gates.
“It’s sharp enough that it won’t even hurt. You have nothing to be afraid of.” The glint of stainless steel, a straight razor. Glimmering, even in the dull light.
Edward turned over, face down in the pillow, and whimpered. “No, I don’t need to remember.”
And his superego responded: “Yes, you do, so that history won’t repeat itself.”
And his id chimed in: “Yes, you do, so that you can do it again. It was good. So good, remember?”
Edward swallowed; his tongue felt dry and rough, like a cat’s. But he didn’t think he had the energy just now for a cross-room trek to the sink for more water. He tried to summon saliva from somewhere deep inside, like someone in a desert digging deep for ground water.
He saw Terence again.
He was naked, and his body was perfect, which made Edward wonder once more if he was heading down the right path with the expressionism of his art; if he shouldn’t be perfecting realistic strokes so he could capture the beauty of what was before him. To capture beauty like what was in front of him, Edward had thought, would be real achievement. He could record and memorialize something outstanding.
“God, you’re gorgeous. How did you get so pretty?” He had reached out a hand to touch Terence’s flat stomach, to feel the cobblestones beneath. He imagined putting tongue to the white, silky flesh stretched taut over pectoral muscles.
But Terence had held up a warning hand. “You can’t touch.”
“Why not? Isn’t that what we came here for?” He was so hungry for this man, he felt near tears.
“We came here to get to know one another better. I like you. I like your work. But you must know: I’m not a queer.” The dark irises flashed. “At least not in the sense of the word you’re probably thinking of.” He snickered.
Edward had felt a momentary flash of shame. “But I don’t understand.”
“Can’t I want to be close to you without wanting to stick my cock inside you? Can’t I be your friend? Can’t we be intimate in other ways?” Terence brought his face close to Edward’s.
Edward was drunk, emboldened by spirits. “But I want to be close to you in all ways. And right now, I want to be close in the physical sense.” He remembered a voice that became pleading. “Listen, you don’t even have to do anything. Just lie back and let me suck you. You can close your eyes and pretend it’s a woman down there.” A nervous giggle had escaped him. “A mouth knows no gender.” He had hated himself for begging, for putting himself in the position of being the one who wanted and not at all being the one who was wanted.
“That’s not true.”
Had he spoken aloud? He didn’t think so.
“I want you very much.” Terence had turned, exposing the turgid flesh between his thighs; at the same time, exposing Edward’s thoughts. How had he known? “I just think there’s a better way for the two of us to commune other than the pedestrian fumbling most people pass off as real intercourse.”
Edward felt coarse, crude; he wanted to chastise himself. But he couldn’t draw his gaze away from the rigid column of flesh rising up from the thatch of silky blond hair. He wanted to touch it; everything else was blotted out by this desire. It was almost all-consuming.
And then he recoiled, scrambling back just slightly, away from Terence, desire beginning to ebb as it combined with repulsion. It was such a tiny thing, yet seemed so out of place.
A drop of blood stood poised at the tip of Terence’s penis. It dribbled down the shaft, to be replaced quickly by another. “You, you, you’re bleeding,” Edward whimpered, gesturing with an unsteady hand.
Terence looked down at himself, then up at Edward. He was grinning. He put his finger to the blood, then put it in his mouth. Scooped some blood from the shaft of his penis and held it out for Edward to lick. “Take this all of you and drink it, for this is my blood. The blood of the new and everlasting covenant.” He snickered. “Go on.” He edged his finger close enough to Edward’s face that Edward could smell the metallic aroma. “Taste.”
Edward moved back a little more. “I don’t want any.” He longed to feel the queasy delirium of being drunk, but suddenly, his mind was clear, and he was afraid. He didn’t understand what was going on. This was turning into a nightmare.
“What? Do you want to lick it from the tap, so to speak? Sorry, fella, I don’t do that.” He leaned in close. “But I will do something, something physical that will make me very happy. And I can tell you’re more the type that likes to make his partner happy. From giving pleasure, you derive it yourself. Tell me, Edward, am I wrong about that?”
In spite of the fear that had cleared his head, Edward was intrigued. Part of him wanted Terence to leave. What scared him even more was the thought of trying to get rid of him, of the inevitable conflict, and who would win. Another part of him wanted this man to stay with him, that part was willing to take whatever Terence was willing to give him, which is why he asked, “What do you mean?”
Terence slid close. Close enough so if Edward reached down, he could touch his sex, just encircle it with his hand, hold it. But he had a quick vision of a hand swinging out so fast the arm was a blur, a vision of himself flying across the room to land—hard—against the wall, his spine snapping and seeing himself collapse, like a marionette, to the floor, barely breathing. So, he simply stayed still, like an animal in the clutches of something much more powerful, frozen and submissive because there was no other option.
Terence breathed in, then met Edward’s gaze full on. “There is something, a little ritual if you will, that can bring us closer together. I would only want you to do it if you really wanted to…”
“What is it?” Edward whispered. He could barely speak, terror and lust warring within him.
“I’d like to drink your blood.”
Edward stared back, lips parted. Get up and run, you idiot! he thought, but stayed rooted to the floor. He suddenly realized he could barely move, and that all of his movements, since he had taken a few tokes from Terence’s pipe, were cloaked in a kind of nightmare slowness, as if he were moving in something heavy and viscous. Like clotting blood, perhaps. “You’re not serious.”
“Oh yes. Very serious.” He cocked his head. “Are you worried that I’ll hurt you? Worried maybe that I’ll kill you?”
“I don’t know what I’m worried about.”
“I won’t do either.” Terence’s eyelids were getting heavier, the hooded look that came with lust. And seeing the lust in his face gave Edward a feeling of power, making him forget completely the possibility he was being seduced, being manipulated.
It was then Terence brought out the straight razor. “Just a taste. All right?”
Edward said nothing. He didn’t move.
Terence must have interpreted Edward’s silence as acquiescence. He brought the blade close, paused
with it just above his thigh. “It’s sharp enough that it won’t even hurt. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
And Edward, trembling, had lain back, spreading his legs a little further. Terence was right: it didn’t hurt. There was a slight chill as the metal made contact with his flesh, replaced by a warm, crawling sensation as the skin broke and the blood, freed, began to trickle down his thigh.
But not for long. Terence’s mouth was on him, sucking and moaning.
Edward turned and felt sick. The memories scattered as he struggled to bring something up. But there was only a little yellow bile he swallowed back down, bitter and acid.
I won’t do it again, he thought. And even as he thought it, he was wondering how he would find Terence again. Wondering if he would appear once more in the Eye of the Tiger.
Chapter Five
2004
She has been alone so long the sound of a knock at her door startles her. Elise turns, head cocked, questioning. She puts down the charcoal pencil and goes to quiet the pounding.
The pounding grows louder as she skirts easels, a drawing board, her meager furniture. “All right, all right.” Who can it be? Her life has become cut off from everyone she has ever known: family and what few friends she once had. When you become a cut-rate streetwalker, somehow the desire to keep in touch with Mom or Cathy from high school just isn’t there anymore. “Yeah, Mom, today it was the same old, same old: blew a dozen guys, let six fuck me, and took one up the ass. But, hey! I’ll make the rent this month.” It wasn’t the kind of news, either, one posted on the alumni website.
“Jesus! Give me a second.” She struggles with the locks, wondering: Do policemen ever make house calls to prostitutes? At least in any kind of official capacity?
She swings the door open and memories rush in, images forming and dispersing with the rapidity of montage. Terence. Gone are the chains and leather. Tonight, nothing more than jeans and a crisp white button down cotton shirt. Asics running shoes. He looks devastating. But not devastating in the way most people would interpret that word; his appearance begs a more literal interpretation. The pedestrian, everyday clothes don’t make him appear more normal, but emphasize his ashen pallor and dark-eyed intensity. The street clothes can’t mask a hunger that’s frightening. She really hadn’t expected to see him again. That’s the great thing about the business: one is always meeting new people.
“What do you want?”
“What? I get not even a hello?”
Elise leans against the door frame, crosses her arms across her chest. “Why? When I didn’t even get a goodbye?” She starts to close the door. “Now, if you can’t tell me something as simple as what you want, I really don’t have time to be standing here.”
He smiles. His teeth are tiny, baby-like, pearls between thin pink lips. “Isn’t the answer obvious? I wanted to see you.”
“Didn’t you see everything you wanted when you were here last time?” Elise recalls how, against her wishes and her will, he had devoured all the art she had created over the past months, drinking in her vision, raping her creativity. She wasn’t ready for a showing. She doesn’t know if she ever will be.
Terence laughs, his deep voice dead, an echo. “Yes, as a matter of fact I did. I saw probably more than you realize.”
Empty words. Does he mean to praise her? “Okay. You’ve seen me. I’m busy, so, please, could you go now?” Elise begins to close the door again.
Terence puts up a hand Elise cannot fight. The door stays open. She stares, waiting.
“I want you to come with me, meet my friends.”
His friends? Elise cannot imagine the ghouls that would number Terence among their friends. Would they be like him, locked in some sort of pseudo-goth glamour? Besides, it’s been so long since she’s met anyone (other than in her role as professional caregiver), she wouldn’t even know how to act. What would she say? What topics could she talk about? “That’s impossible. I don’t have time.”
“It might help your art.” Terence gives a small smile.
This statement intrigues Elise. “In what way?”
“Experience. Isn’t that what you feed from? Isn’t that what inspires all artists?”
“Oh, please.” Elise tries again, without success, to close the door. “Save the art school platitudes for the kids at the Art Institute downtown.” She sends a pointed stare his way. “Really. I’m very busy. The best way I can ‘help my art,’ as you put it, is to keep working at it.”
Terence sighs. “Look, I won’t take up much of your time.”
Elise shakes her head. “Really. I think you should be going. This foot in the door routine is just irritating right now. In about five minutes, though, it will be illegal.”
“What if I make it worth your while?” Terence takes out a wad of green and presses it into Elise’s palm. For a moment, she is tempted to slam the door in his face. Instead, she looks down and counts five hundred dollars. She realizes she has become more of a whore than she realized.
“All right, I’ll come with you, but for just a little while.”
They roar down Sheridan Road, weaving between cars, making their own lanes as they speed between two rows of moving traffic, surging forward. They squeeze between parked and moving cars and buses. Elise prays no one will fling open a door as they whiz by. She imagines how quickly it would happen, her body flying through the air to crumble in a heap on the pavement, the slow stream of red darkening the asphalt. The sirens. The upended motorcycle wheel, spinning forlornly. Perhaps cinema would be more her forte. Or perhaps she can store the image for later retrieval. Already, she is wondering how the broken body on the road would look in a painting of black and white, the only color the trickle of blood from the victim’s head.
But there are no accidents. The wind whips through their hair. She clings to Terence’s back, wondering why pressing against him offers no respite from the chill of the wind off the lake, just a block or two to the east. She lays her cheek against his back. After all, nothing separates her flesh from his but white cotton. But even this divider seems to throw up a wall against warmth.
Have I done the right thing? Elise asks herself. Going off with a stranger, someone who, just last night, betrayed me? But Elise knows Terence is right when he says she needs experience to create. And if the experience turns out to be bad, or even fatal, well then, who will know the difference?
Terence rounds a corner near Loyola University and continues south. Now, the broad expanse of darkness that is Lake Michigan is to their left. Elise looks over at the water, how the moon glows silver and distorted on its surface. She has a quick image of playing in the icy surf one early summer day, the air fresh and filled with promise. Idyllic. She wonders if this “vision” is merely a figment of her imagination.
“Almost there now,” Terence yells back, the wind stealing his words almost before they reach her ears. “I hope you’re ready.”
“I hope I am, too,” Elise whispers.
The bike sputters as Terence comes to a stop. He pulls between two parked cars on Thorndale. The absence of the Harley’s engine roar seems strange, making the more commonplace night sounds of traffic and insects underscored by the pound of the surf seem surreal, as if they exist in a void.
“Where are we going?” Elise runs fingers through her windblown hair, trying to smooth it.
“Home.” Terence begins walking away from her. It must be wonderful, she thinks, to have such confidence, to know that when you start to walk away, someone will follow.
He is walking toward an old mansion, one of the only ones left in this mile or so long strip of high rises fronting the lake and having the feel of southern Florida, if not the warmth. Elise has passed the old house many times, and had noticed it because it was an anomaly, here on this strip of high-rise apartment buildings. “I thought this place was abandoned.” It had always looked so, and looks so still. Its windows are black and empty (eye sockets whose vision was stolen in a gruesome maneuver); the yard spo
rts patches of bare earth and weeds, and the entire façade radiates emptiness. The house seems solid and has the earmarks of architectural confidence and even style, but the overall effect is fearsome, as if the house disguises something alive and waiting, breath held, attempting to look innocuous to lure the unwary.
“No, not abandoned, my dear.” Terence stops and turns. “Although I suppose it’s not unfair to describe it as lacking a certain lived-in quality.” He snickers and begins moving toward the broad and crumbling concrete front steps.
I suppose he’s expecting me to ask what he means by that. Elise will not give him the satisfaction. She follows him up the stairs and notices he does not remove any keys. He simply stops, hand poised on the doorknob.
“You’re going to really like my friends. And I’m sure they’ll love you.”
In spite of the mockery that is a nearly constant key he sings in, there is none of that in the simple statement. On other lips, “they’ll love you” would probably be welcome, calming to a new visitor.
But on Terence’s, the phrase sounds like she is being described as an entrée, words to be followed with, “I’m sure you’ll be delicious.”
A quick chill. “I don’t think this is going to work.” Elise turns, heading back out toward Sheridan, where there are plenty of cabs.
“What are you talking about? You mean we came all this way for nothing?” He lays his hand gently on her arm. “Now, don’t be silly. You’ll come inside. You don’t have to stay long.”
It all sounds so reasonable, Elise thinks, stealing one last glance at the lakefront before following him inside. Part of her wonders if it will truly be her last.
Inside, Elise paces, heels clicking on the dusty wooden floor. Outside of a gallery, she has never seen such a collection. But no, not even a gallery would contain such an eclectic mix of art: representational mixed with wild flights of fancy, abstract sculptures welded from metal, looking violent and harmful, sitting next to a figure carved from marble in a classical manner (the careful chips and missing digits on the one hand made for a convincing replica, Elise thinks; such attention to detail). Perhaps a museum might yield such a mix, but in a museum, there are separate rooms for separate periods and styles. There is logic and organization. In a museum, there could not be this anarchy of form and vision; this chaos that somehow makes a statement on the hunger human beings have for expression and creation.
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