Kiss Me, Judas

by Will Christopher Baer

  I never watch this show, says Jude.

  Don’t tell me that.

  She laughs. I prefer the new one.

  Jesus, I say. What is it about that bald Frenchman?

  His voice is sexy. And he has a strong nose, like a hawk.

  The nose, I say. What do you want with his damn nostrils?

  I could think of something, she says.

  Horatio mutters, I’m awake. I’m awake.

  I remember the boys Lucy used to bring home. They were like pets. She petted them and dressed them up and adored them. She would have eaten this kid alive.

  Do you have a girlfriend, I say. A boyfriend?

  Horatio stares at me.

  What is your favorite sport?

  Hush, says Jude.

  What will you be when you grow up?

  Horatio laughs suddenly, and I think he forgives me.

  Jude props several pillows behind the boy’s head and gently pulls him to a sitting position. I barely recognize her. She offers him a drink of water and he swallows a few drops. He begs for a cigarette and I light one for him, holding it to his lips each time he has a puff, so the ashes won’t fall in his bed.

  I have AIDS, he says. Two new kidneys wouldn’t save me.

  He shrugs and I bite my lip to stop myself from saying, yes, I know.

  Jude frowns and I wonder if she would have performed the transplant, if things had gone differently. She could have easily cut herself when her hands were inside him.

  It wasn’t even sex, says Horatio. I was born with the virus.

  I stare at him, stupidly.

  My mother gave it to me. He smiles. But she didn’t have the same luxury of dying from it.

  Jude strokes his pale, waxy hair from his forehead.

  Gore isn’t your father, she says.

  Oh, says Horatio. He claims to be.

  Interesting, she says.

  But my birth unveiled a thing or two and my mother was dead by my fourth birthday.

  Don’t tell me she killed herself, I say. Don’t.

  The cause of death was unclear, he says. He licks his teeth and for a moment I see shadows of his father in him. I wonder if he sees it. The doctors couldn’t agree, he says. It was either drowning or a heart attack or a blow to the head. Or it was all three. She was found at the bottom of the swimming pool.

  What was she wearing? says Jude.

  Horatio looks surprised. Her pajamas.

  Murder, she says.

  Horatio shrugs. She was dead and my father’s little empire began to fall apart. My brother was a pyromaniac. He wet the bed. He tortured animals. My sister protected me like her own child, but she was out of her mind. She was a slut.

  Jude smiles dreamily. She had sex with the gardener, she says. With the stable boy. She had three abortions by the time she was sixteen and her womb was ruined.

  I know, says Horatio. Childhood trauma is such a bore. It’s such television.

  But was it a bore when you were six?

  No, he says. It was awful.

  It’s fucking biblical, I say. To be an infant afflicted with HIV.

  I do like boys, says Horatio. I just rarely have the opportunity to get out of the house.

  Have you never had sex? says Jude.

  Once, he says. My sister took me into Dallas. I had a brief and not so horrible encounter with a male prostitute. He wasn’t gay, of course. And he was only a year older than me. I told him that I was sick and he said it would cost twice as much, that we would use two condoms. He fucked me in the back of my father’s car while Isabel drove in endless circles.

  I shudder, thinking of Isabel. Dead in a bathtub, with holes in her feet.

  Jude has nothing to say and I wonder if she’s in the desert with Felix, the stuttering virgin. He stares at the punishing sun until she has to kill him for a mouthful of water.

  My father loves me, says Horatio. I repulse him, but he does. He gave the very last of his money to my brother and packed him off to Colorado to purchase a stolen kidney. I told him to send Isabel, but he said some things are better left to men.

  Jude closes one eye. As if she’s glaring down a rifle sight.

  What a mess, I say. What a fucking mess this is.

  I’m used to it, says Horatio.

  Still, she says. I think I would like to kill your brother.

  He won’t come back. He’s on a beach somewhere, and the money is nearly gone. He’s posing as a race car driver, a retired navy pilot. He’s borrowing money from women and children. He’s telling outrageous stories, like a monkey performing for free drinks.

  Horatio is shrinking. His voice is disappearing. I can barely hear him. He is so quiet, so still. He could be a child that is holding his breath and floating facedown in dark water. He could be pretending to be dead. He could be dreaming of his former, unborn self.

  I want to ask you something, he says.

  Anything, I say.

  I offer him the cigarette and he sucks at it, his lips touching my fingers. He’s going to ask me to kill him, to put him to sleep forever. I’m weirdly calm, amazed that he would choose me rather than Jude. I’m happy and shivering and I can kill him as easily as I breathe. I will stare at him until his eyes become Lucy’s and I won’t hesitate, I won’t weaken.

  I want to kill him.

  Would you kiss me? he says. I haven’t been kissed in an age.

  Jude laughs, nervously.

  *

  I flick off the television and she walks barefoot through the library, humming like a girl. I think she’s looking for something to read and I’m curious to see if she will choose poetry or religion. But she merely blows out the drowning candles and I can see the night unfolding before us. The two of us will sit beside his bed without speaking until the sun creeps in and turns everything to ash. Horatio will not wake again, and he won’t die.

  My face is still marked with Henry’s blood and I bend over this boy as if I’m taking a drink from a fountain in the park. I brush his nearly dead lips and they are dry as the back of my hand. His tongue barely touches mine and pulls away like a thief and oh Lucy if you had only asked me for this.