The Fourth Angel

by John Rechy

  ‘Maybe,’ Jerry says.

  On the street, honking cars are protesting the blocked traffic.

  ‘Come on!’ Shell says, but she looks uncertainly at Jerry, as if she's not sure he'll come with them.

  He follows them into the car. Manny sits quickly in front with Shell. Jerry sits in back with Cob. They drive away.

  Imprisoned behind the dark sunglasses, Cob will not even glance at Jerry.

  Is he remembering the strange interlude between them when he touched Jerry? Belatedly, as if reality is splicing the sequential order the drug destroyed, Jerry wants to explain to Cob those moments of rejected touching, explain that within the quagmire of insanity he had felt vulnerability then like an open wound (and was that all?!), that the touch of another would have seared him with pain. But Cob seems locked irretrievably within a cage of anger.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Manny forms the crucial question.

  ‘To the old house by the bar, we're right near it, and I've got some hash,’ Shell says, ordering her voice to sound natural.

  Jerry remembers the violent whirlpool of blackness of that house. But he doesn't protest going there, as if he must now proceed to face himself in judgment.

  Manny is forcing himself to laugh gaily. ‘This dude, man, he's running under the train, man, diggit?—and all those straights are freaked out; and …’ Manny's world. Insistently: We're together again, not alone. The four angels!

  Jerry's world: We're hopelessly apart now. And do I want that?

  Cob's world: A tension. A sense of exposed vulnerability. A ritual of power to be performed, to heal that raw wound with assertive strength.

  Shell's world: Bewildered violence.

  Again, the wing of the drug's madness brushes Jerry as they park before the gray, sorrowful house, the wooden X's across the windows signaling its doom. But this time the disorientation lasted the length of a desperate sigh.

  Through the boarded window, they move into the darkness of the old house. Ghosts of their experiences within it stir: Stuart, the two men … Heat crouching along the corridor captures them instantly.

  In the main room: Huddled shadows protected from each other's scrutiny by the hot entombing darkness, they sit on the floor.

  Jerry's eyes move automatically to the transom; to the dead bird trapped there.

  Shell is constructing a pipe for the hash. Finished, she passes it to Manny quickly, as if anxious to re-link the invisible chain, weakened, among them. Manny draws on the pipe, passes it to Cob urgently to complete the binding circle swiftly, Cob draws —and still without looking at him, he passes the pipe to Jerry.

  Jerry holds it, he doesn't draw from it.

  ‘You're afraid!’ Cob attacks him eagerly; his anger can't wait any longer. His words snap within the charged mood. ‘And it's just hash!’

  Yes, Jerry's afraid it may stir the twisted world again, even though the earlier times it had no effect; his mind still feels raw from the hideous trip. Still, he wants to thwart Cob's anxious judgment of him. But he doesn't draw from the pipe.

  ‘If you can't cope with the fucking dope …’ Cob builds his attack on Jerry—an attack catapulted by the memory of the strange interlude of thwarted touching earlier?

  ‘You're the one that can't cope with it, Cob,’ comes Shell's voice in the darkness. Cob's anger is charging the room electrically like a naked live wire.

  ‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Cob's voice is hoarse.

  ‘You copped out when Jerry bummed,’ Shell says easily— whether accusing him or merely taunting him.

  ‘Yeah, you fucking did,’ Manny says. ‘You were gonna split.’ The accumulated tension of days is shaping at last; dark fog gathering from the ocean of their minds.

  ‘When I …!’ Cob begins to blurt. ‘When I … he …’ He flounders. ‘I never cop out,’ he regains cool control.

  ‘It was a cop-out,’ Shell says firmly. ‘Jerry's one of us.’

  ‘Is he?’ Cob lashes.

  In the darkness Jerry faces him. Finally, defiantly, he draws from the pipe. Waits. Tensely. Moments of terror; he remembers the monstrous flight into his mind earlier. But he feels in control. He draws from the pipe again.

  Shell smiles at him.

  But only because by his action he put Cob down? Jerry wonders.

  ‘And you, Shell,’ Cob strikes, ‘you didn't cop out, did you? Because all you wanted was to get into his head all along—but he split,’ he moves to create a wedge between her and Jerry.

  Is he right? Had he been merely a part of their—Shell's—relentless pursuit of black experience? When she first saw him, crying in the park …? Or had she really wanted to jolt him into an unfeeling strength, like hers? Had she tried truly to help him earlier today out of the quicksand of insanity? Or had she merely known that then was when he would be most vulnerable? Jerry looks at Shell for answers.

  Her beautiful face is a dark, inscrutable mask.

  ‘Shell wanted to help the dude,’ Manny insists, as if otherwise he too will suddenly become an object for scrutiny, like Stuart.

  Then Shell's calm voice enters the darkness: ‘You feel threatened, don't you, Cob?’

  ‘Yeah, man,’ Manny says. ‘You're always fucking threatened. By Jerry. By me. By your sister…’

  ‘Don't call her my sister!’ Cob shouts fiercely.

  ‘That's what she is, man; face it.’ Shell's voice is dull.

  Yes, face it, Jerry thinks. That's all there is. To face It.

  ‘She's …’ Cob begins.

  ‘A threat to you like everyone else,’ Shell finishes in accusation. ‘And you're afraid, Cob.’

  ‘Of everyone, Cob!’ Manny reacts to the finally released undercurrent of tension. ‘Especially of Shell.’

  ‘Afraid!’ Cob reacts in anger. ‘Shit! You're the one that's afraid, Manny—running to your old lady, who hates your guts…’

  ‘You shut up, Cob!’ Manny yells. It's as if during the days together as angels they've existed on a field of explosives requiring only the touch of a match to consume them in rage.

  ‘And you're the one that's threatened, Shell,’ Cob continues, a note of harsh warning permeates his voice.

  Shell's words are cold, pronounced almost hypnotically like a strange prayer. ‘No one, and nothing, threatens me, nothing scares me, nothing in the world, not you, not anyone, not any thing.’

  ‘No?’ Swiftly, Cob stands.

  Fiercely, Shell stands to face him. ‘No!’

  ‘We'll see!’Cob assaults.

  ‘Go ahead and try!’ Shell moves for a showdown, long postponed.

  ‘All that shit about how you're too strong to cry …’ Cob derides.

  ‘You think you can make me cry, man?’ Shell asks with contempt.

  ‘Yeah—because I've been into your head all along, Shell, and I know what scares you,’ Cob threatens darkly.

  ‘Try,’ Shell challenges coldly.

  ‘You're a fucking dike, Shell,’ Cob says with viciousness. ‘A dike!’ he tosses the word with relished loathing.

  Jolted by the open declaration of war, Manny and Jerry stand too.

  ‘That's why you only want to bum out dudes, never chicks,’ Cob lunges. ‘Because you're a fucking dike.’ Again infinite loathing coats the last word. ‘You don't want cock, man, you want cunt.’

  Automatically Shell touches her breasts, full, desirable. Then she laughs in Cob's face, laughs loudly, shaking. ‘You really think that's going to scare me?—you think that's going to make me cry? Oh, man, you are too fucking much!’

  ‘If you're not a dike, prove it, Shell,’ come Cob's words.

  Shell's laughter stops, as if sliced abruptly with a sharp knife. Then, as if forcing a connection within her, she resumes the derisive laughter.

  Manny stares at Shell, at her breasts shaking with intense laughter. Instantly Cob's words released a pressurized undercurrent—Manny feels the diluted tension funnel with urgent swiftness into desire, there from the first and throughout, f
rustrated constantly.

  Jerry is engulfed by the instant sensuality released by Cob's last words. A physical force seems to pass suddenly among them. There's an isolated intensity as if a powerful camera that has merely been scanning them has suddenly zoomed in on their emotions.

  In surprise, Manny hears his own rash words, pulled out by desire. ‘Yeah, Shell, prove it.’

  Jerry whirls to face Manny.

  ‘What the fuck does that mean, stupid?’ Shell aims at Manny.

  ‘Don't call me stupid!’ Manny shoots back.

  ‘He means just what he fucking said,’ Cob says to Shell. ‘You've laid all this heavy shit on us that you're the fucking first angel because you're so strong and tough, and you're the fucking leader, well, diggit, man, I'm the leader of this fucking game, and it's called “Cry, Shell.”’

  ‘Bullshit!’ Shell laughs at him. ‘We'll see who cries first. I told you, you don't scare me!’

  ‘But this will!’ In a sudden violent movement Cob rips the front of her dress, exposing her breasts. She wears no underclothes.

  Not reacting, Shell did not even flinch.

  Manny stares at her bared breasts. Beautiful, naked, full, firm. His mouth opens automatically.

  Wanting her, Jerry too stares at Shell.

  ‘Take her, Manny!’ Cob turns to him quickly. The gathered violence rushes turbulently.

  Manny advances as if hypnotized by the bared breasts.

  Only Shell's intense breathing reveals her anger. Her breasts rise, fall. But she stands very still.

  Fascinated, Manny touches her nipples tentatively.

  Jerry moves towards Manny. But he doesn't know whether he intends to stop him or to join him. He hears a shrill shrieking in his head—the wail of fused anger and desire.

  Like a champion awaiting the exact moment of vulnerability to strike, Shell stares at Manny.

  Rashly, Manny cups her breasts, one in each hand, squeezing them experimentally.

  Shell winces. Her eyes close for a moment, as if to shut out a deeper darkness.

  Swiftly, circling her like a cunning animal, Cob pulls her dress down.

  Naked in tatters, she looks savagely beautiful.

  Jerry moves automatically closer to her.

  ‘Now prove you're not a fucking dike!’ Cob shouts at her, moving for total control, the total vanquishment of her. ‘Are you going to cry, Shell?’

  Manny's fingers are moving clumsily on her body, edging in hypnotized fascination toward the parting between her legs, the soft triangle lightly brushed with hair.

  In a movement belied by her delicate beauty, Shell pushes him violently away. Manny reels against the wall.

  Instantly Cob is on her. Enraged, he wrenches her hands behind her, his knee at her back, pushing her toward Manny. ‘Fuck the bitch!’ he orders Manny.

  Angry—and aroused—Manny unbuckles his pants quickly. His cock is already hard, throbbing expectantly, erect.

  ‘Fuck her!’ Cob calls.

  Jerry moves. Again he's not sure whether it's to block Manny or take her himself. Or merely with motion to stop the shrieking in his mind.

  ‘Okay!’ Shell shouts. ‘Okay! I'll ball you! But let me go!’

  Cob doesn't release her. ‘Fuck her, Manny!’ he shouts, ignoring her words.

  ‘Let her go,’ Jerry says evenly. The shrieking subsides.

  Cob continues to wrench her hands.

  ‘Yeah, let her go,’ Manny says. ‘She fucking said she'd ball us.’

  ‘But she won't,’ Cob says. A note of desperation.

  ‘Let her go,’ Jerry insists.

  Cob releases her.

  Shell rubs her wrists. She stands in tatters before them. Perspiring bodies in the black heat. Then she strikes coldly: ‘You first, Cob.’

  Jerry feels resentment, anger.

  ‘You prove I'm not a dike, Cob.’ Shell's voice is in total, frightening control.

  Cob turns to Manny, who still stands with his pants to his knees, his cock rock-hard, ready.

  ‘Fuck her!’ Cob says urgently.

  ‘Why don't you want to go first, Cob?’ Shell's words lacerate.

  And Jerry understands, clearly. He remembers: Stuart, and the two men in the glare of the slaughtering flashlight. ‘Yeah, man,’ he hears his own words aimed deliberately at Cob, ‘Why don't you go first?’ He surrenders totally to the meanness: ‘Are you afraid, Cob?’

  ‘I'll go first!’ Manny says eagerly, not understanding. He holds his cock impatiently in his hand.

  ‘No, man,’ Jerry blocks him. ‘Cob has to go first.’

  ‘Go ahead, Manny!’ Cob yells.

  ‘You first, Cob,’ Jerry insists coldly. He still blocks Manny.

  Shell's nakedness challenges Cob. He looks away from her.

  ‘You first, Cob,’ Shell repeats, and her smile attacks him.

  Cob takes a step toward her. Then he turns away quickly. ‘Go ahead, Manny!’ he pleads.

  The heat twists the darkness into strangling knots about them.

  Then Manny frowns, understanding vaguely. ‘No, Cob, you first,’ he joins the attack on Cob.

  Shell smiles triumphantly. Now her words crack like a whip lashing at Cob: ‘Come on, motherfucker! … You can't, can you? Because you're fucking scared!’

  Cob slaps her across the face.

  Jerry grabs his hand. ‘Don't do that!’

  Shell laughs in Cob's face. Then she turns angrily to Jerry: ‘Let him go! I don't need you or anyone else to protect me!’

  Stung, Jerry releases Cob.

  ‘You're afraid, Cob,’ Shell aims to slaughter. ‘Because you're a fucking faggot.’ Quickly she adjusts her ripped clothes.

  ‘Don't!’ Cob reacts as if to hit her again, this time with his fist.

  Now it's Manny who holds him, twisting his arms behind him.

  Shell moves swiftly before Cob: ‘Now you! You prove I'm wrong!’

  Cob looks away.

  Then in imitation of his violent gesture on her, Shell tears Cob's shirt from the front.

  Manny holds him more tightly.

  Rage, anger—a burning fever seizes Shell. In swift powerful movements she rips Cob's shirt into strips—and she ties his hands behind him. Her sudden, bewildered accomplice, Manny still holds him tightly.

  Jerry is an uncommitted witness.

  Relying on sudden motion, on shaping the whirling violence quickly before it assaults her—quickly seizing time—with incredible strength, Shell forces Cob onto the floor. He turns, struggles, resists.

  His pants still lowered to his knees, his cock still aroused, ready, anxious, Manny sits on Cob's upper thighs to restrain him. Now Cob lies face down on the floor.

  Then Shell's words form: ‘Fuck him!’ she orders Manny.

  Manny looks down in bewilderment at Cob's prone body. Cob makes a jerking motion. Shell presses her total weight on his shoulders, restraining him. Manny looks at her.

  ‘Fuck him!’ Shell commands Manny, who seems again suddenly dazed, hypnotized.

  And then with a sound that is laughter and panic, anticipation, desire, release, Manny pulls at Cob's pants, exposing his naked buttocks. Then he flings his body on Cob's twisting thighs while Shell still holds him powerfully, and he pushes clumsily against Cob's body.

  Shell yells fiercely at Manny: ‘Rip the hell out of him!’

  Then the twisting movements of Cob's body stop abruptly.

  Savagely, Manny lunges into him.

  Pain exploding deep in his body, Cob yells.

  Jerry is staring at Shell.

  Still holding Cob, she looks up quickly, as if desperately searching an unblemished sky. At the moment of Manny's savage entering of Cob and Cob's shout of rending pain, she closed her eyes, wincing, her own body contracting as if in vicarious—remembered—pain.

  Manny pumps into Cob.

  Suddenly Shell leans over Cob, and she shouts angrily at him—but as if to someone else, a surrogate figure: ‘How do you like it, goddamnit? How the he
ll do you like it! Bastard! Bastard!’

  Jerry stares fixedly at Shell out of control, her voice waning, becoming weary. This act of violence—what substitute revenge for her?

  Manny's pumping increases, his breathing is audible—even over Cob's sudden sobs. Manny pushes, hard, harder …. Then very slowly, in bewilderment, the terrible franticness and urgency released, he withdraws. He looks at Shell and frowns.

  She turns away from him, faces Jerry. ‘Now you!’ she commands him.

  Cob lies curiously still and unprotesting on the floor. Numbed by the pain? Surrendering? What?

  Jerry looks at Shell's exposed body. Then he glances quickly at Cob's. Confused desire mixes with nausea.

  A conquered warrior, Cob remains on the floor.

  ‘Fuck him!’ Shell yells at Jerry.

  Jerry takes a step toward Cob. Then he retreats. Resurging momentarily, the violent part of him lies shattered in a pool of drugged insanity.

  Manny stares at Shell as if stunned by his own act. Then he looks down at Cob. ‘My mother does love me, Cob,’ he whimpers bewilderedly.

  ‘Fuck him!’ Shell commands Jerry. ‘He'll dig it, that's what he's wanted all along! He's a sick bastard!’

  ‘It's you who are sick, Shell,’ comes Jerry's voice.

  Shell reacts as if slapped. Her long hair whips across her face.

  16

  Slowly, still dazed, Manny kneels over Cob, untying him. But Cob remains on the floor as if he can't—won't—yet face the new reality. His sobbing subsided as if it had never happened.

  ‘And what about you?’ Shell strikes back at Jerry. ‘When we met you, you were whimpering. That's why I made you the fourth angel—to teach you how to stop crying … And when I met Cob and Manny, I knew…’

  ‘Was that the reason, Shell?’ Jerry forms the obsessive doubt Cob had voiced earlier. ‘Or do you just dig …?’ Yet minutes before, she had attacked Cob for abandoning him in his drugged nightmare.

  She stops his words sharply, repeats emphatically: ‘To teach you how to stop crying! Because that's the sickest shit!’

  ‘And all I found out is that I'm as rotten as you,’ Jerry hears his words.

  ‘No, not yet!’ Shell warns ambiguously.

  ‘But I'll control the rot, Shell,’ Jerry thwarts her unclear threat. ‘I'll try to,’ he adds slowly, remembering the excitement of the violent encounters, an anesthetic numbing his own pain.