by Todd Young
“The money — it’s for you,” he said.
“I don’t care about the money. I care about you, Angel.”
He sighed. He hedged for a moment. It was a coward’s way out, but he’d chosen this morning to tell his mother he was gay. He’d been planning it for days. Now, with the cab ordered and perhaps five minutes away, he hesitated. His mother had expressed a desire for grandchildren more than once, and recently a strong desire, a hope she might see at least one of Angel’s children before she died.
The last time she’d said it, Angel had felt angered and frustrated, and he’d spent a sleepless night thrashing in his bed, his mother’s comments playing on his mind and giving rise to an almost unbearable angst. He wouldn’t be having a child, not naturally, and he needed to tell his mother this now, that he was gay, in order to forestall her expectations. Still, when it came down to it, he hadn’t been able to do it, and they’d parted with a hurried kiss, the last Angel had heard from his mother an anxious query as he closed the front door.
“Angel?”
His name.
He’d spent hours wondering what she might have wanted, both at the institute and since he’d been home. He didn’t expect to find out, not now and not ever, and it was distressing to be thinking of it yet again. He told himself it would be good to get to New York, to get somewhere new, where something new might happen.
He turned away from his mother’s room, dressed and drove to the store, figuring he’d get in everything he needed for the next three weeks, or for two weeks at least, as he didn’t see the need for staying around any longer than that. Jason had said he was welcome anytime, but the truth was that now, the thought of going to New York, and going without Finn, was strangely depressing. Angel’d hurt Finn. He’d hurt someone badly. A young man his own age who was damaged, who’d had a shit life, and was even now most likely hanging around some park, looking for a trick.
In the parking lot at Costco, Angel hovered, waiting for a spot. A woman pulled out near the ramp and he pulled in, and then, right in front of the car, he saw a man in a gray hoodie lift an assault rifle from beneath his coat. He cocked it on his shoulder and aimed at an elderly lady who was wielding a cart awkwardly down the ramp. The guy pumped a round of bullets into her chest. She released the cart and it skidded sideways, screeching along the iron railing of the ramp, though by the time it reached the bottom and collided with a Toyota, the woman was undoubtedly dead.
The guy with the gun stood over her and grinned.
A young couple, who’d gotten out of their car as Angel was parking, turned in confusion. They traced the line of the cart to where the old woman’s body lay, with the man standing over her, and then, as though fixated, began to walk forward.
“Nothing to see-ee,” the man said, drawing the words out in the same way the dark dude in the diner had. The couple lifted their heads, and then continued up the ramp as though they were automatons. The man stepped on the old lady’s hand, but continued on nevertheless.
Angel sat rigidly in the car, too frightened to move. The man in the coat stood over the old woman’s body for a long time, and then, reluctantly it seemed, he tucked the rifle beneath his coat and lowered his hands toward her. He spread his fingers, and as Angel frowned in confusion, began to move them over the old lady’s body. Slowly, she began to grow insubstantial, wilting beneath the man’s hands. Her body collapsed, as though desiccated, and then a sudden, strong wind blew all trace of it away.
The guy spat on the spot and then raised a fist at the sky. “Yeah! Got that bitch!” he said.
Angel waited, hoping the guy would walk away. He decided to close the windows and lock the car, but just as he reached for the driver’s window, the guy turned to him and frowned.
“You see that one, dude?” he said. “You see the way I hazed her?”
Angel shook his head in a frightened, stuttering movement, too afraid to speak. The guy stepped forward and opened Angel’s door, and Angel knew he had to get out of the car. But right at the moment, he didn’t seem able to move.
“What are you?” the guy said, his face darkening with suspicion.
“An angel.”
“What? You guy’s dropping the ‘fallen’ now and simply calling yourself angels? You don’t seem like no angel I’ve ever seen.”
“I’m just … I was just infected — a few weeks ago. Getting used to things.”
“Yeah? You got yourself a piece?”
Angel shook his head.
“I like to use a knife, on the young ones, but with an old broad like this, I get a buzz out of watching the way the bullets tear into them. Man, did you see her dance?”
Angel tried to smile.
“Well. Pleased to meet you. I’m Mike,” the guy said, and held out his hand.
Angel took it, and felt a sudden, sinking feeling. It was as though the guy’s touch itself was diseased, with the power to drain life and happiness. Angel swayed, a little disoriented, and then released Mike’s hand.
“I’ll give you my number,” Mike said. “We’re working on the gay guys. This here — this was just a piece of fun — but we figure, in our chapter, that the gays are a legitimate target. And too fucking smart,” he said, touching his nose, “if you know what I mean.
“Some of them are so fucked up that they’re slipping into our territory. Starting to work things out. So we figure we need to get them sorted. As a priority — if you know what I mean.”
Angel nodded. He phoned Mike and Mike saved his number. Then Angel walked into the IGA and wandered the aisles, barely able to make sense of anything he saw.
At home, he vomited, and then showered.
He tried to remember Finn’s number, but it was lost to him.
18
Over the next two weeks, Angel witnessed seven murders, eighteen rapes, and a child abduction, which, despite what he knew about the dark, he couldn’t simply let go.
“He called out to the girl, calling her Annie,” and the man who had her hand let her go.
Angel pulled the girl into his car, asked her where she lived, and dropped her off at the curb, pulling away quickly, as he knew he was in as much danger himself as the dark abductor had been. Over the next couple of days he sweated it out, thinking the police would come knocking on his door, someone having seen the plate on his car.
He stopped going out, and the television news took on a bizarre aspect. The intricate details of a murder investigation now seemed as though they were something from a TV sitcom. The reality of life remained invisible to the mundane, and Angel began to feel as though he was going insane.
He thought of Finn, of how Finn had seen this all his life, since he’d been a child, and any doubts he’d had about Finn went through a quiet revolution. Though still, there was something more to the story, something that Finn hadn’t said to him and wouldn’t say.
Something odd.
Angel frowned for a moment, and then realized he could get in contact with Finn. He could phone Tomas, who had Finn’s number. He pulled his phone out and all but hit Tomas’s number. But then, somehow, he didn’t know what it was, Finn’s strangeness, his intensity, warned Angel off, and he told himself to deal with what was happening on his own.
Perhaps things in New York would be better. He phoned Jason a few days later, asked if he could come early, and Jason said sure.
Angel loaded up the car and took off, happy to get out of the city and into the hills. The drive was long and tiresome. He stopped three times at roadside motels, but drove the rest of the way straight through. Then he was in New York, trying to make sense of the streets, though he finally had to put his car in a parking lot. Jason had an apartment in Brooklyn, and Brooklyn was hardly what Angel was expecting — filth everywhere, broken windows, drug dealers on the streets — and plenty, now that Angel knew how to spot them, plenty of the dark.
Jason’s place was a four-story house spilt into five apartments. Jason had the top, and Angel arrived at his door with a pack slu
ng over his shoulder. He knocked, but drew his head back in surprise when the door opened, because there was Finn, standing directly behind Jason, all but naked.
19
“Finn’s going to bunk in with me. We’ll give you the couch — if that’s okay,” Jason said.
Angel nodded. He shook Finn’s hand while Finn stared shamefacedly at the floor. Jason, though he’d taken a moment to recognize Angel, was now brimming over with new-found confidence, his auburn hair and dark eyes glittering under the bright electric lights.
“Finn’s making us a lasagna. His specialty.”
Angel nodded and took a seat on the couch. He glanced over his shoulder, toward the kitchenette, and frowned at Finn, who Angel now saw was wearing a cotton apron and nothing else, an apron with a floral print tied around his waist so that his ass, surely Finn’s best feature, was left bare, with nothing but the ties swinging between his cheeks. As Finn bent forward and opened the oven door, Angel realized that he was also wearing sneakers, and his cock twitched. He glanced away and pressed his fingers into his groin absentmindedly. A moment later he was bouncing on the couch, testing it out. He didn’t figure it was going to be too comfortable.
The news was on, and Jason had his attention fixed on the television. Angel drifted, the lines of the highway playing hypnotically, on never-ending reels through his mind, as though three days of watching them had burned them into his consciousness. Vacantly, he began to knead his cock and balls, a thing he might have done if he were alone. There was a vague pain, one no doubt attributable to sitting in tight jeans, driving. Yet it was the glimpse he’d caught of Finn in apron and sneakers that now occupied Angel’s mind.
He needed to sell his car, hold onto as much of his fifty thousand as he could, and get himself his own place. Without a job, he wasn’t going to have much chance of buying a place, but now that he was in New York, he wasn’t sure he wanted to stay here. What he’d seen out on the streets, guys grouped everywhere, glancing one way and another, had made Angel uncomfortable.
And what the hell was Finn doing here?
Angel pulled his hands out of his groin, appalled at what he was doing. He stared at them, turned them over, and then flinched as he became aware of Jason watching him. Jason was sitting on the armchair, in a pair of tighty-whities, sitting up high, like a toddler. He nodded at Angel’s cock, which was hard, grinned, and then nodded at his own cock, which Angel saw was hard also, his own foreplay having been the catalyst for this, it seemed. Unexpectedly, Jason gripped his cock and displayed it to Angel in the tighty-whities, gripping it at the base. He did it foolishly, thrusting it into the air and making fun of himself, but Angel guessed he was happy with how things had turned out. Having been on the ZFU-B for quite a long time, there’d been a point when Jason had been in danger of losing everything he had, and certainly a point when it looked as though it had happened.
The commercial break ended, and in silence they turned their attention to the news. It was a story about a potential medical breakthrough, a cure for lung cancer, during which Finn walked quietly out of the kitchen. He stood at the opposite end of the couch, with his naked hip pressed against it, a dishcloth looped over his shoulder.
As the news ended, Angel turned to Finn, leaning forward and digging his fingers into his groin. He gripped hold of his cock and tried to resettle it, but the jeans were too tight and he’d been wearing them for too long. “I was going to call you,” he said, wincing as he struggled with his gear, “but I couldn’t find your number.”
Finn smirked, smiling at the way Angel was wrestling with his groin. He nodded, accepting what Angel had said, and then walked back to the kitchen again, the ties of the apron swinging between his butt cheeks. Between his legs, at the base of his butt, Angel glimpsed what he thought was Finn’s head, pressed against the front of the apron, hidden in the shadows.
Were Finn and Jason together? Was that it? Had Finn come out here and seen Jason and got together with him over the past week or so? It certainly looked like it. And when Jason got up and followed Finn into the kitchen, Angel realized he was right. Of course he was. Jason walked toward Finn and gently placed his hands on Finn’s shoulders. He kissed Finn’s neck and Finn squirmed away.
“The apron’s my idea,” Jason said, turning from the kitchenette and taking a seat on the armchair again. “I hope you don’t mind, but that stuff — the ZFU — well, I’ve only stopped taking it in the past few days. I was getting the other shit, the stuff meant to neuter you, so I’m still feeling pretty horny.”
Angel nodded, finding it a little difficult to look at Jason steadily given he was wearing nothing but a pair of tighty-whities. He was sitting on his heels now, and his cock was more than a little distended; the head was pushing forward insistently from beneath a wet, pink circle of precum. Angel glanced away, turning his attention to a print above the fireplace as he once again gripped his cock and tried to settle it comfortably.
“You like that?” Jason said.
It was an Australian beach scene, a screen-print by the look of it, a group of lifeguards feeding a rope over their heads, dressed in green speedos and backed by a yellow sun. Angel nodded, thinking it was good, and as he considered it a little more closely, forgot once again that he had his hand on his cock.
“Finn did it. He spends three days on it and it looks like something out of a gallery.”
“It’s great,” Angel said.
Finn, hearing them Angel guessed, stepped into the living room and stared at it for a moment, his naked ass once again in Angel’s line of sight. “I started off at a community college,” Finn said absentmindedly, “doing arts. At least — I got into a couple of courses.”
“Looks like the sort of thing you could make money out of.”
“Yeah,” Finn said vaguely, but as he glanced at Angel, Angel remembered the hustling. Was that going on now, while he was with Jason?
“So …” Jason said, “… it’s a little awkward. You guys never really spoke to me during the trial.”
“I think we were all … fucked up,” Angel said. “I think that Umberto guy was some kind of sadist — the kind of guy who played with people just for the …. The kind of guy who enjoyed it.”
“He was a little dark,” Finn said.
Angel dropped his head and gripped his temples with a hand. Dark? Umberto? One of the dark?
But he hadn’t got away with what he was doing, not with guys like Sean and Joel and Brody around, and really, now, if Angel had a choice, he’d seek them out and talk over what had happened. It went beyond the drugs with Umberto. Angel understood that. There was some other agenda. A simple desire to fuck with people, the sort of thing Finn was talking about.
“How come you …?” Angel said, turning to Finn.
“What?”
“Signed up?”
“You mean with Umberto?”
Angel nodded.
“Well, like I told you, the world isn’t as simple as it seems. But we don’t want to talk about that around Jason.”
“Around me?”
“Yeah. You’re a babe in the woods,” Finn said. “I wouldn’t even believe you were eighteen if I hadn’t seen the evidence for myself.”
“And you’re what? Thirty-nine?”
“No. I’m eighteen, like I said, but some of us pack a few more years in when we’re children.”
Jason opened a bottle of red and poured them each a glass. He settled on the armchair again, crossing his legs beneath him, and let his eyes stray over Finn.
“He’s one beautiful guy,” Jason said. “Don’t you think?”
Angel turned his eyes on Finn lazily, though he had in fact been thinking how very attractive Jason was. He was all softness, as though seen through a misty lens, his hair and skin appeared to radiate light, blurring his boundaries. He was impossibly clean, and smelling of a cologne that was threatening to give Angel a hard-on again. Yet still, Angel could see that Jason had eyes for no one but Finn, whose extraordinary beaut
y seemed harsh and bright and blond when compared to Jason’s.
“He’s just like that other guy — that Joel,” Jason said. “Not that he had any time for me.”
“I think he was pretty fucked up. They gave him a hard time with the testing. I’d say he was lucky to get out of there alive.”
“And then he goes and disappears. You know we’ve got the court case. Don’t think I won’t be seeking damages.”
“Those things take months,” Angel said.
“Yeah. Sure. But we need all the guys there and everyone pushing. What they did to us …” Jason shook his head.
“I thought you kind of liked what Warren did to you.” Finn smirked. “You crave that kind of cock, don’t you, Jase?”
Jason spilled his wine as he stumbled to his feet. “I told you, Finn. I said to you … that’s private.”
“Yeah, but he yearns for a big cock, Angel. So maybe you could help him out.”
Jason placed his wine glass on a side table and when he’d steadied it walked into the bathroom.
Here it was again, Angel thought, Finn’s craziness. His ability to say anything to anyone, without any apparent concern for how it might affect them.
Finn glanced at Angel blankly, apparently without emotion, and then got up and followed Jason quietly. The bathroom door closed and a moment later Angel heard their voices raised in anger. He began to wonder why he’d come here. Had there been any need to be in such a hurry?
No.
But it might have been better if he’d come sooner. He didn’t suppose he would have minded if Jason were here on his own — if they were about to share a bed tonight. Jason had that boyish charm, all innocence, and to be next to him, to be held by someone like him ….
But when would that happen again, if ever? Angel was stuck with this thing, this disease, and on the drive out here things had continued to deteriorate, or improve, he supposed, considering on how you looked at the changes that were occurring to his body.