She nodded and smiled, fears a little relieved but not banished completely. The band had launched into a hectic, electric rendition of a plaintive ballad when Philip returned and gave a thumbs-up, just as Patrick stood and grabbed his bag.
Philip said, “Everything ship-shape and A-OK. I said she was a good kid. Hey, you’re not leaving, are you?”
Patrick slugged down the end of his beer. “Yep. Got to, I’m afraid.”
Cathy smiled at him, teasing. “Hot date?”
“Hey, what can I tell you?” he said, grinning broadly. “I’m young, free, and good-looking. The city is alive, and love awaits.”
Night in the city, and the beautiful people were at play. That is to say, most of the men in this particular Greenwich Village club were beautiful, which made Benjamin Van Horne—almost 40, short-legged, with thinning hair and a weak chin—feel less attractive than usual. But his physical inadequacies didn’t seem to matter to the wildly handsome young guy dancing opposite him, hands locked above his head as he jerked his hip sideways to the pulsing music.
Christ, he really is stunning, Benjamin thought, as the strobe lights scanned down his dance partner’s dark skin, his lithe, muscular physique. The man pursed his lips and laughed, closed his eyes, ran his hands along the mesh fabric of his tight-fitting top. Benjamin shuffled his feet and clicked his fingers, a little self-conscious, a large part disbelieving. The guy was definitely interested, and Benjamin could scarcely accept it. He wasn’t ugly, he didn’t think, but this vision of male loveliness was in another universe to his level. And yet, and yet… Here they were, flirting, dancing, moving closer and backing away, those little matador rhythms of seduction. The other man hooked his fingers around Benjamin’s tie and began leading him from the dancefloor as the tune segued into a slower song. Benjamin smiled dumbly, stopping just short of pinching himself, and thought, Welcome to your lucky day, Van Horne. Now shut up and enjoy it.
They reached the bar and found their drinks. Benjamin said, projecting his voice over the music, “So, ah, sorry, I couldn’t hear your name properly earlier.”
“Tommy. What’s yours?”
“Benjamin. Benjamin van Horne. I’m a stockbroker.”
Tommy wiped the sweat from his forehead with an elegant stroke of his finger, saying, “Sounds fascinating.”
Benjamin smiled, bashful and self-aware. “Afraid not. The money’s good, though. Paid for that sweet little number I pulled up in. And business makes a handy excuse for…uh…for when…”
“So you’re married, obviously.”
Benjamin looked away, toward the dancefloor, guilt passing over his face in the sweep of the lights. He said, “Yeah. You’re not pissed at that, are you? I mean, I know a lot of you don’t like guys like me. I’ve been called a tourist plenty times. But it’s not like that.”
Tommy smiled. “’Course it isn’t, Ben. Nah, I don’t mind at all.”
“Great. Excellent.”
Tommy touched a slender hand to Benjamin’s face, his throbbing temple, beating an infinitesimal tattoo. He ran his hand down to Benjamin’s chin and said, “In actual fact, Ben, I find it a bit of a turn-on sometimes. You know, thinking about the little wifey at home all the time we’re…”
Benjamin squirmed but didn’t pull out of the embrace. “Uh…I dunno. I can get pretty guilty about it, I gotta say. I mean, she thinks I’m at a conference for the next two days, and here I am.”
“Listen. Why don’t you put wifey to the back of your mind for an hour or two? I know a safe little spot we can go to. You can feel guilty tomorrow.”
He raised an eyebrow and touched Benjamin’s lower lip, the heavy silver ring on his middle finger glinting in a spotlight. Benjamin smiled widely.
“Well, hell. Why not? What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, right?”
“Can’t hurt her. Exactly. Meet me around the side in five minutes.”
Tommy pushed with his thumb, gently, into Benjamin’s lip, then turned and walked off into the crowd. Benjamin checked his watch, checked his pulse rate, and finally checked his hair in the full-length bar mirror. Hey, you’re not so bad-looking, he said to himself. In this light, anyway. He took a deep, steadying breath, fixed his jacket against his neck and left, his squat reflection matching his progress, rippling beside him in silver and glass.
He wasn’t an especially courageous man and wasn’t known to take risks, and Benjamin’s excitement was commingled with a low trepidation as he peered into the dark alleyway beside the club. A neon sign saying Klub Khan was mirrored in a dirty puddle at the mouth of the alley. A streetlight cast a wan, dirty yellow glow a little of the way in. Benjamin was hesitant.
He called out, “Uuh…Tommy? Are…are you there, Tommy?”
Then Tommy appeared from behind the far corner, his face illuminated by the flare of a cigarette lighter. He lounged against the wall, beautiful, cat-like, languorous, and beckoned Benjamin with his finger.
“C’mon, Mr. Stockbroker. Come with me and forget about everything.”
Benjamin grinned, the tension easing out, and started to walk down the alleyway toward Tommy, who loitered at the corner for a moment before turning on his heel and motioning Benjamin to follow. The well-dressed stockbroker sauntered after him, passing through a small area of almost perfect darkness and entering a reasonable-sized yard. Benjamin guessed this was the rear of the club, a storage area or something. He stepped into an elongated pool of light cast by a lamp. Tommy was at the pool’s outer edges, hip cocked, drawing slowly on his cigarette. Although he had done this before, a few times, Benjamin suddenly felt a little stupid.
He said, “So, uh…should I just whip it out, or what? Wha-what do you wanna do?”, and began laughing nervously.
Tommy smiled. “What do I wanna do? Well, Ben, I think I wanna do…you.”
He whistled and three men stepped out of the darkness, forming a sort of crescent. Strangely, even while his legs were turning to jelly as he realized he’d been set up, Benjamin noted that the gang was comprised of four distinct ethnicities: black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. He raised his hands in protest.
“No, no. Wait. Hold on there. Just… Tommy, please. What are you doing? I thought…”
Tommy laughed, his big, brilliant teeth white against the night. “You thought? You didn’t fucking think, Ben. You didn’t think at all.”
The gang rushed forward, kicking and punching Benjamin, spitting out insults. Bare fists and boots only, but Benjamin had a dread certainty that they weren’t going to stop at that. Tommy remained outside the scuffling circle, dancing around gleefully, Mohammed Ali skips and little air-punches. He lit another cigarette and came closer, drawing random kicks at Benjamin’s body as his men moved aside.
Tommy said, “You didn’t think, Ben. You didn’t use your faggot-assed little brain in there, my man. What, you thought a guy like me was gonna put out for a disgusting fuck like you?”
Benjamin was on his knees, mumbling through a bloodied mouth, “Please. My wife…she doesn’t know. I can’t have her find out. Please, Tommy. Why are you doing this…?”
A couple wandered down the alleyway, arms around one another’s waists, seeking a private spot. They stopped, shocked, eyes rolling from Benjamin to the gang members. Tommy snarled at them and they fled, and Benjamin knew that he wouldn’t live the night.
Tommy leaned over him, affecting a whining tone of voice, saying, “‘My wife doesn’t know, my wife doesn’t know.’ Well, she’s gonna know, Benny boy. So why don’t you…” He kicked, hard, to the face. “…have a think…” Another kick, to the chest. “…about tha-”
Then everything went sort of funny for Benjamin, struggling to see through his tears and the jolts of endorphins flooding his body. As Tommy drew back his leg a chain snaked out of the darkness and looped around the bastard’s calf, pulling it from under him and sending him crashing to the ground. His friends whirled around to see three men in tuxedos and balaclava masks, standing together, a tight military fo
rmation. Whitman dangled a length of heavy chain from his huge fist.
A greasy-haired white guy in denim jacket and ponytail said, “What the fuck is this?”
Wilde stepped forward, hands behind his back. “‘Love may be blind, but love at least knows what is man and what mere beast…’ So which are you? Man or beast?”
Tommy stood and brushed the dust off his jacket. He wiped blood from his mouth and grinned, a horrible expression, vicious and uncontrolled. “What’s that supposed to mean, faggot?”
Wilde said, “It’s called poetry. You should try it sometime. Open your mind. Now, the rest of you—step away from that man.”
“You broke some of my teeth, bitch,” Tommy said. “I’m gonna fucking bleed you for that.”
Whitman said, “Actually, that was me. See?”, and waggled the chain.
“Yeah. That was you, ha ha. Funny guy. Real… fucking… funny!”
On that beat he lunged at Whitman, his long arms stretching for the chain; and a beat later, as if it were a choreographed move, the rest of the gang jumped Wilde and Waters. Benjamin rolled away into the background, scared and bleeding, as Whitman drove Tommy’s head into a chain-link fence. It rattled with the impact, a cymbal sound; the metal bent but didn’t tear. Tommy’s hand was like a claw behind him, grabbing for the chain. Wilde parried the blows of a slim, tall Asian man, blocking them with his forearms, then smacked his ears and struck a sharp, thin blow to the throat. The man choked for air and staggered backward. Wilde turned to where Waters struggled, outnumbered and outweighed, by the guy with the ponytail and a muscular Latino man. They each landed a punch on Waters’ lower body before Wilde sprinted over, kicking one in the back and sending him sprawling, arms outstretched, into a muddy puddle. Waters pummeled the white guy with a volley of punches, his opponent’s head snapping back, a thin squirt of blood from his nose into the air. Ponytail blinked, a patina of oblivion passing over his face, and fell to the ground.
Tommy and Whitman were still locked together, slamming into the fence, scrabbling for purchase in the dirt. Whitman grabbed him in a headlock, drove his powerful fist into the thug’s face, three, four times. The Asian and Hispanic men stumbled away, toward the darkness and escape, as Tommy wrenched himself from Whitman’s arm-lock and dashed for the alleyway…and ran straight into Waters’ tensed fist. He dropped, out cold. Waters winced and flexed his fingers.
Benjamin drew himself into the fetal position and looked up, nervously, at the three masked figures standing over him.
“You…you’re not going to hit me, are you? I mean…I kinda figure you’re on my side.”
Wilde stretched out his hand. “Get up. Come on, take my hand.”
Benjamin stood and brushed himself down, then began gingerly touching his face for signs of damage. He pressed his fingers to his cheek, pummeled and bruised the color of uncooked meat, and said, “Ouch. Jesus, that hurts. That treacherous little shit. He loosened some teeth here…” He looked at the three men again. “So, uh…who are you guys anyway? What, ah…why did you help me?”
Waters and Wilde smiled at each other in unison, a snap recognition, that unspoken communication between old friends. Waters said, “Go on, you say it. Corny one-liners were always more your thing.”
“In your case, sir,” Wilde said, “let’s just say we’re your very own personal tooth fairies.”
Whitman crouched over Tommy, groggily coming around, and placed a damp handkerchief to his mouth, holding it there until the reflexive, sluggish kicking stopped. He began tying the man’s hands. Benjamin took a step toward the streetlight and staggered, moaning woozily.
Wilde said, “Are you okay? Do you think you need a doctor?”
“Yeah. A fucking head doctor. I gotta be crazy. Tell me what I should say to my wife when I get home.”
“You’re married?” Waters said.
“Aw, not you as well. Yeah, I’m married, okay? I’m married and I’m gay and I cheat on my wife with other men. And no, I’m not proud of it, if that’s what you want to hear.”
“Hey, it’s your life, mister. We’re not in the business of judging others…well, ’cept for your friend there.”
“Tommy? I only met him tonight. He hit on me in the club. Ha. Hit on me. God, I’m so stupid.”
Whitman bent his knees, braced himself and hoisted Tommy onto his back in one smooth sweep. The gang started to walk away, then Wilde stopped and faced Benjamin.
“Look, for what it’s worth… Tell your wife. Tell her you’re gay, or bi, or whatever it is you think you are. As a wise man once said, truth is beauty and true love more beautiful still; if her love is true she’ll forgive you.”
He turned to go. Benjamin called out, “Who wrote that? Tennyson?”
Wilde smiled back at him. “Nah. Wilde. The second version.”
Darkness. Soft music played on the vehicle’s stereo—Elvis Presley crooning Blue Moon, that sparse, mournful sound—accompanied by the whoosh of the road rushing by underneath.
Tommy awoke and tried to shake the fuzz from his head. He scrunched up his nose, and felt a sharp pain between his eyes. It’d better not be broken, he thought, all mashed out of shape, or that big fucker in the hood was going to pay. His eyes came into focus on something dark and formless. His vision blurred and sharpened again, and he saw the one with the red bow tie sitting across from him, reading a book, a thin paperback. Tommy yelped involuntarily; Wilde looked up and smiled, giving him an ironic army salute, a slow sweep of his pointed hand. Then Tommy realized that he couldn’t move his arms. He looked down, agitated—he was naked, bound hand and feet in duct tape.
He yelled, “Hey. Hey, what the…? Get this shit offa me, man! Let me outta here!”
Tommy banged his head off the side of the van; Whitman, driving, turned up the radio volume in response.
“Aaargh!! Someone get me outta here! Help! Somebody! You creepy son of a bitch, lemme go, goddamit! You…motherfucker…I’ll…”
He strained against his binds, shoulders pushed back to the point of discomfort, and tried to charge at Wilde, butting like a stag. Wilde rose smartly and slammed him back against the side of the van. Waters placed a silenced handgun to Tommy’s temple.
Tommy said, “Whaddar you…? Okay. Okay, I get it. This is because of…back there, right? Okay. That’s cool. Just listen to me, man—those fags, they get what’s coming…”
Wilde placed a finger to Tommy’s lips. “Hush. You talk too much, Tommy.”
Waters said, “Empty vessels, Wilde.”
Wilde pulled a blindfold from his jacket pocket and began tying it around Tommy’s head. Tommy squirmed away, his bare backside scratched from the rough curved metal on which he sat, and said, “Hey, whoa. Not a blindfold. You don’t need a blindfold, man…”
“Hush, Tommy. You’ll get your chance to talk,” Wilde said. “And you should think about what you’re going to say.” He leaned in close, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Like others before you, you’re going to be remembered for this—so think carefully.”
Darkness again, but this time with tiny, pulsing whiteness at the bottom of the screen: “Karma TV. A 3W Production.” Just above it, a message scrolled once from right to left: “NOTICE: This film is for educational purposes only. All copyright is protected. Our lawyers are watching” with an acid-house smiley face as a large period. Then the blank screen faded away to a shot of Wilde, against a blank background, wearing a surgical smock and his balaclava. The effect was simultaneously silly and unnerving. He spread his arms out wide.
“Good evening once again, citizens, and welcome to the second installment in our series of educational programming. Actually, scratch that—it’s more re-educational. A sort of de-learning and then re-learning. The first program went quite well, anyway—one or two lessons have been absorbed by our subjects.”
The video cut to footage of John Wayne in his heyday, that brash, weatherworn face; then a gruesome bare-knuckle boxing match and cheery marchers in a gay pride pa
rade.
Wilde said, in voiceover, “We come to you tonight from the pleasant surrounds of the Enforced Karma Clinic for Inveterate Homophobes: where we delve deep into the dark, sticky unconscious of the real man’s man. And tonight’s subject is…homosexuality.”
It cut to an actor with a melodramatically shocked expression, then back to the parade: mainly men, though a few women, in gaudy costumes, hoisting placards and waving to the crowd, blowing kisses, acting it up. An enormous man in a feather headdress and gold bikini danced badly to whatever music was accompanying the event. He noticed the camera on him and waved extravagantly.
The voiceover continued: “I know, I know. A lot of people out there aren’t too happy with the notion of two men getting all—ooh, you know—dirty together.”
Cut to Waters posing with a confused expression, saying, “But what is this ‘homosexuality’ all about, Wilde? And why does it upset people so?”
Then Wilde, holding an encyclopedia, leafing through its pages. “I’m glad you asked, Waters. From the World Book encyclopedia, 1986 edition: ‘Causes of homosexuality are not fully understood. According to the most widely accepted theory…’ Nah, that’s boring. Ah, here’s something: ‘Most homosexuals appear no different from other members of their own sex.’ Well, how about that?”
The video switched to a shot of a woman fainting in shock, then back to Wilde as he strolled down a dark, deserted corridor, arms behind his back like a pompous college professor. His white smock shone in contrast to the dank, damp walls, streaked a horrible color with the run-off of decades of leaks.
“To be honest, folks, homosexuality really doesn’t mean anything either way. It just is. And what’s wrong with that?” Cut to Whitman shrugging his shoulders, and back to Wilde again. “But here’s a thing: up to ten per cent of the population is believed to have gay or bisexual leanings. Think on that—ten per cent. If the average person knows, say, 200 people reasonably well, around 20 of those close acquaintances are likely to be—gasp!—deviants. Weird. Perverted. Not normal. And so on.”
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