Homo Superiors

by L. A. Fields

  But thank his lucky stars and stripes, he had Noah. All that unbearable reading he endured really did fill the guy’s head with thoughts—he came up with a perfect crime that Ray had never even brushed against, and it was the perfect night to execute it!

  “I can’t believe you’re really coming out with me,” Ray told him as they stood in their own homes, connected by a phone call, looking for all the domestic flammables they could find. Ray had already collected every match, lighter, and portable candle in the place. He was thinking of fuses now, or rags soaked in lighter fluid . . . how could he get a significant fire started without getting burned? Or caught?

  Noah had an answer to this too.

  “I saw a show about an arsonist once, you’ll want to make a delayed incendiary device, something that burns slowly and then ignites something flammable so you have time to leave the scene.”

  “Incendiary,” Ray said, pausing mid-reach for the emergency snowstorm lantern (he was thinking of burning oil, even though somewhere in his mind he knew it was electric). “I really like that word.”

  “We shouldn’t be saying any of this over the phone, it’s probably being recorded by something.”

  Ray laughed and left the pantry, the lantern discarded from his mind and forgotten. “Paranoid about the government?”

  “Or about some nanny device on your cell phone. You know your mother is the type to record all your conversations if she could.”

  “You overestimate her interest in me. Now that I’m leaving, it’s like I’m a lodger who didn’t renew his lease, like she’s waiting for a stranger to leave already.”

  “No wonder you like my mom so much.”

  They met up on the sidewalk between their houses and headed for the nearest bus stop. Ray’s idea was to find a crappier but still mostly white part of town so they wouldn’t stand out. They needed to find something to light up: a shed, a dumpster, a garage, hopefully something still made out of wood.

  Ray got more excited as their bus carried them further north, his foot tapping a dance tune on the floor and his hands playing with a cigarette because he thought that might be a good incendiary whatever, what Noah said. He’d gotten the pack of cigarettes during his stealing phase, a half-empty pack someone had set next to him on a bench, which Ray picked up under his backpack when he stood to leave. He kept them because he thought smoking might make a nice habit (certainly one that would incense his mother), but now they could be used for something really special.

  Noah was feeling their approach to this mission too, the way he started wiping sweat from his forehead and then setting it on the back of his hand, and the way his eyes started swirling like he felt dizzy.

  “Calm down,” Ray told him. “You’re with me, and nothing bad ever happens to me.”

  “That’s true,” Noah said, whimper-coughing without humor. It really was.

  They failed at their first attempts: one in the unkempt brush of a vacant lot, one in the trellis of some abandoned, boarded up, ramshackle house. Ray wanted to stay and watch to see if the flame caught, but Noah was boss in one area: he insisted that Ray light the cigarette, or the wrap of matches, and drop it and walk away.

  “Walk around the block and circle back to see if it worked, don’t be so stupid so early.”

  Ray was in a grand enough mood that he didn’t even mind Noah getting snippy with him; Noah had low nerve, but plenty of brainpower. Compared to him, Ray really might seem stupid sometimes, but Noah was an exception unto himself.

  Ray finally got so insistent on seeing some soaring flames that he had Noah dowse an old sock with lighter fluid, and Ray threw a match onto that in the corner of some Porta-Potty on a bare-bones construction site. It might have been a demolition site for all Ray could see—no one was building in this area, but certainly the city still tore shit down.

  That plan finally worked.

  They saw the flames spark and start licking at the plastic of the outhouse, blacking and melting it. Noah insisted they walk a full four-block circle before they returned, because he insisted they only walk past once to avoid suspicion in case there was a crowd.

  And there was a crowd. Or at least there were a few spectators who’d stepped out of their lives and into Ray’s to look at what he’d done. They were trying to find a long hose or a bucket to keep the fire from spreading away from the shitter. They were speculating about how the disaster had started.

  The heat and color of the fire did nothing to excite Ray, but he wasn’t disappointed, because he immediately inserted himself into the neighborhood’s conversation.

  “Must be some fireworks accident,” he declared as they approached. Noah stiffened but did nothing to scold Ray.

  “Nobody’s wasting money on fireworks around here, this is some asshole smoking in the john.” This was told with tired authority by a man wearing a cleaner’s uniform, clearly headed to or from his crappy job.

  “Maybe it’s a prank,” Ray said. “You know, teenagers or kids or something.”

  “I guess you would know that,” said an old lady who seemed too tired to even say this, and turned back to her house halfway through the sentence with a slow, creaking walk. She couldn’t find a hose or schlep water, so there was no reason to stand around watching.

  “It’s nothing big,” said the first guy to another neighbor. “Can you handle this, Phil? I can’t be late.”

  Phil nodded, they both agreed that no one would even have to call the fire department, and the rest of the two or three lookie-loos dispersed. Noah started leaving too, and Ray had to follow him, feeling a little dejected that he hadn’t caused more of a panic, but then this was only his first attempt, so it would only get better . . . right?

  “I’m not doing that ever again,” Noah told him firmly the second they were far enough away to not be heard.

  “Yeah,” Ray said. He probably wouldn’t either—it was too much trouble for too little reaction, and without Noah’s help or acknowledgement . . . what was the point?

  6

  IF RAY THOUGHT HIS EXPERIENCE with crime was disappointing (and he did, and he made it very clear with his deflated attitude every other week), he would be emotionally felled if he experienced it all the way Noah did. Noah had never been afraid of hard work or lengthy mental endurance or even public speaking, but his forays into bad behavior with Ray gave him sickening feelings of anxiety and paranoia. If Ray thought about his own parents finding out any of his misdeeds, he smirked. He would say something like, “It would serve them right, I’m not the one who raised me so terribly.” But just the thought of having to answer for that sort of idiocy to Faye made Noah want to injure himself. He’d considered himself a skeptic and at least a Nietzschean sort of atheist for years, but committing petty crimes made him understand the severe mortal guilt that made religious enthusiasts flagellate themselves in the hopes of making up for their many moral deficiencies. Noah would put himself through a lot of physical torment before he’d tell his mother he’d set a shed on fire in a poorer neighborhood just to watch Ray watch it burn. He couldn’t stand the thought of disappointing her, not after all she still endured for bringing him to life in the first place.

  So why risk it?

  On the way home from the shed fire, Noah made himself a resolution. He was sitting under the bleak lights of a public bus, surrounded by incredibly average, noddingly tired, dumpy Midwesterners, and he was sitting next to Raymond Klein who, even in his sort of post-coital come-down from their tepid little arson, out-shown the whole city. The way Ray couldn’t stop chasing crime no matter how often it didn’t dazzle him . . . that is how Noah stuck with Ray. It couldn’t just be his handsome face, because Noah found a lot of good-looking people vile. It couldn’t just be his smarts, because he wasn’t that smart, and he certainly never worked hard enough to live up to his potential. And it couldn’t be just because he liked Noah so much . . . could it? There wasn’t enough data to know the answer to that question; the sample size of those who liked Noah was inc
redibly small.

  Ray could be a bit of a user. Noah knew that, and knew that he liked being used by Ray because it netted him more time in the boy’s presence. He was under the impression however that their friendship was as unique in Ray’s life as it was in his own, and he knew a way to test that hypothesis. He spent the bus ride sweating even though a cold vent was blasting right into his left armpit as he rested his forearm against the windowsill. He was trying to gin himself up for an act even risker than setting that fire.

  “I said I wouldn’t do that again,” Noah began when they disembarked and started walking home through the summer haze of the air in their neighborhood—it was a rather sweet sort of miasma here, in streets full of trees and flowers, much better than the junkyard where they melted that shithouse.

  “Yeah, I heard what you said, I won’t bother you about it anymore,” Ray snapped in response.

  Noah waited a beat before continuing, until Ray realized that he’d interrupted after just the beginning of a sentence and looked at Noah, waiting for the rest.

  “I might consider doing more with you, because I know it matters to you, and honestly you need a little more caution in that department, you need contingency plans and you never think those out in advance.”

  “Okay,” Ray said. He was excited. He’d take criticism like a perfect gentleman if he knew it was part of a compliment sandwich; he wanted that middle part more than he wanted to argue.

  The problem was, Noah didn’t know how to say the next part. What he wanted . . . it wasn’t sex, but it was still going to feel like asking for it, like dealing for it, like prostitution. He thought (unhelpfully) of the mating rituals of birds, about all the literal puffing and calling and flaunting and strutting they did for love; there’s nothing subtle about their declarations of desire for their mates. But as a human: there was no rival to peck at, no color on Noah’s breast, and no nest full of stolen shiny things that could make this statement for him. He had to find the courage to use words, and they wouldn’t be the best words for it either—English was no lover’s tongue compared to so many others he knew.

  “What are you getting at?” Ray asked, still happy, still smiling, cajoling Noah because he was about to get what he wanted, he was just waiting to hear the price of it.

  “I, guh . . . ” Noah believes he said, before he looked over Ray’s physique trying to figure out how to phrase it. He didn’t want a gay boyfriend to bring home to mom, and he didn’t want a brainless make-out session, and he wasn’t comfortable enough with his own body to want it being touched too much, but looking at Ray . . . he just wanted more. What amount of crime would make Ray lose his taste for it? How much heroin was too much for a junkie? When would enough time pass to let Noah get over Ray? Some people could find rock bottom, hit it, and bounce; other people were limitless.

  “You’re limitless, and I wish you would, like . . . ” Noah gestured weakly at Ray. Did he mean touch? Touch me, let me touch you? Fuck.

  Ray raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t look away in disgust.

  “This is an exchange, right? Like a fair trade? My hobbies for what you want?”

  It didn’t sound very special when it was put that way, but, “Yeah,” Noah said.

  Ray nodded, and he looked around their separation corner to make sure no one was watching them, and pulled Noah into a huge hug; a hug that lifted Noah off his feet, and then his feet off the ground.

  “Yeah,” was all Ray said in agreement, but the way he looked directly into Noah’s eyes, nodding in earnest, it was clear that they had a deal.

  7

  AUGUST WAS RAY’S LAST MONTH IN Chicago before the move to the University of Michigan. He would have that journey to himself—scheduling with Noah’s transfer meant he wouldn’t follow Ray for a week or more, which wasn’t the sundering for Ray that it was for Noah. Would he miss having his partner in crime for a little while? Yes, but he could scout, and plan, and wait. Noah’s interest in Ray, however, was much more vital, more . . . pressing. He was a very strange bird indeed.

  Ray knew what Noah wanted was boyfriend stuff, maybe some sex stuff, in exchange for continuing to join in Ray’s crimes. The idea bothered Ray less than he would have guessed, especially if it meant he didn’t have to go through the existential shit-show of giving up his passion, or the one-man audience he had for it. Ray didn’t have to like it, he just had to let it happen to him, and if Noah wanted reciprocation . . . well, they would just have to negotiate that stuff in the fine print of their agreement.

  But what Noah wanted wasn’t that unpleasant. The handful of nights Ray took Noah out scouting for the houses that were summer homes (and thus robbable during the winter months), ended in the back seat with Ray drinking from his flask (for anesthetic purposes), then pretending to be drunker than he was. Then he let Noah touch him (over the clothes) or kiss him (not on the mouth) or grind against him, which is what Noah seemed to want. He wanted permission with a living doll for something the French call ‘frottage’—Ray looked it up out of curiosity after the first odd night in his back seat, and he remembered the word in case he and Noah ever fought, since it’d be a good word to throw in his face. Ray had to be careful not to accidentally say ‘fromage’ if that ever happened, just like he had to be careful whenever saying either Napoleon or Neapolitan; languages were Noah’s skill, not Ray’s, and he certainly didn’t want to embarrass himself.

  Noah helped him pack for Michigan, and Noah spent the last day before his departure to the Great Lake State hovering near Ray like a restless ghost. Ray started to get a little annoyed as the day wore on—this was a moment of independence for him, the first real solo departure of his life, and having his buddy around was ruining it. Ray needed a quiet balcony and a sunrise vista and some dignified silence, not help loading his car.

  “You know, absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Ray said when he finally wanted Noah to say goodnight. They were at last done with the going-away dinner his parents were obligated to present, and done double-checking the schedule and alarms, and done separating the things that would stay from the things that would go. There was nothing left for Noah to ‘help’ with, and Ray had to be up early the next day, well rested for his long drive. It was time to part ways. “We’re about to live in the same cement cell for a year, you should really start missing me now, you know? Before we start fighting over how to hang toilet paper on the roll or whatever.”

  “I already miss you. Michigan doesn’t feel real to me at all,” Noah whined. “I don’t believe I’m actually going. You seem like you’re already there.”

  “I wish,” Ray said, with a little more earnestness than he meant to let out. “I’m sick of this house.”

  Noah looked around at the tastefully decorated walls, like Ray meant the house itself and not the home inside of it that had held him captive all his life. His bedroom, where Ray sat on his bed and Noah sat at the desk chair, was half-stripped. The only things left on the walls were things Ray considered belonging to his parents and not himself; the drawers were all empty, the closet only full of uncomfortable season-specific clothes. It looked like a guest room now, and it would be in a mere matter of hours, and Ray could hardly wait for that to happen.

  “I worry that it’s something I’ll regret someday,” Noah said, his eyes still roving the room. “A move this big can change the course of a life, or of a career.”

  Ray puffed out a huge sigh. “That’s more deep than I’m thinking about it, I just want something new to happen to me. You can always come back if it’s not right for you, and think of how nice that’ll be, knowing for sure what was out there before you chose to stay in your hometown like a loser.”

  That got Noah to crack a sad smile, and at that opening Ray stood and patted Noah’s shoulder to get him moving.

  “At least our hometown is a world-famous city, not some cow pasture place without any stoplights,” Noah said as he moved towards the door, down the hallway, closer and closer to the exit.

 
“There’s that sunny side of you, that’s a nice note to leave on,” Ray said, almost pushing Noah out the door with the hand he never took off his shoulder, just to keep him from stalling or loitering. Noah touched that hand with his own as he faced the darkness outside, and stepped out from under Ray’s palm with nothing but a scoffing, sniffling sort of noise—Ray couldn’t tell for sure because Noah had already turned away from him. He didn’t look back as he walked down the front walk of the Klein home either.

  “I bet there are better cities than this one out there,” Ray called after Noah with a brief lick of sympathy he almost never felt. “We’ll find them together, as soon as you join me!”

  Noah held up his hand in acknowledgement of Ray’s words, and kept on walking home.

  8

  NOAH FELT A LOOMING SENSE of sabotage as he prepared to follow Ray to the University of Michigan. He really couldn’t undo it—payments were made, paperwork was submitted, bags were packed—but it still felt impossible. How could he really leave home to live in some crusty Michigan dorm? No more dinners with Mom, no more quiet hours of study in his comfortable bedroom, and a whole new schedule to adjust to? But right when he was about to abandon the whole transfer regardless of the cost, there was Ray to consider. Chicago without Ray? Death by tedium. And Michigan with Ray? An adventure.

  They’d live together, they’d be transplants together, a team. Ray could never find a closer friend than the one who’d left home for him. They’d go forth to classes each morning with inside jokes, with each other’s secrets . . . they’d be more thoroughly bonded. People keep their college friends for life, no other relationship could touch that.