When the Nines Roll Over

by David Benioff

  I called you the next night. “Hello,” I said. “It’s Frankie.”

  “Hello, Frankie. God, you sound so formal.”

  “I read the Hunter Thompson book,” I told you. “Hell’s Angels.”

  “Oh, really? Hold on a second.” I pictured your hand covering the receiver, muffling the voices I heard, the laughter. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “So you liked it?” you asked.

  “Yes. But the thing is, Leonard’s not in it.”

  “The top shelf.”

  I squinted. “The top shelf? What does that mean?”

  “No, I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “I read the book because you said Leonard was in it.”

  “He is in it.”

  “No,” I said. “I read the whole book. He’s not in it.”

  “Well, he didn’t go by his real name when he was in the gang. What do you think, everyone called him Leonard? He had some code name.”

  “Oh. So, did you notice he’s not in your living room anymore?”

  “What?” I pictured you looking at your amplifier, realizing for the first time that the fake urn was missing. “Where is it? You came in here?”

  “Yes.”

  “You broke into my apartment?” You laughed. “Wow, Frankie, that’s a little scary.”

  “I stole Leonard. You know why? I stole Leonard and I brought him up to the Catskills.”

  There was silence on the line for a moment. In the background I heard someone hammering a nail into the wall. Then you said: “Frankie—”

  “I brought him to the Neversink, and I read his favorite Melville passage, and I opened the urn.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “Why did you do that to me?” I asked.

  “I can’t believe you’re accusing me. You come in here and rob my apartment, and then you accuse me? I trust you with my key and you rob me, and now, now you’re accusing me?”

  “I just want to know—”

  “Okay, you want to know? My father lives in Pasadena. I haven’t seen him in nine years. Now you know. Happy? Anything else? You want his name?”

  “Pasadena?”

  “Pasadena. He’s a tax attorney. Okay? Happy now?”

  “There’s no Leonard?” I asked.

  “There’s no Frankie,” you answered, and hung up the phone.

  Every time I look out my window I see the city where you live, and I wonder where you are, and what you’re doing, hidden behind the stacks of tall buildings. Nothing so mundane as laundry or grocery shopping—no, the laws of bad reality don’t apply to you, you give birth to dead fathers.

  Somewhere in the city Leonard exists, haunting the mind of another blessed suitor. I’m in mourning for a man who never was, that’s true, but I still expect to meet Leonard one day, playing dice in the backroom of a sawdust bar, a crude mermaid tattooed on his forearm, a battered copy of Moby-Dick in the pocket of his leather jacket. I’ll buy him a glass of whiskey and listen to his stories.

  MERDE FOR LUCK

  1

  The woman in the window seat is the first to notice the stink. She begins to frown even before she raises her eyes from her paperback novel. She flares her nostrils and squints; then, when she realizes that the smell is not going away, she closes her book and turns to look at me. She wants to know if I smell it, too. I don’t give her the satisfaction. I stare at the bald head in front of me.

  The other passengers nearby are becoming aware that something is wrong. They turn in their seats and look about the cabin; they grimace at each other; they fan the air with newspapers and magazines. A stewardess, her black hair knotted in an immaculate chignon, walks slowly down the aisle, sniffing with her nose raised, a bird dog flushing pheasant. She stops two rows in front of me and bends down beside a young mother holding a sleeping infant. The stewardess whispers a question and the mother shakes her head, smiling.

  “Clean that baby,” snaps an old woman sitting behind me. “If they want to take a baby on board,” she tells her husband loudly, “they ought to have the decency to keep it clean.”

  “It’s not the baby,” says the stewardess, straightening up and continuing to walk toward the rear of the plane. When she reaches my row she pauses, looks first to her left and then to her right, and her eyes fix on me. The dark stain spreads below me on the seat cushion, out of sight, but the stewardess doesn’t need to see the evidence—she smells it on me, smells my guilt. She walks a few rows farther to verify that I am the source of the trouble. The woman in the window seat already knows. She presses herself as close to the cabin wall as she can, stares at me with confusion and disgust.

  The stewardess returns and crouches next to me. “Sir,” she asks, “are you feeling ill?”

  “No,” I tell her.

  She keeps her voice low, to protect me from embarrassment, to keep the situation calm. “Have you had an accident?” she asks.

  I do not look at her. The bald man in front of me has turned to watch. He looks like my grandfather, a white mus tache above a kind mouth, his ears outstretched like the wings of a swan rising from a lake.

  “Sir,” repeats the stewardess, “if you’re feeling sick, I can help you. This happens sometimes, it’s nothing to worry about.”

  I say nothing.

  “We can get you into a change of clothes, give you something to settle your stomach. Do you want to come with me?”

  “No.”

  The man who is not my grandfather shakes his head at the stewardess. The look he gives her says: We’re dealing with a crazy.

  The stewardess tries one more time. “Why don’t we go to the back of the plane, sir. I really think you’ll feel better.” When I fail to respond she sighs and stands, smoothes out the wrinkles in her pleated blue skirt, and walks quickly to the front of the cabin.

  Some of the passengers have left their seats; they stand in small groups at a safe distance, whispering and giggling and staring at me. I don’t look at them. I don’t try to hear what they are saying. I sit in my own shit and wait.

  The stewardess returns with another member of the crew, a handsome boy with a dimpled chin and carefully molded forelock. “Is there anything we can do to help you, sir?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “All right,” he says, quickly dropping the air of supplication. “I’m going to have to ask you to come with us. Please, sir, let’s not make this difficult.”

  I buckle my seat belt and pull the strap tight.

  The steward and the stewardess exchange glances. Why this? Why now? I watch them from the corner of my eye, prepared to resist should they put their hands on me. But we haven’t gotten to that stage yet. They have no desire to use physical force. They did not ask for this problem; they did not want this to happen. I understand that. I didn’t want it to happen either. I have never been a troublemaker. Until now. These people need to be troubled.

  “I have to warn you, sir,” says the steward, “causing a disturbance on an interstate flight is a federal offense.”

  He waits for a response. There is no response.

  “I’m going to repeat,” says the steward. “I’m repeating this one time. We need you to come with us to the back of the plane. Otherwise we’ll call the airport and have officers waiting there when we touch down. Okay? Sir, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “He’s sick,” whispers the stewardess. She rests her hand on my shoulder. “Sir, please. We’ll get you cleaned up and into some dry clothes.”

  “I need to get out of here,” says the woman in the window seat. “This is insane. He’s making me sick.”

  “Get Jimmy,” the steward tells the stewardess. “We need to move this guy.”

  I want them to understand. I want to show them what happened. If I pulled his photograph from my wallet, let them see his smile, his head tilted back in mid-laugh, would that work? Would they nod and bite their lips, grip my shoulder in solidarity? Or would they hiss?

  2


  His name was not Hector, but that’s what I’ll call him. I met him in a penthouse apartment far above the city streets. The man who owned the place, a famous photographer whose images of pretty boys and girls stood seven stories high in Times Square, had called me that afternoon to invite me to the party. I guessed I was replacing a more glamorous guest, a late cancellation.

  “Bring a razor,” the photographer told me. “I’ll supply the rest.”

  A servant, hired for the evening, met me at the door and helped me out of my raincoat. I’ve had that job before; I’ve catered rich people’s parties, poured their drinks and bused their dishes. I almost told him that, but I realized the intended gesture of sympathy would come across as merely patronizing—I used to do menial work, too. And now look at me!

  The living room was empty. I panicked for a moment, the old high school chill, suspected that the entire party was a ruse. Lure Alexander here with promises, let him think he will play with the popular kids, while the real party rages miles away, the revelers laughing as they picture my confusion. But a pale-faced girl wearing a tuxedo stood behind a white-clothed table topped with rows of bottled liquor. I accepted a glass of vodka and looked around the room. The photographer’s famous subjects hung from the walls, glassed and framed, smiling their famous smiles. I sipped my vodka and studied their poses. Stars, all of them, but they couldn’t compete with the view out the windows, everything blurred and spectral in the rain, headlights and taillights streaming along the avenues, distant bridges glimmering like pearls for Godzilla—my nighttime city.

  I thought I would rather look out the rain-pelted glass than at anything else, but I was wrong.

  “Are you Alexander?”

  I turned around. A naked man, wet from the shower, holding a rolled towel in one hand, stood on the silver carpet. I looked at the girl behind the bar but she pretended to fidget with a corkscrew.

  “Yes,” I said. I stared down at my rain boots, my olive green wide-wale corduroys, my black cashmere turtleneck sweater. “I feel overdressed.”

  He nodded, half-smiling. He had the most perfect body I’d ever seen. The water did not want to run off his skin—it beaded on him, like drops on the hood of a freshly waxed car.

  “We’ve been waiting for you. Come on, follow me.”

  This is why I came to the city, I thought. So that beautiful, naked men could say: We’ve been waiting for you. Come on, follow me. Anywhere, sir, I thought to myself, draining the rest of the vodka.

  The room we entered must have been the photographer’s studio. The radiators were cranking and the air was lush, tropical. A giant white tarp had been laid across the center of the floor. Blue buckets of steaming water sat on the tarp; yellow sponges floated on the water. Twelve men stood naked on the tarp, holding drinks, chatting and laughing and whispering into one another’s ears. Thirteen men stood naked on the tarp when my guide had joined them. It was 1991, before the rage for tattoos and piercings; everyone’s skin was their own. I recognized six or seven faces, well-known artists and art writers.

  “Alexander!” cried the photographer. “At last! A party of thirteen is a very nasty omen. We would have had to kill someone! Alexander, everyone. Everyone, Alexander.”

  “Hello, Alexander,” the friendlier ones chorused. The others simply glanced at me and resumed their conversations.

  “Alexander is a very talented young sculptor,” the photographer continued, already losing interest in me.

  “Painter,” I said.

  “Now,” said the photographer. “Who first?”

  “Me,” said my guide. “I’m freezing.”

  “Nobody told you to take a shower,” said a tall, lanky man wearing square black glasses, a critic for one of the city’s glossy magazines. “You just wanted to preempt us with the wet and wild look.”

  “Fine,” said the photographer, “fine. Hector is first. Pick a man, Hector, pick a man! Whom do you choose?”

  Hector stared directly at me, his brown eyes framed by long lashes. A thrill of desire shivered me in my boots.

  “Him. Alexander.”

  The photographer raised his eyebrows. “To the latecomer go the spoils. There you go, Alexander. Welcome to the party. Come, join us. Sans the clothes.”

  I placed my glass on the floor and stripped nervously, conscious of the watching eyes, stumbling on one foot as I pried off my boots. I’m not badly built—I ran the marathon that year—but Hector, well, Hector’s body was a gift, a miracle. People are not meant to look that good. It’s not healthy for society.

  I stepped onto the tarp, conscious of the silence. My mind was crazed with curiosity, and shyness, and most of all, desire.

  “Your razor,” whispered the photographer. “Where’s your razor?”

  I jogged back to my clothes and pulled the leather case from my pants’ pocket. On the tarp I unzipped the case, removed the tortoiseshell handle inside, and opened the steel blade.

  “Uh oh,” said someone in the crowd. A low, nervous laughter rose up from them.

  “Do you know how to use that?” asked the critic.

  “Yes,” I told him. I did. My father swore by the straightedge, insisted that safety razors were for pansies and pubescent girls. He taught me the technique before I had any whiskers of my own.

  Hector smiled. I had expected his teeth to be perfect, and they were, so white his face grew darker against them. “Come on,” he said, “I trust you.”

  I knew the rules of the game. He stood waiting for me, his feet apart, hands on his hips. Already he was growing aroused and I knew it wasn’t me. He was on display. All eyes watched him; everyone in the room wanted him.

  I carried a blue bucket over to him, dipped a yellow sponge wrist-deep into the soapy water and then circled Hector the way I would circle a marble statue in the museum, inspecting him, front, flanks, and rear. Standing behind him, razor handle in my mouth like a pirate, I wrung out the sponge, watched the water cascade down his back, down the steep channel of his spine, through the cleft of his buttocks and down his legs before puddling at his feet. Hector was rocking gently back and forth, pressing himself against me and away, a sly, teasing motion.

  I thought of the first boy I had fucked, a quiet punk rocker with spiked orange hair. We thought it would be funny to screw each other in the end zone of our high school football field, and it was, we were laughing hysterically as we tore each other nude. But then he grew abruptly silent, turned away on all fours, and offered himself to me. It was Saturday night, the school’s lights all out, the crickets screaming, the wind rattling the pine branches. Stars everywhere, hovering above the hilltops, above the school’s clock tower, above our own steaming skin.

  But this was part of Hector’s game. He wanted me to forget myself, to drop the razor and do him, here and now, standing on the wet tarp. I don’t think our audience would have complained; they stared at us feverishly, waiting.

  I dropped to my knees and lathered the twin-veined diamonds of Hector’s calves. He stood on the balls of his feet, to flex the muscle, and it struck me how intimately Hector knew his own body, far better than I knew my own. He knew exactly how to stand, how to move, where to place his hands. He knew what rippled when he stretched his arms. Hector, I understood, enjoyed a lifelong affair with mirrors.

  “Aren’t you afraid?” he asked, looking down at me, his chin resting on his shoulder, his tone lightly mocking. “Shouldn’t you wear gloves?”

  “I’m not going to cut you.”

  I rested the sponge on the tarp and began shaving him. Short, swift strokes, following the hair’s path. I had forgotten to bring a strop, but Hector never allowed his body hair to grow for long—he needed the shave as much as a young girl would. This was an exhibition, after all. The blade stayed keen and I moved up his legs, careful and patient with the knee’s tricky angles. I longed to ask him how he had created this body but that wasn’t my role here; I had a nonspeaking part. I ran the razor along the muscled slope of his thighs, listening to th
e hushed rasp of steel over skin, and blessed the man who decided he could not make this party.

  I shaved him from the sharp V of his pelvic girdle to the skin around his nut-brown nipples, from the flat hard wall of his belly to the vaulted arches of his armpits. I wished someone would strap tumescence-sensors to the cocks of all the men at the Republican National Convention, then let Hector strut naked to the stage. The Grand Old Partiers would have gouged their eyes out with their thumbs—Hector was irresistible.

  “Turn him around!” yelled the photographer. “We don’t want to see his face all day. Come on, show us his better side.”

  I gripped his pelvis lightly and he followed my direction, faintly smiling, turning about-face. One of the twelve spectators moaned loudly. Another murmured “Amen to that,” and they all laughed. I scrubbed Hector’s haughty backside with soapy water and he thrust against me, flirting with his hips.

  “The real question,” said the critic, “is who the hell goes second?”

  Hector arced his back and stared at me over his shoulder, forever half-smiling. There is a certain meanness to the coquette, the cat’s cruelty, playing a game with a creature helplessly in its power. But even his cruelty thrilled me.

  At last I was ready for his face. I pressed my chest against his, wrapping an arm around his waist to keep him still. Not that he needed to be kept still: Hector could hold a pose for hours. But I wanted my free hand down there, caressing his still slick hips. I shaved his throat, tilting his chin back with the thumb of my blade hand to keep his skin taut, shaved his jawline, shaved the hollow below his cheekbones. When I was finished I ran my palms over his face and body, checking for missed stubble. Finally I closed the razor and stepped back from my work. From the tarsal bones of his ankles to the edges of his long sideburns, Hector was immaculately hairless.