Drawing Blood

by Poppy Z. Brite

  But that reminded him of the kitchen light snapping on, off, on again with no hand near it. And that reminded him of his story. Incident in Birdland. He finished his Coke and walked slowly down the hall, past the bedrooms, into the studio. The light in here was clear, green, pure in a way that only late afternoons in summer can be. He ran his hand over the scarred surface of the drawing table. He stared at the drawings tacked to the wall.

  Then, without quite knowing he was going to do it, Trevor thrust out both hands and tore two of them down and started ripping at them. The paper crumbled between his fingers, dry, brittle, helpless. Destroying artwork was a taboo almost as strong to him as murder. The sensation was heady, intoxicating.

  “HOW DO YOU LIKE IT?” he yelled into the empty room. “HOW DO YOU LIKE SEEING YOURSELF TORN APART? DO YOU EVEN CARE ANYMORE?”

  The silence was deafening. The last crumbs of paper sifted from his hands. Trevor suddenly felt very tired.

  He went into his bedroom and lay down on the mattress. The light in here was dim, more blue than green, the kudzu so thick it was like having the shades drawn. The rumpled blanket and pillow were permeated with a unique blend of his scent and Zach’s, a third scent that had never existed in the world before yesterday morning, a scent part musk, part herb, part salt.

  He touched his penis. The skin felt stretched, tender, nearly sore. The things he had done with Zach were like nothing he had ever imagined. He loved the raw physical intimacy of it, the utter sense of connection. He thought about having Zach inside him, wondered if it would hurt and realized that he didn’t care, he wanted it anyway.

  Hugging the pillow to him, imagining his lover’s body linked inextricably with his own, he slept.

  At the Sacred Yew, Gumbo was running through the last few songs of their set. As promised, Zach had memorized the lyrics Terry had written down for him, then learned to sing them with R.J. singing along softly to cue him. R.J.’s voice wasn’t awful, but it was a flat kid’s voice that had never been meant to front a band. Zach decided his own voice had been meant for just that purpose. On the songs he hadn’t learned, he made up his own words.

  Terry gave his cymbals a final crash and brandished his sticks in the air. “Let’s knock it off,” said R.J. “It’s not gonna get any better than that.”

  Zach had shed his T-shirt at some point during the rehearsal. His chest was streaked with sweat and his own grimy fingerprints where he had clawed at himself with one hand while he clutched at the mike stand or gesticulated wildly with the other. He had snarled his hair around his fingers as he sang, pulled at it until it stood out in a hundred directions.

  He saw Calvin looking at him and grinned. “What do you think?”

  Calvin’s eyes were brazen. “About what?”

  “My highly original vocal style, of course.”

  “Of course.” The guitarist let his gaze slide from Zach’s face to his chest to his midsection, then back up again just as slowly. “I think it’s very attractive.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Will you buy me a beer and pour it in a cup?”

  “Why, of course I will.” Calvin grinned evilly. “But only if you buy the next round.”

  “Hell, I’ll buy this one.” Zach pulled a five out of his pocket and held it out to Calvin. “Leave the change for Kinsey.”

  Calvin waved the money away. “My treat.”

  Terry came over to the edge of the stage toweling his hair dry with his bandanna, sucking some kind of throat lozenge. The sharp odor of menthol hung around his head like an invisible cloud. “That was some heavy mind groove, Zach. You’re quite a crazed front man.”

  “Thanks. You guys are pretty crazed yourselves.”

  “Yeah, we try. You wanna come over for a shower and a toke? I can drop you off afterward.”

  Calvin came back with two sloshing plastic cups. Their fingers touched damply as he handed Zach one. “Where are y’all going?”

  “To my house,” Terry told him hoarsely.

  “Can I come?”

  “No. Go home and take a nap. I know you were up until dawn eating mushrooms last night.”

  “That’s okay. I’m going to eat ’em again tonight.”

  Terry rolled his eyes. “Great. Can you wait until after the show?”

  “Maybe.” Calvin’s gaze sought out Zach’s, fairly sparkling with wickedness. “It depends on what’s happening after the show.”

  For the first time, Zach felt a spark of annoyance toward Calvin. He was cute as hell, he played a mean guitar, and he obviously entertained a healthy lust for Zach. But he also obviously didn’t give a damn about Trevor.

  Well, maybe Calvin just hadn’t picked up on the fact that they were together. Zach didn’t mind the attention or the free beer. Calvin probably meant no harm, and if he did, that was too bad.

  But Zach saw no reason to piss off his new bandmate if he didn’t have to. Calvin might even have extra mushrooms, Zach thought, and be willing to share or sell some.

  And he was awfully cute.

  Trevor woke alone in the dark bedroom. For a moment he could not feel the mattress under him, could not even be sure he lay on a solid surface; he might have been spinning in some directionless black void. Then gradually the dim square of the window became visible, and the larger rectangle of the closet. He became conscious of the empty space on the other side of the mattress. Zach hadn’t come back yet.

  If it was nearly full dark, the time must be well after seven. Trevor wondered where Zach was, what he was doing right now. Was he still at the club, enjoying the cheerful, rowdy company of the other musicians after having spent so many intense hours with Trevor? Was he wishing he had hooked up instead with exotic Calvin, who played the guitar and wore silver charms in his ears, who would not have needed showing how to make love?

  What if he has? What if Calvin offered him a ride home, and their eyes met in some perfect understanding that I could never fathom, and halfway here they pulled off the road and Calvin gave him a blowjob in the car? What if it’s happening right now? His hands twined in Calvin’s bleachy-fine hair, his back arching just like it did for me, his smooth sweet boner fitting as perfectly in Calvin’s mouth as it did in mine. What if he never comes back?

  Trevor brought his left hand to his lips, sank his teeth into the fold of skin at the wrist. The pain cleared his mind a little, made the paranoid fantasies stop racing faster than he could talk himself out of them. He knew Zach wasn’t with Calvin. But he also knew that, under other circumstances, Zach might have been. Irrational as it was, that hurt too.

  Faintly he heard a car pulling up outside, a single door slamming. Then Zach’s footsteps were crossing the porch, Zach was feeling his way across the dark living room. Trevor heard him bang into something, curse, and stop. “Trev?” he called uncertainly.

  You don’t have to answer. You could just leave him standing there, alone in the dark.

  STOP IT! he ordered himself. Where in hell had that thought come from? “In here,” he called.

  Light flooded the hall, sliced across the bedroom. Zach came in, sat on the bed and hugged Trevor through the blanket. Trevor rolled over and hugged back. Zach’s hair was damp, and he smelled of soap and shampoo and deliciously clean skin.

  “You took a shower?”

  “Yeah. At Terry’s. He’s got a cool bathtub, this big old-fashioned deal up on claw feet.”

  Obscure relief flooded through Trevor as he remembered Terry’s clawfooted tub. Trust, he reminded himself. But trust had not been a part of his life for twenty years; it wasn’t going to come unconditionally in a couple of days.

  Zach’s hands strayed beneath the blanket. “I don’t have to be back at the club for a couple of hours.”

  “You never slow down, do you?”

  “No,” Zach admitted, “not if I have a choice.”

  “Could you just come under the covers here and hold me?”

  “No problem.” Zach kic
ked off his sneakers, slid out of his clothes, and snuggled in next to Trevor. He draped an arm across Trevor’s chest, rested his head on Trevor’s shoulder. His body was relaxed and very warm.

  “Ohhhh,” he moaned. “You feel so good. Don’t let me fall asleep.”

  “You can if you want to,” Trevor told him. “I just got done sleeping. I’ll wake you up in an hour.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve never had trouble keeping awake.”

  “Will you stay here and hold me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Mmmm.” Zach heaved a deep, contented sigh. “I love you, Trev … you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He drifted quickly into sleep, and Trevor was left staring into the dark, facing down that thought.

  He didn’t see how he could be the best thing that had ever happened to anyone, let alone someone like Zach. His life had been starred with disaster. He was probably crazy. He couldn’t lean on anyone; he couldn’t be strong enough for anyone to lean on. Maybe Trevor McGee could have been, but Trevor Black could not.

  Still, Zach had said it. And Trevor didn’t think Zach had been telling him lies.

  He wondered what would happen if Zach had to leave. Would he want Trevor to go with him? And if he did, could Trevor go? Though he had returned to the house thinking he might die here, he found that he no longer wanted to die at all. But he still hadn’t found what he had come looking for. Or had he?

  You came back looking for your family. Maybe your mistake was assuming that meant Bobby, Rosena, and Didi. Kinsey and Terry took you in, showed you more kindness than any strangers ever have. And who is this you hold in your arms now, if not family?

  I don’t want him to go. I really don’t.

  Then Trevor had a thought that made his heart miss a beat, made the spit in his mouth dry up. That thought was: Maybe Bobby thought Momma was getting ready to leave with me and Didi. And maybe he didn’t want us to go, either.

  Then why did he leave me alive? Why did he let me go?

  Because he knew you were an artist. That’s it, somehow. He knew you would come back. Artists always come back to the places that created them and ruined them.

  Take Charlie Parker. He could have lived out his middle years in France, where American jazz musicians were treated like royalty, where racial prejudice was almost nonexistent, where the heroin was strong and clean and there were no hassles from the law. But Bird couldn’t. He had to fly back to the tawdry lights of Fifty-second Street, to the clubs where he could no longer play, to the great sprawling hungry land that had made his name a legend, but would kill him at thirty-five. He had to come back. He had to see and hear everything. He was an artist.

  Okay, he thought, I’m here. But I’ll draw what I damn well want to draw. And I won’t hurt Zach, not ever again.

  As if in response, Zach moaned in his sleep and pushed his face into Trevor’s shoulder. Trevor stroked his hair and the smooth curve of his back, wondered what haunted Zach’s bad dreams. Was it a heavy grip falling on his shoulder, a set of steel bracelets dragging him away to bloody rape and death in prison? Was it his mother’s limpid eyes and cruel tongue, or his father’s hands? Or was it something less concrete: an image glimpsed in a mirror, a shadow flickering on a wall?

  The night was very quiet. Trevor heard the small secret sounds of the house, the distant thrum of traffic on the highway, the insects shrilling and sawing in the long grass outside. But closer than any of that, as close as his own, he heard Zach’s breathing and Zach’s heartbeat.

  He held Zach tighter and thought about all the things he would not give up.

  The Sacred Yew was already crowded when Trevor and Zach arrived. A warm rain had begun misting down, but kids were still milling about on the sidewalk, basking in the humid summer night. Zach saw lots of black and ragged denim, buzz cuts and long braids and hair dyed all colors. Most of the faces were young, pale, and rapt. Sick with joy, Zach thought, watching their lives unfurl before them, a myriad of roads.

  The doorman on duty was a slight, reedy teenage boy with a facial bone structure as sharp and delicate as a bird’s. His long dyed-black hair straggled into his face, lightly beaded with rain, and for a moment Zach wanted to swoop the poor starved-looking thing into his arms and give him a jolt of the energy and love crackling through his body. He managed to restrain himself.

  The boy stopped them as they entered the club, and Zach spoke the four talismanic words as easily as if he had been saying them all his life.

  “I’m with the band.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Dario.”

  The kid found the name on his list and scratched it off, then nodded at Trevor. “What about him?”

  “He’s with me.”

  “ ’Kay.” The kid picked up a rubber stamp and pressed it into a red inkpad, then against the backs of their left hands. The design was a scary-looking tree with many spreading branches, rather like the mythic Yggdrasil with its roots in hell.

  They moved from the warm night into the heat and half-suppressed excitement of the club. “Dario?” Trevor inquired.

  “It’s my stage name. After Dario Argento.”

  Then they were in the thick of the crowd and talk became impossible. Zach grabbed Trevor’s hand and led him toward the tiny graffiti-covered room at the back of the stage. Terry and R.J. were lounging on a broken-down sofa. A cooler full of the ubiquitous Natty Bohos sat atop a blown-out, gutted amp, and Zach took one.

  “So Ghost gets on the phone,” Terry was telling R.J., “and says ‘What’s going on? Did you get a new singer?’ ”

  “No shit!”

  “Yeah! And he goes, ’Well, watch out. Somebody’s after him/And then Steve gets back on, and he says, ‘Ghost dreamed the FBI or something was looking for your singer.’ ”

  “Huh … Hey, Zach. Hey, Trevor.”

  Terry got up and greeted them with a hug. “Zach, our psychic friend dreamed the FBI was after you. Say it ain’t so.”

  Zach tried to laugh. “Not unless they know about all those cattle mutilations.” Trevor squeezed his hand.

  “So,” Terry said, “you ready to go?”

  “Hell, yes!”

  “I thought we’d play two sets. Everyone will buy beer during the break and Kinsey will make more money.”

  “And we can get stoned backstage,” said Calvin, coming in. Zach wondered if he had been listening at the door. Calvin was wearing a pair of black cotton leggings and a skimpy rag that might once have been a T-shirt: nearly the same outfit Zach had on, but tighter and rattier. Zach saw that one of his nipples was pierced with a silver ring. Calvin beamed at Zach and offered him a slender black object. An eyeliner pencil.

  “Want some?”

  Slinking about the stage, his eyes smeared with wanton kohl … “May I?”

  Calvin pressed the pencil into Zach’s hand and turned away, flexing his fingers. He seemed to have toned his act down a little. In fact the whole atmosphere backstage had suddenly become brisk, excited but efficient; these guys were ready to have fun, but they also had a job to do. Terry and R.J. were standing, stretching. Zach felt the first flicker of nervousness like a wing brushing the inside of his stomach. He peered into the tiny lightless mirror Kinsey had thoughtfully provided and began outlining his eyes in black.

  Trevor watched him strangely. “What are you doing?”

  “Putting on makeup.” Zach finished, smudged the corners a bit, then looked up at Trevor. “Do you like it?”

  “I think I better go back into the club.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  Trevor leaned in close. “Because if I stay here,” he whispered in Zach’s ear, “I’m going to fuck you right in front of the band.”

  Great: now he was going on stage with a boner. “Wait till after the show,” he whispered back. “I’ll ruin you for life.”

  “Promise?”

  “Mmmmm.” Trevor’s lips covered his, Trevor’s arms slid around him and hu
gged him tight. Then Trevor looked back at the other musicians. “I hope you have a good show,” he said. They all realized they had been staring, smiled a little too widely and offered a ragged chorus of thanks.

  The backstage door swung shut and Trevor was gone into the crowd. Terry glanced at the others. “Ready?”

  A round of nods. A moment of silence. Then Terry spoke three more of rock and roll’s talismanic words:

  “Let’s do it.”

  * * *

  Trevor was standing at the very center of the dance floor when Gumbo hit the stage. He felt the crowd pushing him forward, let himself surge closer to Zach.

  Zach was already smiling at the audience as if he wanted to eat it alive. Calvin and R.J. picked up their guitars, slung the brightly colored hippie-weave straps over their shoulders. Terry sat down, leaned forward, and spoke hoarsely into the small mike mounted on his drum set.

  “Howdy! We’re Gumbo!” A spatter of whistles and applause. “Thanks. You’ll notice that tonight we’re four instead of three. Say hello to DARIO, our special guest vocalist appearing in a limited engagement of one … night … only!” A drumstick kissed the edge of a cymbal. “DARIO! A genu-wine Cajun maniac straight from New OrLEEENS!”

  Over the forest of waving, fluttering hands thrust up by the crowd, Trevor distinctly saw Zach mouth the word Shit. But he recovered fast and ripped the microphone off its stand as Terry gave the three-beat intro to the first song. Calvin unleashed a fast-and-dirty flood of guitar noise, and RJ. backed him with a bass line that made Trevor think of wheels blasting down an open highway. Zach stood with the mike clutched to his chest, arched his back and speared the audience with his glittering eyes.