The End of Billy Knight

by Ty Jacob

  “That looks amazing,” Mike said. “You take such good care of me.” He took a forkful of lasagna.

  “Well, I try. You know if anything ever happened to you, if you were sick or hurt, I’d take care of you. You know that, right?”

  Mike smiled back at Dale. “Thank you. I know you would.” His pager went off and he looked at it. “It’s Nick,” he said, and set the pager down on the table. “The lasagna’s terrific, by the way.”

  Dale was glad that Mike didn’t call Nick back until after they were done with the main course. Dale stood in the kitchen making coffee and trying to listen to Mike out in the front room on the phone. He couldn’t quite make out the conversation.

  Eventually Mike stepped into the kitchen. “Dale, Nick’s having a sex party tonight and I don’t really want to be there. Do you mind if I stay here tonight?”

  Dale couldn’t believe his good luck. “Stay? Of course you can stay. We can both come back here and crash after Hump Night.” Dale looked at the clock. It was nearly nine o’clock. “I’ve got to be on stage at the Lucky Pony by ten. We have to hurry up and eat dessert.”

  “Shit,” Mike said. “I forgot it was Wednesday. I’m still on tour time. I’m sorry, I’m pretty exhausted. Do you mind if I don’t go tonight?”

  Dale felt horrible. He’d wanted to show up with Mike on his arm. He’d wanted them to go together, like before. “But I’m doing Cher. You always like it when I do Cher.”

  “Oh, yeah, but I’m really not up for a night out tonight.”

  “Are you sure?” It was true, Dale thought. Mike did look tired. “Well, I guess you could just stay here, if you’re really too beat. While you were away I, ah, I got some furniture for your old bedroom. You can sleep in there.” Dale looked down at the cake and started to slice a large piece for Mike.

  “Furniture?” Mike was already walking down the hall. Dale heard the door opening to Mike’s old room, then Mike walking back. “I can’t believe you got a bed, and a dresser, and a night stand,” Mike said. “How’d you afford all that?”

  “That’s why the goddess invented credit cards.”

  “But no roommate yet?”

  “No. I suppose I thought it would be easier to find one if I advertised that it was a furnished bedroom. In the meantime, you can sleep in there tonight.” Dale held out a white plate with a piece of dark chocolate cake, and he saw the smile on Mike’s face.

  “The cake is beautiful. Did you buy it?”

  “What! Serve you a store bought cake? I’d sooner have my dick fall off. I baked this for you this morning, after you called. It has an orange in it.”

  “An incredible meal, a bed for me in my old room, homemade chocolate cake. You’re really too good to me.”

  “Yes,” Dale answered. “I am.”

  52. In the Closet

  THINGS GOT CRAZY after they finished dessert. Mike watched as Dale started running around, looking for his Cher dress.

  “I was just mending it the other day!” Dale yelled. He ran off into his bedroom to see if it was there. Mike slowly cleared the table, stacked the rest of dishes in the sink, then wandered down the hall and looked into Dale’s room.

  It was a mess, as always. Dale was rummaging through his closet, flipping past dress after dress hanging on hangers. He pulled out things at random and threw them behind him. Dresses arced through the air, hangers leading a streamer of fabric as they fell and crumpled into lifeless heaps on the bed or across the floor.

  “Don’t just stand there,” Dale said. “Help me find it. It’s black and sequined with red metallic shoulder pads.”

  Mike laughed. “How do you misplace a dress with red metallic shoulder pads?”

  “Shut up and look.”

  Mike walked out of Dale’s room and into the bathroom. He looked behind the bathroom door and there it was on a hanger, hanging neatly, all black and red and very Cher.

  He took the dress and stood in Dale’s bedroom doorway. “Is this it?”

  “Oh, my lucky angel!” Dale came running over. “Where the hell was it?”

  “Back of the bathroom door.”

  “Oh, Jesus. If you hadn’t been here I would have looked forever and ever and never thought to look there.”

  Dale zipped the Cher dress into a garment bag with two other dresses, and threw a bunch of makeup into his old train case. He grabbed several wigs and threw them into a bag. Then he picked up a black stiletto off the floor. “Where’s the other one? Oh God.” He started rummaging through the heap of shoes on the closet floor, scattering them everywhere. “Got it!” He threw the shoes into a handbag and turned to Mike. “You’re sure you don’t want to go?”

  Mike was sorry to disappoint Dale, but he couldn’t deal with the Lucky Pony tonight. He was exhausted. “I’m sure.”

  “Well then make yourself useful and help me carry this all down, would you?”

  When they stepped out of the apartment and into the hallway, Dale said to him, “You’ll need my key to get back in.”

  “I’ve still got my old one.”

  Suddenly, in the middle of all that flurry and scuttle, Dale stopped right there in the hallway. He looked at Mike and grinned, “It’s like you never left.”

  Mike helped pack Dale into his car and waved him off, then went back up the stairs and inside. He looked around the kitchen, at the dishes piled in the sink, the lasagna still sitting on the stove top, the cake uncovered on the counter. He felt perfectly at ease, like he was home, even though he hadn’t lived there in almost four months now. He put the lasagna in the refrigerator and covered the cake with plastic wrap. The entire time he was thinking that he was too hard on Dale, too easily annoyed. The incessant phone calls that had bothered him all summer long weren’t really so bad. If they’d suddenly stopped, he probably would have missed them. He would have felt even more alone in the world. He put the stopper in the kitchen sink and filled it with hot soapy water. Then he washed every last dish, dried them, and put them all away.

  When he was done, he walked down to Dale’s bedroom and looked in. It looked worse than usual, as though a dress bomb had gone off. He started picking up the dresses and hanging them back in the closet. Almost every dress brought back some kind of memory of Sasha in it, singing on stage at the Lucky Pony or laughing in some club somewhere. When he began pushing the shoes back into their heap on the closet floor he noticed the safe again. There was a long red dress hanging down above it that had gotten shut in the metal door, so that the safe didn’t seem entirely closed. He tried to gently tug at the fabric, but it was caught. He pulled at the door a little to see if he could release the captured dress, and the door swung open easily.

  The edge of something sparkling inside the safe caught his eye. He pulled the door open wide then, just to have a quick look. He saw Sasha’s tiny gold crown. He almost laughed out loud. It was a fake crown, he knew, something cheap she’d bought at a costume shop years ago. It was covered in plastic rubies and emeralds. Only Sasha would lock up her fake gold crown. He was about to shut the safe door when he noticed a brown plastic pill bottle with a white cap.

  Mike reached into the safe and picked the pill bottle up. There was no label. He pushed down on the child-proof cap and turned. Inside there was a handful of dull green, oval shaped pills. He poured them into his hand and picked one up. There was a split-pill line on one side and on the other side was the number ‘542’. He put the pills back in the bottle and screwed on the lid.

  There was one more thing in the safe – a simple black videotape. It, like the bottle, had no labels of any kind. The black plastic tab on the side of the videotape was punched out, protecting the contents from being recorded over by mistake. It looked rewound, ready to watch. He knew he shouldn’t watch it, but he couldn’t help himself.

  Mike took the videotape out to the front room and put it in the VCR. He sat down on the floor in front of the television to watch.

  The first thing he saw was someone’s foot. It took a moment befor
e he recognized it as his own. From there the camera trailed up his body, moving from ankle to calf to knee. It slowed at the crotch of the red gym shorts he was wearing, moved to his bare chest, and finally stopped on his face. He was napping on the fake leather couch, out in the front room. The camera panned back. The windows were open, and the curtains were blowing in. He rolled over, the camera jumbled, and the scene cut.

  There were two other scenes of Mike sleeping before suddenly there was Earl, talking directly into the camera, mumbling. His hair was a mess and his eyes were red. “Yeah,” he said to the camera. “Yeah, he’s hot. I said I’d do it. I’ll do him.”

  What Mike saw next confused him, made him feel like he was suddenly outside of himself and somehow watching from very far away. The wobbly, hand-held video camera panned back, and there he was, Mike, apparently passed out on the bed behind Earl, wearing nothing but the brilliant blue shirt he’d last worn the night of the Lessing party. The shirt was unbuttoned and lay open across his chest. His dick was flopped to the side.

  Mike had no memory of this at all. He watched as Earl reached over to him and began caressing his body, playing with his dick. He was surprised to see himself turning his head, moving his arm, acting strangely compliant, as though he didn’t even care.

  Earl reached behind Mike’s back and sat him up, and it seemed Mike was a rag doll, doing whatever Earl wanted. Earl slipped off Mike’s shirt, then stood and took off his own clothes, lay back on the bed, and pulled Mike’s face into his crotch. Eventually Earl pushed his dick into Mike’s mouth, and Mike seemed almost to accept it, or at least he didn’t fight it.

  The scene cut then, and suddenly there was Earl’s finger, pushing into Mike’s ass, playing with it, one finger, and then two. “What a fucking great hole,” Earl said clearly. The camera tilted and things shuffled around, then Earl was kneeling behind Mike on the bed. Mike was bent over on all fours, his face pushed down into the mattress. Earl’s dick was hard. He slapped Mike’s ass a couple times, then reached out to pick up a bottle of lube. He squirted some into his hand and applied it to his dick, then rubbed the rest onto Mike’s asshole He moved his hips forward. He wasn’t wearing a condom.

  “That’s it,” a voice said from off camera. “That’s it.” The voice belonged to Dale. “Fuck him just like that.” The camera jostled and Mike saw Sasha’s hand move into the frame, wearing her sapphire ring. She pulled away a pillow, and the camera moved in and went steady again.

  Mike watched in total disbelief as Earl’s cock slid, bareback, into his ass. Earl pushed in deep, then slid out, pushed back in again. Mike heard himself mumble something, but it sounded like somebody speaking out of the depths of a dream, a sleepwalker who wasn’t really there in the room at all but far off someplace else instead, in another world. Nobody, neither Earl nor Sasha, paid any attention to what he was trying to say.

  The camera panned back, and Earl started to thrust harder into Mike. His hands held Mike’s hips in place. There was the slapping sound of Earl’s body against Mike’s ass, Earl saying, “Fuck yeah.”

  Mike watched, horrified, as he himself in that bed did nothing to stop it from happening, just let Earl fuck him that way.

  When Earl said, “I’m gonna shoot my load,” Mike’s heart fell.

  Dale’s voice came through clearly now, cold and monotone. “Come inside him.’

  Everybody knew Earl was HIV positive. Sitting there in front of the television, watching, totally helpless and unable to intervene, Mike began to cry.

  Earl began shouting, “Aw, yeah, yeah.” His hips quickened and then he pushed deeply into Mike, tipped back his head, and let out a long, deep moan.

  Mike could barely see for the tears streaming down his face. He was only vaguely aware of the camera moving closer as Earl pulled out slowly, semen dripping, and then the screen went black. Mike curled up into a ball on the floor, and he sobbed.

  He didn’t know how long he lay there on the floor. Eventually he stood up and started shouting at the walls, not saying anything that really made any sense, just yelling. His hands were shaking as he took the videotape out of the VCR, picked up his car keys, and walked out the door.

  He threw the videotape onto the passenger seat and started the engine, then pulled out into traffic. As he did, he felt small things inside him beginning to break. The Lessing party was in mid-June, over three months ago. He had to get tested. Driving down La Cienega Boulevard, he began crying all over again, the windows rolled up, inside the bubble of his car alone, surrounded by darkness. He wiped the tears off his face with the back of his arm, and then returned to yelling.

  He went down Santa Monica Boulevard and parked not far from the Lucky Pony. He left the videotape in the car. He didn’t want her to have it anymore. The bouncers didn’t stop him as he walked into the bar. He barely even saw them as he passed them by.

  Inside people were laughing, drinking, some were dancing. The stage was empty. It was almost eleven o’clock. Mike looked around, but Sasha was nowhere. The music was loud. Somebody turned to him and yelled, “Hey, Billy Knight! Nice to meet you.” He turned away and went to the door at the side of the stage, opened it, and headed down the hallway toward Sasha’s dressing room. There on the door was the star that she’d recently made herself – yellow cardboard, her name in gold glitter at the center. He threw the door open without knocking and stepped in.

  “Billy!” Sasha looked up at him in the mirror, her back to him. “You gave me a fright, barging in here like that. But you’re just in time. I’m about to do Cher. What made you change your mind?” She was wearing the long black Cher wig, the dress with the red metallic shoulder pads. There was an eyeliner pencil in her hand. She glanced up again, and then turned around. “What’s wrong, baby? You look upset.” She stood up, put her arm out and came toward him.

  He lunged at her, pushed her hard, felt his hands sink into the padding of her bra as she stumbled backwards, landing half-seated against the vanity, the back of her head banging against the mirror. Her eyeliner pencil fell to the floor. She looked shocked, and suddenly frightened, and surprisingly frail.

  He screamed. “God damn you!”

  “Baby, what? What?!”

  “You had him fuck me bareback! You did it!” He was nothing but rage and tears. He could barely see again.

  She stood and moved toward him again, slowly, holding both arms out as though to hug him, whispering “No, no.” He pushed her harder this time, and she tumbled down between the chair and the wall. He pushed the chair away, and she lay there looking up at him, one arm up, scared. He wanted to climb on top of her and choke her, wanted to kick her. She deserved it. But something stopped him. He stood over her crying. He didn’t want to hurt her.

  “Baby,” she said, looking up at him from the floor. “I never did that.” Her wig was crooked, the black sequined dress tangled around her legs.

  He had to concentrate to push out the words. “I saw your videotape. I looked in your safe.”

  Her eyes opened wide. She shook her head violently, as though an electric shock was suddenly running through her.

  He faced her vanity and leaned over it. In one large arc with both arms, he swept away everything there, pushed it so that it went flying into the air and onto the floor and on top of Sasha. Tubes of lipstick. Trays with small square colors of eye shadow. A compact and a hand-held mirror. Lotion. Cotton balls. Small glass bottles in different shapes. Little tiny pencils.

  Sasha let out a strange noise from the floor – a low, mannish howl.

  Mike turned toward the chrome rack that stood behind him, where dresses hung on hangers, and he pushed it over. It fell toward her, and she quickly pulled back her legs and shouted, huddled against the wall. “But I love you! I love you!”

  He looked at her. “You love me?!”

  “I did it because I love you.” The high, affected voice of Sasha was gone. This was Dale. “I want to take care of you. I just want you to need me. You can live a long time on the dr
ugs. I’ll take care of you.”

  Mike stepped backwards. “You want me to get sick? You want to do that to me? You had Earl fuck me bareback for that?” He felt his face twisting into shapes he could not control. His eyes burned. He struggled to breathe. He wanted to get away from that small, dingy room, to get away from Dale, to go far. It was as though a room that had always seemed safe was suddenly lined with daggers and knives, landmines under the floor.

  Carl was at the door. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Mike pushed past him and ran into the hallway. Carl tried to grab his arm, but Mike pulled away and ran down the hall, out into the bar and through the crowd gathering now at the foot of the stage, and then through the doors back outside, out onto Santa Monica Boulevard. One of the bouncers called out to him as he pushed past. “Yo, Billy! What’s up?” Mike didn’t stop, just ran down the street as fast as he could, past men wandering toward the Lucky Pony, past shops that were closed, a movie theatre, a young straight couple speaking Russian, past the Mexican cantina, a group of lesbians, a gallery, past a line of muscular men in Levis in front of the country-western bar, past the book store. And then he just kept going. He was almost all the way to La Cienega before he realized he’d passed his car. He stopped and looked around, breathing hard, a sweat breaking across his forehead and back. The streetlights turned everything yellowish-green, and cars were driving up and down the boulevard. He glanced ahead toward La Cienega and then back toward where he’d come. He had no place to go.

  53. The Blackness

  DALE HEARD THE sound of the street cleaner in the morning, but he didn’t care. He’d barely slept. It was Monday morning. He knew his car was parked on the wrong side of the street, knew that if he didn’t get up and move it quickly, he was going to get a ticket. He scratched at the stubble on his chin, rolled over, and went back to bed.