The River in Winter

by Matt Dean

  Arcane, but comprehensible. Subsequent paragraphs became more and more dense with acronyms and words derived from Greek and Latin. CTL's. PBMC's. CD8+DR+CD25-. GM-CSF. IFN-?. IFN-?. IFN-?. Monocyctes. Follicular lymphocytes. Dendritic reticulum cells. Michael understood all this? I carefully returned the bookmark to its place.

  At the top of a stack of books beside the desk lay a hardcover copy of Stephen Hawking's Brief History of Time. I picked it up, thumbed through. Dozens of pages had been dog-eared and annotated in the same cramped cursive as the Day Runner. On the title page of chapter eight, tiny words filled the space around the chapter title with a digressive meditation on Einstein, absolute time, and the existence of God. It seemed that Michael believed in Einstein, but not in God or absolute time. It seemed so, but I couldn't be certain; the handwriting was difficult to decipher, and the prose was convoluted or perhaps simply beyond my understanding. I returned the book to the stack, squaring its edges with the book beneath.

  On the wall above the desk, Michael's undergraduate degree hung in an ebony frame. It was an elaborate, professional framing job-a creamy yellow matte, a bronze medal in an oval cutout, a ribbon of black, yellow, and red stretched across the bottom. According to the Gothic-lettered parchment, Michael-Michael Walrath-had received a Bachelor of Science from Heidelberg College and had graduated magna cum laude.

  The door swung open. Michael stepped through, kicked the door closed behind him. Though he carried my sweater, jeans, and embarrassing candy-striped pink boxer shorts in a neatly folded stack, he stopped short just inside the door, as if he hadn't quite expected to see me standing in his room.

  I set my hand on the back of his chair, felt the fine-grained leather of my jacket collar, and wondered if I should have somehow covered myself with it. I might have wrapped it around my waist like Donna Reed's apron, might have cinched the sleeves into a knot at the small of my back. No matter. Too late now. I moved the chair and hid behind it.

  "Your last name is Walrath," I said.

  "I'm aware of that."

  "I always thought your name was Walton."

  In the manner of a zookeeper shoving food into the cage of a ravenous, man-eating predator, he set my clothes on the desk and sidled away. He kept his eyes resolutely off to one side. "Why do you think I always call you Jonas?"

  All at once my knees felt weak. I sank sideways onto the chair. I let out a long laugh, a crazy bark of a laugh, a mad song of a laugh.

  When I'd met Tory, I'd thought he was sad, over the hill, a dim bulb, and yet it turned out that he knew more about Beethoven than I did, that he could quote Berlin and Hammerstein as well as or better than I could. For pity's sake, he could read, could translate, German.

  I'd thought that Eliot meant to help me, to deepen and enrich my life, but to him I'd been just another queer in need of a cure. Through a series of lies and blandishments he'd dragged me into his bizarre missionary fantasy.

  For more than a year I'd thought that Michael Walton-Walrath-was a self-centered frat boy, beautiful but wanton, working his way through the Twin Cities one ass at a time like some sort of sexual conquistador. I'd never have guessed that he was a medical student, an MD/PhD candidate, one half of a committed couple, a saver of lives.

  "What?" Michael said. He was looking at me now, focusing-so it seemed-on the center of my bare chest.

  "I just realized I'm not exactly a great judge of character."

  "Could you get dressed, please?" he said.

  As I reached for my boxers, I muttered an apology. "My mind was wandering," I said. "I didn't mean to-."

  "It's not that I don't-. Never mind. I shouldn't-."

  I picked up my jeans, shook out the folds. The denim snapped in the air like a flag whipped by strong wind. I said, "It's okay. I know that you and-." What the fuck was that rower's name? "That is to say-. You don't have to-."

  "James," he said. "His name is James, and we're-."

  "I saw the picture. Worth a thousand words, as they say." I put on my sweater.

  As if hearing the boom-box for the first time, he turned toward it, cocked an ear. "This is his voice," he said. "This is his band, playing a song he wrote."

  I put on my shirt. It was still warm from the dryer. James sang something about a scar. "She bore her opinion of me like a scar upon her face"? Was that it?

  "Jonah," Michael said. He was looking at the knees of my jeans. Smudges of brown and green still marked the faded twill. My face grew hot. "I don't know what you were doing down at the beach. I don't know why you were out on the dock like that, wailing like some sort of wounded animal."

  So I had been bawling out there on the dock. And he had heard me. I dropped my eyes. Michael's thick toes drummed against the linoleum. I had a crazy impulse to prostrate myself, to scatter my limbs across the floor, to cover his feet in kisses and tears.

  "You don't have to tell me," he was saying. "I mean, don't tell me. I don't want to know. But you have to take care of yourself. Nothing is worth-." He put his hand over his mouth, as if stoppering it.

  "I know."

  He dropped his hand, fidgeted with the drawstring of his sweatpants. "I don't know if you do."

  Suddenly I couldn't face him any longer. I had to get away. I had to get home. I put on my jacket. "How long did I sleep?" I looked around for a clock. "What time is it?"

  Shrugging, he checked his watch. "Quarter after four."

  "Fuck. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to-."

  He put up his hands. "It's okay. I never sleep more than three or four hours a night. Never have, suspect I never will."

  "But surely at this hour-."

  He shook his head. "I go for my run every night, then I come back here and sleep for a few hours, then I get up and study. Except for the hypothermic redhead in my bed, this has been a pretty normal night."

  I said, "I don't know how to thank you. I know I can never repay you." I still could not look at him. I stared at the photograph of Michael and James. In the photo they looked absurdly happy. Had Tom and I ever looked that happy, even in the beginning? "I can never-."

  In a couple of steps he closed the gap between us. He took me in his arms. He said, "I wish I could fix it, whatever it is."

  For a moment I stood rigid against him, too shocked to return his embrace. But then my arms closed tight around him, pulled him hard against me. I buried my face in his sweet-smelling hair.

  * * *

  11 - The Goblin March

  On the way home, in the back of a Yellow Cab, I dozed. The driver tapped my knee to wake me. Groggy, not quite awake, I looked down. Where he had touched me, on the left knee, my jeans bore a greenish-brown splotch, roughly circular, about four inches in circumference. Another stain, more irregular in shape but nearly as big, covered the other knee.

  I looked up, and I saw that the driver, a jowly, whiskered man in his late fifties or early sixties, was staring at the spot on my left knee. I handed him a twenty-dollar bill and, before he could make change, climbed out of the cab on the curb side.

  Dawn was a purplish vein of light in the eastern sky. The house was as I'd left it-no bumper stickers, no chalk on the sidewalk, no graffiti. The cab spun away on Sherburne. I stumbled up the walk.

  First thing, I called Martin and left a message on his voice mail. Sick, not coming in, terribly sorry. I said something-no doubt something not entirely convincing-about food poisoning.

  I stripped, dumped my clothes into the laundry basket. I showered, the longest, hottest shower of my life. I tumbled into bed.

  The doorbell woke me. For many minutes I lay staring at the ceiling, dully thinking that I couldn't remember anyone ever ringing my doorbell. Jehovah's Witnesses, perhaps.

  The windows were dark. I switched on the lamp. According to my alarm clock, it was just after six. I'd slept for more than twelve hours.

  The doorbell rang again, a dozen or more times in the space of a few seconds. If some Jehovah's Witnesses had decided to pay me a visit, they must be unu
sually persistent. I put on my stained jeans and padded to the front door. John Peterson, whose friends called him Spike, stood on my front stoop in his sheepskin jacket, his brown boots, stiff new jeans, and an orange and blue plaid shirt. When he saw me, he smiled. "Beta," he said. Shedding his jacket, he pushed past me into the entryway.

  I closed the door. He pinned me to it with a hand on each shoulder. With the full length of his body against mine, he kissed me. His scent-an earthy mix of something peppery and something sweet-filled my nose. Pulling away, he unbuttoned my Levi's. They fell to the floor at my feet.

  "I've missed you," he said. He laughed, as if the idea of missing me could not exactly be taken seriously, but then he kissed me again, and the kiss was very serious indeed.

  I set my hands on his forearms and squeezed, willing him to wrap his hands around my throat as he had before. An oblique gesture, a sidelong way of making the request, but he seemed to understand. He laid his hands on either side of my neck and gently pressed his thumbs into the hollow at the base of my neck.

  Taking me by the hand, he led me to the bedroom. Bronze light from the bedside lamp made plain the path to my bed. He laid me across it. Still clothed, he lay atop me. His knee pressed my erection down between my thighs, pinioned it. Painful, yes, but no pain had ever pleased me more.

  He kissed me, stroked my bare shoulders, chest, hips. Again, his hands grasped my throat. His weight trapped me.

  But then he rolled us over, so that I lay astride his lean body. I undressed him. Half-crazed, I feasted on him, on his soft mouth, his broad neck, the damp knots of hair in his armpits, his stiff nipples, his belly, his pulsing cock. He moaned. In this position I could not have all of him. How maddening that I could not have all of him. I moved on: his perineum, dark and fragrant with sweat; his legs, broad and solid; his feet, long and gnarled. Crouching on the edge of the bed, looking up at him looking down at me, I took both of his big toes into my mouth at once.

  "Get up here," he said, chuckling. He beckoned with two fingers. "Get your butt up here."

  I dragged my body along his until our mouths met. I eased off him and nestled against his side. His hand traced the curve of my back. I wrapped my fist around his erection and stroked it gently.

  "You want it?" he said.

  No way existed for me to give my answer the emphasis and power it deserved. Perhaps if I could have scrawled it across the sky or used my own blood as ink, I could have come close. My answer came out in a ragged whisper.

  Reaching for the bedside table, he switched off the light. Silver and green spots danced before my eyes.

  He flipped me onto my belly and knelt astride my legs. He lowered himself over me. I held my breath, braced myself. He spat noisily. He entered me in one thorough, excruciating drive. I clutched a pillow to my face. Heedless of my squirming, he fucked me with thrusts long and savage. I cried into the pillow.

  After a time the pain ceased. At every instant it seemed I might explode. I slipped my hand between my cock and the sheets, and the mere brush of my fingers finished me.

  Panting and hollering, Spike drove hard to his own end. He collapsed against me. The rise and fall of his chest beat a crazy cadence on my back. His sweat drenched my body. He stroked my hair and nuzzled my ear.

  Abruptly, apropos of nothing, he laughed.

  "What?" I said.

  "I guess neither one of us got our fill last weekend."

  "I called you, but I didn't know you gave me your pager. I left a stupid message." I was glad that, in the dark, he couldn't see me blush.

  "I called you, too. But you"-here he bit my earlobe, a little too hard-"are the last person on earth without an answering machine."

  "You didn't-? That is to say, did you-? Did you drive all this way just to-."

  He shook his head. The patch of whiskers below his lip brushed my shoulder. "I'm flying out tomorrow."

  "Flying?" I said, too loud. I cleared my throat. I turned to face him. He laid his leg over my hip. "Where to?"

  "Los Angeles." He grinned. "I'm resurrecting my porn career. I got a call from an old friend of mine. He's been trying to put something together, and a guy dropped out at the last minute."

  All at once a dozen highlights of his earlier performances came to mind. Spike kneeling. Spike on all fours. Spike in a sling. I rolled away from him and sat on the edge of the bed. I turned on the light. "What kind of-? I mean, will you be-?"

  Blinking, squinting against the light, he arranged some pillows against the headboard. He sat up against them. He stroked his sticky thigh, smoothing flat the black hairs there. "He wants someone ? aggressive. Someone mean, actually."

  "Mean?"

  There was a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He nodded. "'Mean as shit' were his exact words."

  I swallowed hard. "What is it, some kind of-?" Some kind of what? I didn't exactly know what I meant to ask.

  Leaning forward, he grabbed a hank of my hair and dragged me toward him. His teeth knocked against mine. He drove his tongue deep into my mouth. He let go, shoved me away from him. I nearly toppled off the bed.

  "Like that," he said. A few flame-red hairs had come loose from my scalp; he sprinkled them on the floor. "Mean as shit."

  My heart hammered in my chest. I saw that he was hard again, and then that I was, too. My mouth was dry. I licked my lips. "Do you want to-? That is to say, do you need to rehearse?"

  * * *

  My hunger was bottomless. I fed on him, and could not get my fill. Hours earlier I'd imagined myself at Michael Walrath's feet, flattened against the floor, crawling and begging, worshipful, penitent. With Spike I got my wish, and it seemed I couldn't go low enough.

  He stepped on me, trampled me, and yet I could not go low enough. He called me names, made me repeat the names he called me. He bent me over his knee, struck and heated my skin with the palms of his hands. I could not get my fill.

  At some point, when we were in the living room, he cranked the stereo and set the needle on the platter. The Great Fugue, the goblin march. He laughed at me, kicked my thighs lightly with his bare toes, ridiculed my taste in music. Spike-the subject-dragged me-his countersubject, his answer-along behind him, molding me, forcing me to obey his mysterious purposes, to accommodate whatever remote and inscrutable harmonies he had in mind.

  I could not fucking get enough.

  By midnight, sweat dripped from our bodies. My skin felt branded and bruised. My knees and hips and jaw ached. Spike said, "I need to blow a fucking joint. Want some?"

  My jeans still lay in the entryway. Spike put them on. They were a snug fit, inches too short. Without even buttoning the fly he dashed barefoot and shirtless to his car. Lying naked across the sofa, I watched him through the open door. His car was a great beast of a thing, green-gold in the weird light of the streetlamps. When he returned with a bag of weed and a stack of rolling papers, I sat up to make room for him on the sofa. He said, "This is some good shit. Blow-your-fucking-mind kind of shit."

  Sitting next to me, hip to hip, he rolled a joint on the mud-stained knee of my Levi's. With dainty pinches he crumbled the buds into flakes and fragments. He rolled the paper and licked the glue with the darting tip of his tongue. As he passed me the unlit fatty and a lighter, I said, "I never-. That is to say, what do I-?"

  He laughed. "Just watch what I do, and do the same."

  He lit up. Sucked the smoke deep, swallowed and held it. Again he passed me the joint. I did as he had done. He exhaled sweet smoke and took another drag.

  "Good shit, right?"

  I nodded, but in point of fact I felt nothing. We smoked. Beethoven still played on the stereo, more softly now. It was not the Great Fugue. I thought it might be the C-sharp minor quartet. Certainly I felt the C minor mood in spades, as Tory had put it.

  "What is this?" he asked me. He nodded toward the stereo. "I don't get your taste in music at all."

  I shrugged. "It's Beethoven. I heard it on the radio. I got hooked somehow."

&nbs
p; Curls of blue smoke escaped his lips. "Highbrow shit. Kind of stuffy." He kissed my ear. "You don't strike me as the stuffy type. Stuffed, maybe." He licked my neck.

  When nothing remained of the joint but a smoking twist of paper, I at last felt a tingle, a buzz, a slight giddiness. I couldn't help thinking that beer would be cheaper, easier to get, and more effective.

  As if he'd read my mind, Spike said, "Got any beer?"

  I shook my head. "There's a bar more or less around the corner. A block and a half, two blocks. A gay bar."

  He sucked the roach, glared at it as if reproving it for insufficient longevity. Pinching it delicately between thumb and forefinger, he sucked it again. "What time is it?"

  The VCR clock blinked a series of zeroes. I couldn't remember the last time I'd touched or looked at the clock in the kitchen. I went to check the alarm clock in the bedroom. When I came back, I told him, "Almost twelve-thirty."

  "Let's go."

  We didn't trouble to shower or even to wash our hands. We dressed in a hurry. As we walked, Spike draped his arm over my shoulder, held my body close against his. I glanced around, following with my eyes the cars that passed us. I couldn't stop thinking that his public display of affection and proprietorship would someday soon be repaid with more Stinson bumper stickers.

  * * *

  The Town House was crowded and too warm, rippling with blue neon light. A slow, sweet Mary Chapin Carpenter song played too loudly. Hugging couples filled the dance floor. In a chilly corner near the door, we found a stretch of empty wall and leaned against it.

  "Get me a beer," Spike said. His tone was lordly, masterful. I didn't quite trust myself with a reply.

  I wriggled through sweat-damp bodies. At the bar, I ordered two beers. With an ostentatious display of self-control, the bartender began naming all the beers on tap. I seized on the third, MGD. As the bartender filled two plastic cups, the song changed. Two men near me were kissing. Even over the din of a Brooks and Dunn two-step remix, even over the scuff and clomp of a hundred boots on the dance floor, I heard the wet smack of the men's lips and tongues.