by Matt Dean
The phone rang. I froze. On and on the bell jangled, bright and loud.
I made for the door. Stopped. Turned. Answered the phone.
"You killed him." It was the same deep voice that had left all those voice mails on my phone at work. "As sure as if you put a gun to his head, you killed him."
"Who-?"
"My brother," the voice said. "You killed him."
Dial tone.
I stared at the handset. George? Tom's brother, George? All this-the bumper stickers, the paint, the scratched windows, the voice mails-. It had all been George's doing?
He was just a kid-true, just a kid. But clearly he was capable of violence, of evil.
I needed to get out of here. I unplugged the phone, and I left.
Just as I reached the curb, a car rumbled toward me. An old Cadillac, a behemoth, greenish-blue. Its grille had been busted out or kicked in, so that it appeared to be grinning toothlessly, malevolently. Much of the vinyl had peeled away from its roof, and strips of it waved and shimmered in the failing sunlight. The windows and windshield were all tinted black, so that I could see the driver only as a vague silhouette.
The Cadillac's horn blew. I jumped, faltered, backed away from the street. The car veered, its vicious grin aimed directly at me. It came to a stop with its fat front tire against the curb. All the driver had to do to leap the curb, I was sure, was tap the accelerator. To get to my car, to flee, I would have to enter the street, walk or run out into the open. But by the time I reached my driver's-side door, slipped the key into the lock, and climbed in, I knew, the Cadillac's driver could have run me over four or five times.
I turned and bolted for the house.
As I ran, I fumbled in my hip pocket for my keys, fished them out, dropped them, shuffled through them, dropped them again. I found the door key. I stabbed the key into the lock. Turned it. Opened the door. I crashed through it, and then I heard behind me-realized that I had been hearing all the while I'd been running-a voice. A deep male voice.
"Beta! Beta! Beta Murray!"
* * *
Spike wandered through the house, looking at all the ruined windows, tracing the letters with his thick fingers. He wore a full beard now, bushy and black. He stroked it.
"What the hell?" he said.
"My vandal."
"Your vandal? You have a pet vandal?"
He stopped at the box of bad influences, stooped over it.
"Are you moving?" he asked me.
I shook my head, but then I said, "Yes. Soon. Now."
"My videos are in here," he said. He smiled. "Are you throwing these away?"
"I was going to-. It's hard to explain."
"I brought you a new one to add to your collection." From the inside pocket of his jacket he drew a videotape. It came free with some difficulty, snagging on the corners of the pocket. He waved it in the air. He grinned. "Hot off the duplicator," he said.
He slipped the video into the VCR. He pushed play.
After all the disclaimers, the FBI piracy warning, and an advertisement for lube, the screen faded to black. An electric guitar crunched fat chords. It sounded familiar-the dotted rhythm, the predominance of minor sevenths. The goblin march? The Great Fugue, played on an electric guitar?
A title swam up from a single point of light to fill the screen.
A single word. The title was a single word. Dirty.
Suddenly Spike stood quite close to me. He'd been smoking pot. I could smell it on him. He reeked of it. The bottom dropped out of my stomach.
Spike kissed my ear. "I think it turned out pretty well," he said. "All things considered."
It took me a second to realize that he meant the video.
His credit-he was still John Bambrick, I saw-flashed across the screen.
Taking my hand, he drew me closer. Fred and Ginger. He wrapped his arms around me. He'd lost weight. There were deep clefts on either side of his mouth. Veins-the channels and distributaries of a river delta-stood out at his temples.
I struggled to pack into one sentence the events of four months. "Things have changed," I said.
Letting go, he stepped back. "Are you with someone?" He looked around him. If he expected to see signs that I'd taken up residence with another man, he saw instead the wreckage of my lazy and solitary life. Shirts, towels, books, papers-a broad jumble of junk on either side of a small path to the hallway. The brown-stained sock still lay in the middle of the floor.
"No, I'm not, but-."
Smiling, he again drew me close to him. In long smooth strokes his hands caressed my back. "What then?" Before I could answer, he kissed me.
His mouth was cool and tasted of the pot he'd been smoking. His whiskers chafed my chin and cheeks. Plunging my fingers into the starling-darkness of his hair, I pulled him against me. He pressed his hips to mine. He crushed me against him.
Together we worked the buttons of his clothing. Together we stripped away his shirt and jeans. Underneath he was nude-no underwear, no socks. I touched him everywhere. I nibbled the smoothness of his chest. I squeezed the hard curves of his ass.
Pushing me back, onto the floor, he lay on top of me. He linked his fingers with mine, pinning my hands to the floor. He kissed me roughly, like a man staking a claim. Letting go my hands, he tugged the hem of my T-shirt and in one sharp move pulled it and the flannel overshirt from my body. Meanwhile I yanked open my belt and fly. With one firm yank he laid me bare.
He flipped me over. He spread himself across my back. Tucking himself in at top and bottom, he nuzzled my neck.
Wrapping one hand round my neck, he turned my head. "Bed?"
"There's-. There's glass in it."
"Glass?"
"My vandal."
"Right. You have a pet vandal. I have a pet redhead, you have a pet vandal."
"I-. I don't mind the floor," I said, and I lifted my hips, thrust myself up into him. "But could you-? Could you-?"
He kissed the back of my neck. "What?"
But I couldn't say it. Instead, I moved my hands, moved them into the small of my back, clasped them as if they were bound. I craned my neck, looked at him.
He grinned and reached for my jeans, for my belt.
* * *
I lay underneath him, my hands bound with my belt, my head spinning, my cock humping the rough carpet. He fucked me. It hurt, but I wanted it to hurt. I wished it could hurt worse than it did.
"I have the best line in the whole movie," he told me.
I grunted. I was incapable of speech, and in any case, this was no time for a chat.
"You'll see. It's coming up. Look."
I looked. The scene began without preliminaries, without dialogue. A bodybuilder-a giant, a god, far bigger even than Charlie-stood in an empty room. Naked, erect, he stroked himself. From knees to navel he was slick, wet with lube. Spike appeared, also naked. He kissed the bodybuilder, tweaked his nipples. Yanking on them, yanking hard, yanking downward, Spike brought the other man to his knees. The bodybuilder looked up, worshipful. He held hands behind his back.
Groaning, I lifted my hips. Spike thrust himself forward and down, buried himself in me, held still. His beard scoured the back of my neck.
He said, "Here it comes."
Spike-the onscreen Spike-said, "Let's see if we can get you pregnant."
Everything stopped. My heart thumped, hammered, threatened to burst. I turned my head, saw him in the corner of my eye. "Pregnant? What does that mean-pregnant?"
He shoved in deeper. He said nothing.
On the screen, the bodybuilder said, "Fuck yeah." His voice was thinner, higher, than I'd expected.
"Pregnant," I said. I tried to force my hands apart, tried to wriggle free of the belt, but he'd cinched it tight. I tried to lift him off me, but he was too big, too heavy. "You said you were clean."
With his mouth against my ear, he said, "Things have changed."
"Things have-. What the fuck are you-? You weren't going to-?" The leather dug into my
wrists.
"You hate rubbers as much as I do. You're obviously pretty slutty. By now, I figured-."
I raised my hands, shoved against him. I looked at him over my shoulder. "Get off."
"That's what I'm trying to do," he said. He stirred his cock around inside me. It hurt.
"Let me up," I said. My throat felt scratchy, my voice sounded hoarse. Had I been yelling?
Yes. Yes, I'd been yelling. Less than sixty seconds ago, I'd been howling, urging him to fuck me harder.
"What the fuck?" he said. But he rolled off me and set about freeing my hands.
I rubbed my wrists. "You have to-. I have to go," I said. I reached for my jeans.
"Chill out, Beta."
Since I'd seen him last he'd started a pot belly. I hadn't noticed it before. His shoulders had narrowed. His hips had narrowed. His skin seemed to lie uneasily over his shrunken muscles. Everywhere-on his legs, on his arms, on the caps of his shoulders-his veins popped and snaked along the curves of his body.
"Don't call me that, please." Already I was in my jeans. I buttoned the fly. I searched for my shirt, the flannel shirt. I found it draped across the box of bad influences.
He sat cross-legged on the carpet. "I have a few days off," he said. "I figured we'd-."
"I have to go," I said again.
I found my wallet. I stuffed it into my back pocket. I found my jacket. I put it on.
"The ironic thing," Spike said, "is that the line was a fiction at the time, or we all thought it was." He leaned over and pulled a joint from the pocket of his jeans. It was a crumpled, twisted thing, already half-smoked. He said, "I was just playing a part."
He turned toward the television. He lit the joint and toked. Glassy-eyed, he watched the video, watched himself trying to impregnate the bodybuilder.
* * *
I drove like a lunatic. University, Snelling, I-94.
The card Michael Walrath had given me-The Pink House, 1362 LaSalle, LaSalle at Grant-had been, all this time, in the ashtray of my car.
LaSalle at Grant. LaSalle at Grant. It sounded familiar.
Of course. Tom's favorite Thai restaurant, King and I Thai, was at LaSalle and Grant. Though Tom had loved the restaurant, had loved the atmosphere, had loved the food, eventually he'd refused to go there with me. Throughout the process of getting there, ordering, eating, and getting home again, I'd been almost entirely unable to utter a sentence without adding "Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera."
As I drove with one hand I held the card in the other. I-94 through downtown Minneapolis. I swerved from lane to lane, dodging slower-moving traffic. A red Ford Mustang-brand-new, bearing temporary tags-poked along in the left lane at fifty miles an hour. I laid on the horn, darted around it on the right.
Lyndale. North on Lyndale.
On the back of the card, Michael had written-something. "Thu, 6-10" perhaps? I hoped so. It was Wednesday. I hoped it wasn't his night to work. I hoped he wouldn't be there.
Walker Art Center on my left, Loring Park ahead on the right. I turned right on Oak Grove Street. Loring Lake was milky gray, as if the thinnest skim coat of ice lay on its surface. Oak Grove forked to the right. I veered left, onto Fifteenth.
Pregnant, I thought. Who would ever-? How could-? What kind of sick mind would confuse a virus with a baby? Christa was pregnant. A life-an entire person-was growing inside her belly. The thing growing in Spike-the thing that might be growing in me-. Yes, it was life, a kind of life, a living thing. But, no-really, it was death.
Fuck. LaSalle was a one-way street, a one-way going the wrong way.
Flu-like symptoms, I thought. I remembered my aching hips, my sore shoulders. I should have known. But then, I had known, hadn't I? Just because you're a hypochondriac, I thought, doesn't mean you're not sick.
The traffic light at Fifteenth burned red for what seemed minutes, hours, years. Cars sped by on Fifteenth-hundreds of cars, it seemed. I became certain that this light was the longest, most ill-timed traffic light in the universe. I pounded the steering wheel. I shouted at the light. I begged it to change.
At last, it changed. At Nicollet I sailed through an amber light, turned left.
Nicollet and Grant. Another long light. Fuck.
The Regency Athletic Club and Spa, a big block of grayish-white concrete, lay ahead of me on the left. All or part of the building had been given over to restaurants and bars. One of the lighted signs along the front read, "Spike's Sports Bar."
Pregnant. Fuck.
My stomach lurched. I thought I might vomit.
Grant. At last. LaSalle and Grant. I didn't see a pink house. King and I Thai. The Loring Municipal Parking Ramp. A strip mall with a SuperAmerica and a pub and a bookstore. Some kind of red brick apartment complex. No pink house.
On the right, past King and I Thai, LaSalle dipped into a tunnel or underpass. It must be to the left. I signaled. I turned left.
I passed it three times-circled the block, sat through the long lights three times-before I found it. Between the SuperAmerica and a fenced parking lot behind the Emerson School, the Pink House sat at the back of a narrow, deep lot. Only the door and the window frames were pink. Otherwise, the building was plain and rather ordinary, a beige stucco house not unlike my own, with a foundation of red brick and a low front porch. The sign out front was discreet, unobtrusive, the size of a sheet of notebook paper.
After all that rushing around, after driving like-well, like Christa-to get to The Pink House, I sat for a long time in the Chevette. I couldn't bring myself to go in, couldn't bring myself, even, to get out of the car. I sat with my hands on the steering wheel, the car in reverse.
In the rearview mirror, at the edge of my vision, I saw something move. Something-. Someone-. A man on a bike rode up behind me, came alongside.
Michael Walrath. Of course. He knocked on my window. I rolled it down.
"Here you are at last," he said.
I showed him the back side of the card he'd given me. I still had the card in my hand. The sweat of my palm had dampened it, darkened it.
"I thought you were here on Thursdays."
"It is Thursday."
"It's-. It's not. It's Wednesday, March-."
He shook his head. "April Fools'," he said.
I stared up at him. Was he messing with me? An early April Fools' joke? Or had I missed a day? Had I been thinking, all day, that it was the last day of March, when it was really the first day of April? How could that be?
And if it was Thursday, wouldn't Eliot's group be starting about now? Why hadn't Eliot mentioned it? Wasn't I supposed to stay away-stay away from group, away from Charlie? Why hadn't Eliot been in the midst of his usual frantic preparations-chilling bottles of soda, dumping bags of nuts into silver bowls, wiping down the lacquer tray?
I looked at Michael, studied him for some hint, some sign, that he was teasing me. He was inscrutable.
"You rode your bike all the way here from the U?" I said. "Isn't that something like-?"
"I ride my bike everywhere. It's only four or five miles. Not far," he said. He said, "Come on in."
"You don't have a car?"
He shook his head.
"Is it because all that carbon monoxide makes the earth weep?"
He squinted at me. "Don't be a dick. It's because I'm poor."
"What about when it's fourteen below?"
"I presume you've heard of buses," he said. "You're trying to dodge me. Come in, please."
"I don't think I can."
"Come on. You got yourself here. That's half the battle."
The corner of the business card pricked the skin of my palm. I looked at it. Softly, I said, "Michael, I think I know what the results are going to be."
"Everyone says that. It's not always true." He nodded gravely. "It's not always true. And if it is, it's better to know, don't you think?"
"Is it?"
Reaching through the window, he put his hand on my shoulder. "It is. It's better to know. If you're
positive, there are things you need to start doing, and you need to start doing them right now. It's better to know. Trust me. Come inside."
I looked up. His black hair streamed around his face. His face was pink, after his bike ride, flushed from effort and from the wind whipping his skin. He smiled, showing his fine white teeth. God, he was beautiful.
"Michael, have you ever heard of something called the Twin Cities Mental Health Assistance Program?"
He looked at me as if I'd just sprouted a third arm.
"Never mind," I said.
"There are breakthroughs every day," he said. "New drugs. New treatments. It's better to know, so you can take action." He held out his hand. "Please," he said. "Come in."
I got out of the car. I followed him into the clinic, through the pink door.
* * *
30 - Fire
Eliot greeted me at the door. Like a fretting housemother he stood in the open doorway, his arms folded across his chest.
I slipped off my boots. One foot was bare. Fuck. In my rush to get away from Spike, I'd forgotten one of my socks. I removed the other sock and tucked it into my boot.
"It was dark hours ago. I was about to call the police. Where've you been? Where's your stuff? Your clothes and stuff."
Fuck. In my rush to get away from Spike, I'd left my gym bag.
I stammered. "Something-something happened. Something came up." I said, "Sorry. It's-. It's hard to explain." I took off my jacket, draped it across the back of the sofa.
"What happened?"
"Spike happened." In my rush to get away from Spike, it seemed, I'd left behind one sock, my undershirt, my belt, my boxers, my gym bag, and my better judgment. I told Eliot everything. The car, the video, the bondage, the Pink House, the HIV test, everything.
He stood in lithic silence, his fingers kneading the flesh of his forearms. At last he said, "I can smell him on you. Lube, ass, pot."
I blushed. Had Michael Walrath smelled it on me? Pearl, the sweet-tempered phlebotomist who'd taken my blood-had she smelled it on me?
In a flash Eliot leapt the gap between us. Clutching my wrists, he dragged me toward the fireplace. His fingernails dug into my flesh. I saw that on my left arm, where wrist met palm, there was a deep red crease where my belt had notched my skin.
Eliot sat on the hearth and dragged me down to sit beside him. A fire blazed at our backs.
"I fear for you," he said. He spoke in a bare whisper-the crackling of the fire was louder-as though he meant to impart some great secret. "I'm not talking about the results of the HIV test. I'm talking about your soul. How long have you been working at this? How long have you been engaged in this struggle, only to throw away months of abstinence for a moment's pleasure?"