Exquisite Corpse

  As Jay ravaged my mouth, Tran turned over and ran his hand up my leg, then fumbled at my zipper. By the time he got it undone, I was hard enough to ache. He ran his tongue over the head of my cock and in a slow spiral down to my balls, gripped my thighs, and took me deep into his throat.

  It felt heartbreakingly good. I gasped into Jay’s mouth, gripped his shoulders, arched my back. Tran kept swallowing me, elbows splayed, head buried between my legs. Jay put his hand on the back of Tran’s head and pushed down. The tip of my penis clicked past his tonsils and slid deeper into his throat, which seemed to go into peristalsis around my swollen flesh.

  I felt orgasm lurking, drawing near. Then it was sinking its teeth into the back of my neck just as I had done to Jay last night. Not until it had overtaken me, mauled me, and spit me out half-alive did I realize that my hands had gone round Tran’s throat, choking him as Jay forced his head onto my cock.

  I fell back on the love seat. Tran flopped off of me, long strings of saliva and spunk trailing from his open mouth. Only Jay’s hand tangled in his long hair kept him upright. He took a great wet gulp of air, then another. I could see that his eyes had partly rolled back in his head, but I could not tell whether he was conscious.

  Jay stood, pulling Tran upright with him. Tran wobbled on unsteady feet but did not fall. “Come on,” Jay said. “Let’s get him to the bedroom.”

  By the time we had Tran spread-eagled on the bed, he had begun to mutter incoherently. I pulled his jumper over his head. His hair came out of its ponytail and spilled around his bare shoulders, a luxuriant black tumble. Jay unzipped Tran’s loose bluejeans and tugged them down his skinny legs. He was naked beneath, his body wonderfully smooth, his cock half-erect.

  Jay and I looked at each other. His eyes asked a mute question.

  “He’s yours,” I said.

  Jay’s cold gaze shifted to the boy on the bed. He undressed slowly, touching himself every now and then as if to ascertain that he was still made of solid flesh. Only by the slight tremor of his hands could I tell how drunk he was. He knelt beside Tran and stroked the boy’s flat belly with reverent fingers, bent and kissed one of his puckered brown nipples. Tran stirred but did not open his eyes.

  Jay leaned over to remove an object from the nightstand drawer. For a moment I thought it was some sort of arcane sex toy. Then I saw that it was a Phillips screwdriver in quite a large size. He took the blade in his mouth, coated it lightly with spit. Then he pulled Tran’s legs up, exposing the tender crack between the silken buttocks, and he jammed the screwdriver into the centre of that crack. At the same time he bent again and bit deeply into Tran’s left nipple.

  Tran’s body convulsed in a long shudder of pain. Jay gave the screwdriver a final shove, a nasty twist, then yanked it out and held it dripping with blood and shit before the boy’s wide-open, terrified eyes.

  Tran lashed out and knocked it from his hand. Before Jay could react, he was up and off the bed, lunging for the door. I grabbed for him, caught a handful of flying hair, smashed his head against the door frame. He left a smear of blood on the white paint. But the force of the blow had been insufficient to drop him. Revived by terror, Tran tore away from me and charged down the hall.

  We almost caught him in the parlour. I was an arm’s length behind, Jay right on my heels. Tran raged through the room, grabbing at lamps, vases, anything he might hurl at us to slow our progress. Jay snatched up a glass paperweight and sent it flying at Tran. It glanced off his skull, snapping his head forward. Still the cursed brat would not fall. He ran into the foyer, yanked at the door, opened it and stumbled into the courtyard.

  In three great bounding steps he crossed it. Then he was hammering at the gate, which was impenetrable from the street side, but required only the push of a button to open it from the courtyard. A serious flaw in Jay’s security system, I thought; only two days ago I had pointed it out to him. The gate slid soundlessly open and our Tran was through the widening gap in a flash, naked and bloody, but free.

  I followed Jay back inside. “I’ll go get him,” he was saying, more to himself than anything. “Got to put on some clothes and get some cop insurance. Yes, I’ll get him.”

  He walked quickly to the bedroom, threw on shirt and trousers, shoved his slender sockless feet into loafers of exquisite black Italian leather, retrieved his wallet from the dresser and had a quick peek inside. As always, the wallet contained a fat sheaf of bills. Cop insurance.

  “Well, bring him back alive,” I said as Jay turned to go.

  “Don’t worry,” Jay told me. “We’re not done with this one yet.”

  14

  His first thought was that the French Quarter had never looked so dark.

  Here and there he could make out blurry rectangles of light that might be windows. An early string of Christmas bulbs twined through the ironwork on a high balcony, blinking gold, red, gold; a wavering gas lamp, ghostly in the deserted night. But for each point of illumination there were ten impassive brick facades, ten rusty gates that hung ajar on blackness.

  Every nerve and chemical in Tran’s body was telling him to be frantic with terror, and his brain could barely remember why.

  He was cold. Dimly he realized this was because he was naked, but he couldn’t quite remember why that mattered, either. This was the French Quarter; he’d worn almost as little on these same streets last Mardi Gras, with Luke beside him. He was hurting, and that did seem to matter more with every step he took. His head pounded like a huge heart; his bitten nipple throbbed as the cool air teased it erect. But those pains were nothing compared to the cramping in his gut, like a steely hand clamping onto his intestines and twisting …

  He couldn’t recall what had happened exactly. He had thought Jay was interested in him again, and it had made him horny enough to get drunk, to lose his fear of getting burned a second time. He remembered watching the cousins make out, then sucking Arthur’s uncircumcised cock, intrigued with the texture and pliability of the very clean foreskin. But beyond that was oblivion, then the rending pain in his asshole and nipple. Pure instinct had sent him hurtling off the bed, and he had only the faintest memory of Arthur, face contorted with rage, smashing his head against the door frame. Now he was out here. None of it made any sense.

  A few more steps and the pain doubled him over. He leaned against a wall, retching but unable to bring anything up from his damaged system. He felt a cold sick sweat springing up on his face, along his spine, under his balls. For a moment the pain in his head threatened to blot out the others, and he welcomed it; it was easier to bear than the gaudy blaze of pain in his gut.

  Then suddenly hands were on him, pawing at his bare shoulder. Jay. Arthur. Tran jerked away, curled, fell to the sidewalk.

  “Hey buddy—hey, you OK—”

  He stared up into a blurry black face. Big pale-palmed hand reaching down to him, long shape slung over the guy’s shoulder—a gun? no, an instrument case. Street musician on his way home. This guy would know his way around the Quarter, could help him get somewhere safe.

  Tran tried to move, to take the man’s hand and pull himself up, but everything felt so heavy, even his own hand far away at the end of his arm. He registered the locust buzz of motors pulling up nearby, the pounding of hard soles across concrete. Then the musician was grabbed from behind.

  “Getcher ass up against dat wall—”

  “Motherfuckin nigger pervert—”

  The first remark came from a fat white cop, the second from a slight, slender black one. Their absurdly tiny NOPD scooters idled at the curb. Their hands were, variously, gripping the back of the musician’s neck hard enough to dimple the skin; on the back of the guy’s skull, shoving his face into the rough brick wall; yanking his arms behind his back, handcuffs ready.

  Tran tried to say something, some wonderful crime-tale cliché like Hey, you got the wrong guy, but he could not make his mouth work. He swallowed, trying to moisten his raw throat. His saliva tasted of blood and come. Some of hi
s teeth felt loose. Worst of all, he was still drunk.

  He couldn’t think of a single reason to stay for the rest of this scene, so he closed his eyes and invited blankness into his head, and blankness accepted his invitation.

  By the time Jay rounded the corner of Barracks Street, a small crowd had already begun to gather around the bleeding boy on the sidewalk. The cops had released the musician, who stood rubbing his sore neck and glaring at them. A pair of tourists from Alabama wandered by, lost in search of Bourbon Street, and stopped to watch the action.

  “Looks lak somebody needs to call a ambulance,” one of them remarked.

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Jay, coming up quickly, getting between Tran and the cops, but not too close to the cops. “He lives with me. I’ll take him home.”

  Jay knelt beside Tran and pulled him into a sitting position against the wall. Tran’s eyes fluttered open. For a long moment he stared at Jay. If he starts screaming, I’m through, Jay thought. But there was no sign of recognition in Tran’s pain-dulled eyes. After another moment they slid shut again.

  “He lives wit’ you, huh?” asked the white cop. “What’s he doin’ bare-assed out on the street?”

  Jay met the cop’s rheumy gaze with unwavering honesty. “I’m afraid he had too much to drink. He’s not used to it, and we argued. He ran out before I could stop him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “John Lam.”

  “How ’bout you?”

  “I’m Lysander Byrne. I live up on Royal.”

  “Lemme see some ID.”

  Jay handed the cop his driver’s license with two bills folded discreetly under it. Catching the flash of green, the other cop waved an imperative hand at the onlookers. “Y’all go on, now. Nothin’ to see here.”

  “That boy’s hurt,” the musician protested. “Look, he’s just a young kid—”

  “He’s twenty-one,” interrupted Jay.

  “Looks about fifteen to me,” one of the tourists said.

  “Got blood on him,” the other pointed out.

  Everyone looked at Tran. It was true: though not immediately noticeable in this half-light, several dark smudges of blood stood out against the pale skin of Tran’s face, chest, and legs.

  “Mr.—” The white cop consulted Jay’s license. “Mr. Byrne? Know why he’s bleedin’?”

  “I saw him fall as he was running away. Probably banged himself up then.”

  The black cop bent to examine Tran more closely, then straightened up and pointed to the bite mark on the boy’s nipple. “He did that to himself, too?”

  Jay shrugged. “I did that. I’m not responsible for his sexual proclivities, but I do try to indulge them.”

  The cops glanced at each other. Utterly unlike in every other way, their faces bore twin expressions of distaste. The white cop handed Jay’s license back, scissored gingerly between thumb and forefinger. Apparently he was willing to take his chances with the money. “Mr. Byrne, I suggest you take your, uh …friend home and keep him there until he sobers up. I see him on the street in this condition again, I’ll arrest him.”

  Jay nodded, smiled. Someone else might have found this performance humiliating. He was savoring the cops’ cluelessness, their utter belief in his act. “Thank you, Officer.”

  “Hold up a minute!” The musician gestured at the cops, at Jay. “That kid looks hurt bad to me. I say he needs an ambulance.”

  “Zat right, nigger?” The black cop took two steps toward the musician, pushed his skinny face into the older man’s seamed one. “Well, I say he doesn’t. And I say you need to get your black ass outta here while you still got the chance.”

  The musician looked at the other cop, at the limp form of Tran, at Jay who met his gaze without sympathy or rancor. He looked around for the two tourists, but they had done a quick fade. At last he hitched up his instrument case on his shoulder and walked away toward Decatur Street, shaking his head in disgust.

  “I’ll just take him home now,” said Jay.

  Luke blazed through the streets of By water and Marigny, past Victorian cottages and camelbacks and shotguns, old houses mostly rickety but painted a spectrum of colors. Here and there a house was boarded up and ravaged with graffiti. But as he approached the Quarter, the streets took on more of a genteel-homo air, a rainbow flag or windsock fluttering from every other porch, a pink triangle or a SILENCE = DEATH sticker on every other car bumper. In these lovingly renovated, tastefully appointed homes, people were making dinner, having sex, getting dressed to hit the bars, dying of KS and PCP and CMV and crypto and toxo and a hundred other incomprehensible horrors the rest of the world just called “AIDS.”

  Or living with those horrors. Soren liked to stress that distinction: Are you dying of AIDS, Luke, or are you living with it? He’d always had a sarcastic comeback. Tonight he would answer the question truthfully, one way or another.

  He had no idea what he meant to do. Assuming he could even find Jay’s house, how was he going to get in—ring the doorbell? Uh, good evening, Mr. Byrne, sorry to disturb you at this late hour, but after all the horror stories my ex has probably told you about me, I’m sure you’re real eager to let me in so I can rip your fucking THROAT OUT … No; what then? Forced entry? What the hell did he think he was doing, anyway?

  He wished he had kept Johnnie’s gun.

  He wished he had a needle and a ready vein.

  For a moment Luke thought of bypassing Royal Street, going instead to a certain bar or two, looking up one of his old acquaintances, the kind of old acquaintances who always hang around junkie bars mopping up the tears of fallen angels. He had money in his pocket; he could score enough heroin to keep him high for days, to stop his heart. Let it go, said something in him. Let Tran go where he will. Leave them alone. Show yourself some mercy.

  But the stronger part of him—the part that had been angry all the time for more than a year now—would not allow it. Junk was too easy. Tran was his rightful lover in this world. He had shucked the ballast of WHIV, and he no longer cared whether he finished his novel. This was the real story, the only one whose ending he still cared about.

  He crossed Esplanade into the Quarter. This end of Royal Street was dark and empty. The air smelled of wood smoke, a lonely autumn scent. As he walked, Luke checked the finials of every wrought-iron gate for pineapples. In this way he happened to catch sight of the commotion taking place halfway up the block on Barracks.

  Police scooters at the curb, their whirling bubble lights lending the scene a sick stroboscopic quality. Two blue backs, one broad and one narrow, both topped by small round heads that sat atop their shoulders without the interruption of necks. A tall, coolly handsome blond man gripping the arm of a naked boy whose long black hair hid his face. As the blond man pulled him upright, the raven sheaf of hair fell back, and Luke saw that the boy was Tran. Which must mean that the blond man was Jay.

  His heart clenched. Pain corkscrewed through his chest and down into his belly. He hadn’t eaten in two days, so his bowels probably weren’t about to turn traitor on him, but the familiar cramps wrung his gut anyway. He hadn’t known what he was going to do before; what the hell was he going to do now?

  The cops were getting on their scooters. They were going to let Jay have him. This registered in Luke’s mind more clearly than the dark smudges of blood on Tran’s skin, more fully than the shock of seeing Tran naked and helpless on the street: They were going to let Jay have him. And Jay could not have him.

  Luke leaned against a building and gathered his strength. He’d been awake since dawn; he’d watched one friend blow his brains out and had strenuous sex with another; he’d walked two miles in a highly pissed-off state of mind; he’d missed three doses of various medications. He was tired. Anyone would be.

  Even so, he pushed himself away from the building and walked as quickly as he could up Barracks.

  Jay saw Luke coming and recognized him at once. He’d never seen Luke before, but the leather jacket
and battered boots, the badass stride, the ghastly-handsome face left no doubt as to the identity of this new character. Luke always carried a razor in his boot, he recalled Tran saying. After he got sick, he said if anyone fucked with him, he’d slash his wrist and throw blood in their eyes …

  Jay wasn’t afraid of a little blood. Razors didn’t worry him much either. But what if Luke took Tran away? Andrew would be disappointed, maybe even angry. Maybe even angry enough to leave. And Tran would remember what they had done to him; perhaps his injuries would require medical attention. Doctors would ask questions, and talk to cops, and these two cops would remember him and find out he’d lied …

  Silently he calculated the contents of his wallet. He’d given the cops fifty dollars each. Would another fifty make them turn a deaf ear to anything Luke might say? Jay thought so, but he wasn’t sure. Better make it a hundred more apiece. He put his hand on his back pocket, not taking his wallet out, just letting the cops know it could happen.

  “I know that boy,” Luke said. He was out of breath, and his eyes looked quite insane. “What’d you do to him? What’s wrong with him? Tran?” He moved forward, reaching for Tran. The white cop put out a meaty arm and blocked his way.

  “You know this guy?” the black cop asked Jay.

  “We’ve never met, but I’ve heard about him. He and John are, uh”—Jay coughed discreetly into his free hand—“a thing of the past.”

  That look of distaste passed between the cops again. Give them something they don’t want to hear, Jay thought, and they won’t listen as carefully.

  “His name’s not John!” Luke yelled. “It’s Vincent Tran! Dammit, I know him!”

  “Oh yeah?” the white cop asked. “How come he ain’t actin’ like he knows you?”