Boulevard (28 page)

But in the aftermath came the sour, beery smell of Jerry's breath, the shit smell from Newell's own ass, and the clammy dampness along their joined skins, a feeling of pleasant heat and unpleasant stickiness. He felt a need to sit on the toilet for a while in case anything might fall out, after all that banging and rattling. The sheets were wet in spots and stained in spots. Jerry sat up on the edge of the bed. He reached for his drawers, then stopped. “You don't want me to stay, do you?”

“No,” Newell said, and Jerry put his feet through the drawers, found the rest of his clothes in the dark.

“Did you like it?”

“What? Sure.” He knew he ought to say more, so he added, “It was great. I don't remember when I had better.”

“You're kidding.”

“No.”

Jerry grinned then. He was sliding the sleeveless shirt across his shoulders, but he stopped to grin, so big Newell could see it, and he wondered why Jerry would believe such obvious flattery; but the smile made him like Jerry again, anyway, so Newell stood up, naked, and put his arms around Jerry and kissed him on the mouth. For a moment the movie had come back, and Newell could see himself, the languid movement up from the bed, his pale skin, pretty body, shapely arms, tender mouth. Jerry had stopped dressing and waited, so Newell stepped away.

After a moment, cautiously, Jerry said, “I better go, I guess. My wife is probably at home waiting up for me.”

“You think she is? You think you're all that special?”

“I'm all she has.”

“Then she has a problem.” Newell stood, angry now. He walked to the bathroom. “Get dressed and go, please. So she won't have to wait anymore.”

“I'm sorry I said anything.” Jerry waited a moment, spread across the bed big and square. He was wanting Newell to change his mind, but Newell closed the door
and sat on the toilet. In a moment he could hear Jerry moving, and came out.

So satisfying to stand there, to have Jerry's eyes pore over him like this. Jerry buckled the silver belt buckle. He looked so helpless, standing there. Jerry walked to the door and turned back. “I'll see you sometime, okay.”

Newell shrugged. “Sure.”

When he was gone, Newell stripped the bed. He lay on the bare mattress under the blanket. For a long time he could only lie there thinking about the way it had felt when Jerry was here, when they were touching each other, the strange cloud that had suffused Newell. He was seeing Jerry's broad back, the warmth of the body, the smells, sweat and pepper and earth. Different from Mark.

Bigger than Mark. It had felt nice, to be under a man so big. A man the size of Jack, he thought, and lay still.

T
HE NIGHT WOULD LINGER
afterward, for many people who would remember it when Newell had vanished, as the last time they saw him; they would remember specifically, because a few days later when he disappeared the rumor circulated that Newell had been murdered. By then he had become, in his small way, notorious, as a cute boy prone to wear leather was apt to become notorious in the French Quarter in 1978. People at the bookstore talked about him, people at the Circle
K talked about him, answered a few questions from the police, traded suspicions. He had vanished, taking nothing out of his room. Mac suspected Newell had gotten mixed up in something ugly. Dixie knew something of what really happened, but kept quiet about it for the rest of her life. Louise had her own troubles by then; Henry cleaned Newell's room out, had Newell's phone turned off, drank himself silly afterward, never saying much about what he thought, and soon sickened and died of Kaposi's sarcoma, one of the earliest deaths from that disease in New Orleans.

When Jack came home that night, which is to say, when Jack came to Leigh's apartment, which she had come to think of as his home, she could see something had piqued his interest, but she knew better than to ask. He had been to Mac's, bought the quaaludes she wanted, gave her a couple, and she took them, waiting to feel languid, looking at Jack and thinking she was, maybe, tired of him, now that she had become so accustomed to him. Maybe she was nearly through with him, she was thinking, and he was watching her, hardly seeing her, probably himself already seeing somebody else in his mind, like that friend of Mark's he wanted. Tedious, the presence of anyone, after a certain point, to Leigh. But Jack eventually put his arms around her and his callused hands felt nice on her creamy skin. “Do you ever think you'll get tired of me, Daddy?” she asked.

He laughed. “Of course not.”

She laughed, too. But the next morning he was gone
and stayed out the whole day and night, the first time in a while he'd been away so long. So later, when she heard about Mark's friend, that he had disappeared the same day, she wondered what had happened, but never asked whether Jack knew. She canceled the Halloween party, to let Jack sweat a little. Pretty soon she decided she really was tired of him, anyway, and told him so, and moved on.

I am Jack. I have made Newell an offer and I have waited for an answer. I have been as patient as I could.

He has taken some days to come round. I have had to stand in front of him for a long time, show myself for a long time, and even to undress myself a bit and allow him to touch me. His excitement has led him forward, and I have brought him to the very center of the old brewery, near the end that faces the river, all broken glass and corroded iron; I have brought him here because I love him so, tonight. I am glistening when he enters, his face masked and his body still clothed, that slim white body that I ache to hurt, his face sheathed in leather, his hands bound behind him, and the feeling rushes over me, that
I have been doing this for such a long time, that it will always continue, that someone like Newell will appear time after time, fresh and well-prepared by some force already within him
.

I take off the mask and the face becomes lost as I watch it, as he runs his hands under my leather vest; but it is he I am watching, cotton underwear against his pale skin, the dark denim bunched around his knees, shirt torn in half, moving as his hands move over the handsome man in front of him, me; sudden roughness when I shove him to the floor, and slam his face into the handsome man's crotch, mine, and I know from these first moments that I am in the presence of something consummate, I slap him hard across the face and he continues to pursue the body with his hands, our body, the scene we have imagined and yet he recreates it so easily, with such simple gestures
.

I am greedy to see him struck with the lash, first the one that makes the popping sound, red stripes flushing across his delicate skin. I am greedy to slap his bottom, to see the flesh tremble and the handprints appear, as he lies in the light from this lantern, flickering, in this desolate room, being beaten for me, to make me happy
.

He lives in faith, as anyone would in his place, and he accepts my hands, my slapping and pinching, when I hoist him into the sling and fuck him, sweat running under my mask, him lying chained and fetal, his body drinking me into it, his face calling, his soft voice making me shiver, whenever he makes a sound. He lives in faith that
his life will all make sense, that he is making sense of things a moment at a time, that each moment when I twist and bite his nipple is a reason to survive to the next
.

Here he is sagging forward, exhausted, having given himself, with me tired behind him, harsh breathing and sweat, watching, because it is like a movie to watch him, a silvered image, a surface
.

It will seem holy to have my arms lift him so tenderly, to bind his feet in the shackles and raise him up slowly, gently, not too fast so the blood to the head doesn't kill him, to raise him up slowly with the cold sound of the ratchet and tackle and have him shackled that way, spread like a bird in flight, a cloud of terror shining out of him
.

I have this boy to remind me that Paradise is coming, and I shall use him for that, until he is all used up, like all the rest, and his burnt-out husk will drift away from me into the air, and I will scent him on the breeze as he dissolves, and I will carry the smoke from his fire inside me, walk down to the river, drift away
.

Newell was hardly sure where he was at first, there was only a light, high in a wall of vague shadows. His body hurt, his backside burned like fire, his joints were stiff.

Jack was coming back. He'd said so. Where was this place? Some room in one of the warehouses?

He stood. He found he could. He'd fallen asleep on a pile of rags, filthy.

The cuffs were still on his hands, but when he checked they were open. He took them off.

Now he could see, a bit.

He found his jeans. Not much left of his shirt. One shoe, not his.

Sound, someone coming. He went to the door, found it locked. But there was a window and a table underneath it, and he climbed on the table and opened the window. He knew he was making noise, but as far as he was concerned it didn't matter anymore. He thought Jack would let him go if he asked, but he wasn't going to ask, he was going to leave now, through the window, and when he got it open, sore as he was he climbed out, into a wide gutter between two roofs. He pulled the window closed and ran down the gutter, every footfall making the tin clammer like thunder. A dead man could have heard him running away, but he didn't care about that either. He had seen enough.

It was true he had said yes to everything Jack wanted to do. This was what made it all right, made it possible to think about. But to remember, now that the night was over, terrified him, and he was shivering at the end of the gutter, leaning down to the branch of a baby oak, grabbing it without thinking and swinging toward the trunk, his shoulders with a feeling of tearing, then his bare feet on the solid tree, leaves yellowed.

He climbed to the ground. He was in an alley and headed toward a street. He looked up and saw, now, that he was near the old brewery on the river, maybe that was even where he had been all night, with Jack.

When he stood still, he was shivering, but when he
moved he was all right, so he headed home, down Decatur Street toward the lower Quarter. Stepping gingerly, shivering. Feeling for his apartment key in his pocket, relieved to find it. Early yet, nobody was awake.

When he turned the corner for home, though, there were police cars everywhere, two in the street and two in the carriageway, all with blue lights blazing, and a cop standing at the entrance to the carriageway. Newell could see police in the junk store, in Louise's office, and in the store rooms. Searching through her files and her desk, but Newell only glanced that way, he wasn't entirely certain what he saw, the cops on the street were watching him. “You got any business here, son?”

“I live here. Up there.” Newell pointed.

The officer stood aside and said, “You rent from this woman, Louise Kimbro?”

“Yes sir.”

He nodded. “Well, you can go on up, I guess. Stay out of the way back there.”

“What's going on?”

“Nothing to concern you, son. Now, go on.”

He headed along the passage, wondering if something had happened to Louise, but when he reached the loggia he saw her, surrounded by two officers in uniform and two other men in shirts and ties, maybe officers, too; Louise was red-eyed, face impassive, and stared at the ground, refusing to look at Newell at all, though he was sure she could see him.

On the back gallery he lingered a moment, watching,
Louise answering questions in a quiet voice, too quiet to hear.

So Millie had talked to her dad.

It seemed appropriate, to Newell, to be packing while the police searched Louise's house and business, to be packing his own belongings. He had meant to have a bath but suddenly, with the flashing blue lights washing over his room, he was afraid he would turn and find Jack in the doorway. The fear of what it meant to say yes to Jack. So Newell packed some of his clothes, not all of them, because he wanted to take only the bag he had arrived with, and he left all his books since he had read them, and everything else he had bought here, which he would not need when he went back to Pastel, and he got his money out of the four hiding places he had used, counted the three thousand dollars he had saved and divided most of that into two folds, which he put in his shoes. Astonishing how little time it took.

He checked his face in the mirror. No black eyes, no split lip, only a slight puffiness to his cheeks. No one would think anything except maybe he looked hungover.

When the courtyard was empty, he walked down the stairs with the bag, out the passageway and down the street. In a couple of blocks a taxi cruised past and he waved it down, still expecting at any second to see Jack. Or Mark. Or someone.

“To the bus station,” he said to the driver, who chewed on his cigarette filter and stomped the accelerator.

He bought a ticket on the next bus to Jackson, figuring
to make the connection there to Pastel, figuring the Jackson buses would leave most frequently. Even so, for an hour and a half he waited for the bus with his bag beside him, nervous as a cat. Seated in a corner of the tiny station, trying to stay out of sight. Not even sure why he thought Jack would be looking for him, not even sure why he had decided to leave, not needing to think it through, sensing the rolls of his money in his shoes and the fact that he was in motion. Nobody in New Orleans could ever find him, he'd never told anybody very much about himself. Only Louise had Flora's address, and she was headed to someplace deeply unpleasant. Nobody would ever go to that much trouble, track him all the way to Pastel, and anyway, it wasn't likely that Newell would stay there long, was it?