Immortality Is the Suck

by Riley, A. M.

  burying themselves in my hair. I sucked and swallowed and moved my head up

  and down, letting the head bump against the soft palate at the back of my

  throat a few times until he said my name. High-pitched, anxious. “Adam?” His

  balls tight when I touched them and then thick, salty cum at the back of my

  throat. I swallowed and swallowed while he shivered and shook, muscles

  clenching.

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  I let him slide from my lips and rested my chin on his pelvis lightly, so he

  still had the warmth of my throat covering him. He smelled good. Spunky and

  familiar. I suppose the smell of Peter waking in the morning after sex was the

  closest thing to home I could imagine. The fact that, now, I could smell his

  blood, slightly tinny and bright and good, I ignored for the moment.

  He sighed and his hand softened in my hair, stroking. “God,” he said to

  the ceiling.

  “Not really,” I said. “But I'll take that as a compliment.”

  He petted me and I watched his chest rising and falling. Then his hand

  stilled. “I've been thinking,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  He didn't look down at me, but I felt the mood shift as if someone had

  actually tilted the room. I pretended I didn't notice, though, and raised myself

  onto my elbows, crawling up his body until my hard prick was nudging his

  belly. He raised himself on his elbows, the crucifix tumbling against his golden

  chest hair and the muscles over his belly tightening as he lifted his chin and

  kissed me.

  “Knock knock,” I whispered. The blood in the veins of his neck smelled

  different than near his cock. Cleaner, lighter. Maybe because there was more

  oxygen in it. Christ, now I was smelling the chemical components of Peter's

  blood. I kissed him and said into his ear. “Got wood?”

  A dimple appeared in his cheek when he grinned. “You took care of that.”

  I kissed the dimple, buried my head in his neck, and said, “Give me a

  minute here.”

  Poke poke. Slide. I was leaking like a son of a bitch. The little pool I'd

  made on Peter's belly was good enough for a comfortable friction and I basically

  started a rhythm of frottage that he barely participated in until the end when I

  was losing it and he wrapped his arms around me while I gasped into his ear,

  and he started saying things. Low and against my hair.

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  I was too far gone to understand everything he whispered, but I heard him

  say “It's okay,” and then I came in long, painfully sweet shudders.

  His warmth under me. And even as his breathing slowed, I still held him.

  Listening to his breath, feeling his heat. Rubbing my cheek against the back of

  his neck, feeling how silky his hair was between my fingers.

  “Adam, can't breathe,” he said, before I realized I was clutching him

  tightly.

  I pushed myself away. “Sorry.”

  He rolled over and his expression held caution and concern. “What's

  wrong?”

  Peter is extremely schooled in the language of Adam body-speak.

  “Nothing.”

  “Adam…”

  “Just leave it.” I stood and grabbed my shorts from where they were flung

  over a chair.

  When I turned back his gaze was on me, eyes deep blue and serious. “It'll

  be dark soon,” he said.

  I nodded. I didn't think it was the time to tell him that I could feel the sun

  setting.

  “I need to go in to work,” said Peter.

  “I know.” I'm not the clinging sort. Truth is, there's been a few times I've

  been aware of Peter holding on a bit longer than necessary, but I've never been

  like that. Why? I told you already. I'm a prick. “I'll put on the coffee while you

  shower,” I said, turning my back so I didn't have to see him roll off the

  mattress and walk out of the room.

  I made coffee and sat at the table watching him eat. I followed him back

  into the bedroom and sat on the bed, watching him dress. He stood in the light

  coming through the bedroom window as he fastened on his clip-on tie, and I

  found myself eating up the sight of him. His muscled hands moving over the

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  silk. The way his chin tilted up, his eyelashes lowered. The way he flicked at

  the corner of his mouth with his thumb as he remembered what to stuff into

  his pockets. Clipped the phone onto his belt. The gun into its shoulder holster.

  He picked up his shield.

  “Thanks, Peter,” I said.

  He stilled. The setting sunlight came across the shutters in the windows

  and painted a thick golden band of yellowish orange across the golden hairs of

  his head, down the tanned line of cheek. His eyelashes were golden, edged with

  black, in the light. “I won't be long,” he said. “Just have to sort out a few things

  and then I'll come back and we'll deal with everything.”

  “Yeah.”

  His shirt was crisp and starched and white. If I looked in his closet I'd see

  a row of those shirts, all with the cardboard collar holders still in place from

  the cleaners. If I walked up to him now and smelled him he'd be starch and

  fresh cotton, Irish Spring and Peter. Of course, since he was standing in light

  cast through the windows, I'd burst into flames and for some reason that made

  him seem distant. Unreal.

  So, as soon as he stepped into the shadows I grabbed him and kissed him.

  His skin was warm.

  He pulled back from my embrace and his eyes were full of questions.

  “You smell good,” I explained.

  This was not helpful. He watched me warily as he finished getting ready.

  “I'll be back in time for Sports Center,” he said. “So, don't tell me the score

  when I come in.” It was a command and a question.

  “I'll have the beer chilled and the shrimp on the barbie,” I said.

  Now he was seriously worried. He smoothed his tie, lips turned down in a

  pensive frown, and before he left he stopped in the doorway and stood there

  just looking at me. Like he was taking a photograph. Like he didn't want to

  forget.

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  This was all a little too much drama for me. “So, I'll see you,” I said.

  “Later.”

  He looked like he might say something but then, as always, he kept his

  thoughts to himself. “Later,” he said, and closed the door behind himself.

  I waited until I heard the Mustang leave the garage. Then I went into the

  bedroom and found a small, old duffel on the top shelf. I stuffed the bits of

  clothing that were either mine or so old and beat I didn't think Peter would

  miss them, into the duffel. Wrapping a couple of T-shirts around the last

  carton of blood. Peter had put the Smith & Wesson back exactly where he

  always kept it. When I found the extra box of bullets and the wad of money in

  the box, though, I stopped and almost reconsidered my plan.

  The son of a bitch had left over five hundred dollars rolled up in a rubber

  band. It wasn't there the other day so he'd put it there sometime between

  tracking me down in Venice and Stan's visit. I can't explain, exactly, why this

  pissed me
off so badly, but in the end reason prevailed. My plastic had all been

  frozen, on account of my death, so I took the money.

  I always end up taking the money.

  As soon as the sun set, I slung the duffel over my shoulder, locked the

  condo door behind myself, and trotted outside. I had plenty of time to get to the

  pier where my ride would meet me, so when I got there I went into a drugstore,

  added a few minutes to my prepaid cell phone, and while I was standing there I

  looked over and saw the Marlboros.

  “Give me two packs,” I said to the clerk.

  I was just outside the entrance to the pier, so I tapped the tobacco tight

  against my fist while strolling all the way to the end. Where there always

  seemed to be a nodding old man with leathern skin and a line reaching forty

  feet down into the rolling black water.

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  I lit up. Dragged the evil smoke into my lungs. God, it felt good. I loved

  smoking, you know? I only quit to prolong my life. Seemed funny now. Except

  it didn't. I smoked a few cigarettes then walked back the length of the pier.

  I walked by kids throwing basketballs at hoops to win cheap stuffed

  animals. A churro standkeeper getting ready to go home. The smell of burned

  sugar saturated the air as he cleaned out his machine and the smell was bright

  and alive.

  I wasn't.

  At seven p.m. on the button, the distinct roar of double mufflers on an old

  Harley rose above the pier's hubbub, and I looked down Main and saw the

  remembered, chromed out, hard-tail Harley, Albert's bald pate, rebelliously

  sans helmet, shining almost as much as the polished chrome, under the Santa

  Monica city lights.

  Right on time. Just because a man's a criminal doesn't mean he isn't

  prompt.

  He pulled up and killed the engine. His mirrored sunglasses danced with a

  rainbow of colored merry-go-round lights on the pier behind me. “El Demonio!

  La caminata muerta,” he said cheerily. He grinned and the diamond-capped

  tooth flashed at me. “O es usted un fantasma?”

  “You always said I was a demon.”

  He spat a laugh. “Epa, that you are.” Albert removed his sunglasses. His

  black black eyes were heavily creased at the corners and a white scar raised

  one eyebrow in perpetual surprise. He managed to look amused and patrician.

  Like a svelte Sean Connery. No mean feat for a bald-headed, diamond-toothed,

  evil biker.

  “I'm surprised you'd heard,” I said. I wondered who had called him, and

  stored that question for later.

  “Mierda, everyone has heard.” He eyed my duffel. “Are you leaving town?”

  “Can't. My bike's in impound. On account of I'm dead.”

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  “The lot up on Venice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Epa, 'mano, it may as well be Alcatraz.” He kicked the clutch and the

  carburetor filled the night with sound.

  “It's my bike, man,” I shouted. “But I need to make a stop first.”

  “Do I look like the fucking RTD?”

  I looked him up and down. “You are getting a little big in the ass, 'mano.”

  He flipped me the bird. “Climb on. Where we going?”

  I yelled in his ear as he gunned his engine and slid into traffic. “The

  county morgue.”

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  Chapter Eleven

  Okay, I know you're thinking Albert and I are friends. But remember when

  I was stuck naked in the basement of the LA morgue and I told you the only

  person I could call was Peter? Nothing's changed.

  I pay Albert to be my friend. So, you could say Peter was currently

  bankrolling our friendship.

  Albert and I had crossed paths, as they say, a few times already. He'd

  been part of the Bandidos, in Texas, when his fortune changed by way of a hit

  on his brother. Albert turned state's evidence against the Bandidos and had

  helped put a couple in prison. In return, Albert entered witness protection.

  Which is why Albert didn't ride with the Hispanic OMG in SoCal. Our federal

  marshals have a limited comfort zone about those things.

  But Alberto still rides, because you can change a man's social security

  number and last name. You can rewrite his personal history and give him a

  new life. But you can't peel a biker off his ride while his body lives. And it

  wasn't long before I recognized Albert's smiling face roaring by the Rock Store,

  thick hair shaved, newly capped teeth spread in a wide grin and tats lasered

  clean, cruising the back roads of Mulholland Highway. Poor guy was pulling

  into the bushes every time he saw a man wearing colors. I was looking for a

  knowledgeable source that maybe could function outside the gossipy, paranoid

  OMG. Albert was feeling the financial pinch of living an honest life. And he and

  I both saw the potential for a mutually satisfying relationship.

  The federal marshals would undoubtedly protest this little arrangement.

  Which is why you'd never see Alberto on my books.

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  It's a twenty-minute ride from Santa Monica to East Los Angeles, even

  flogging it, and I had time to think about things. Unfortunately, I was

  distracted by the smell of Albert. He wore a beaten brown leather vest, no

  patches, no shirt beneath. I could smell the aged, soft leather, his clean sweat.

  His arms were like a hairless gorilla's, and I could still see the faintest bruise of

  ink where the lasers had scoured his past. The armpit hair slightly damp and

  curling where it disappeared into the loose armholes.

  Albert smelled a little like chicken mole and vanilla milk shakes.

  I was salivating heavily when he finally looped down the freeway off-ramp,

  hanging a slow left to cruise under the overpass, by the graffitied “Wall of

  Memories,” slowing as we drove by the morgue parking area. He cruised

  another half block down and slid his bike around the tire spikes set in the

  entryway to the Children's Hospital parking lot, then circled to the second level

  where we had a clear view of the morgue and the coroner's cars parked there.

  Albert ripped his engine a couple times and killed it. His scent seemed to

  gather and wash over me and I practically fell trying to get off the bike and

  away from him. From behind a concrete pylon I could survey the entire area.

  There was an unmarked car sitting behind a tree in the permit only parking lot.

  In over a decade of service to the LAPD, 90 percent of which had probably

  been spent numbing my ass cheeks in some car, I'd staked out the morgue

  myself a couple times. It's often interesting to see who, besides the next of kin,

  comes to identify a murder victim. I figured the dusty black TransAm sitting

  there was a stakeout.

  The morgue was open twenty-four seven, but I had to get inside without

  whoever that was seeing me.

  Albert perched his ass on his bike, watching me think and smoke. He dug

  a pipe out and lit it, inhaling fiercely. The sickly rich odor of marijuana mixed

  with a minty hint of heroin floated past my nostrils.

  “Albert, we are ten yards from an LAPD establishment.”

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Riley

  Albert seemed unimpressed. He squinted at the building through the

  smoke curling from the bowl of his pipe. “Those are scientists, 'mano, sí? They

  can't hurt nobody.”

  “Not just scientists,” I told him. But I knew it was hopeless. If you're going

  to try to intervene with every drug user you encounter, you aren't going to be

  long in Vice. “Just keep it cool. I might need you to make a quick getaway

  later.”

  He seemed to think this very amusing and his black eyes danced as he

  relit his pipe. “What has happened to you, mi bueno, eh? I've never seen you

  like this.”

  I'm not what you'd call vain, but the lack of a reflection in the past twenty-

  four hours was fucking with my head. I made an attempt to smooth my

  perpetual cowlick and said, “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head, considering me, as he rose from the curb. “I don't

  know, 'mano. You walk, you look, like someone else. Like the lupi, you

  understand?”

  Like a wolf.

  “Like a hunter,” said Albert. “Hungry.” Albert looked surprised at himself.

  He wasn't a poetic man. “Never mind.” He chuckled. “Maybe I shouldn't have lit

  that last bowl after all.”

  Of course he'd put his proverbial thumb right on it, hadn't he? Hungry.

  That's how I felt. Ravenous. The gnawing ache that only subsided when I drank

  the blood, a constant spur. I'd seen men who looked like I felt and wolfish was

  a good description. I remembered at an NA meeting one of the members talking

  about reconciling himself to a life of longing for a fix he'd never have. Fuck.

  Who could live like this?

  “I haven't been myself lately,” I said.

  Albert pursed his lips and let his gaze drop briefly to my groin. Yeah, and

  then there was that. Like I was on a Viagra drip or something.

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  “Sí, cuate." The scarred eyebrow dipped knowingly.

  “Cojale.”

  “Ah, no.” He was laughing. “Pero, sí, usted necesita culear.”