These Violent Delights

by Micah Nemerever

  He gathered up his belongings and followed his grandfather into the living room, eyeing the chessboard by the fireplace. He thought about rearranging the pieces, but couldn’t quite remember the configuration of Kazlauskas v. Kaplan. Even if he could have, though, the queen sacrifice felt oddly personal—as if its beauty should belong to him and Julian alone.

  His grandfather switched on the television at a low volume, turning the channel dial until it landed on a static-frayed hockey game. “Your mother tells me she hardly sees you anymore,” he said. He settled heavily onto the couch and motioned for Paul to do the same. “Says you’re always out with friends.”

  “She’s exaggerating.” Paul sat on the edge of the cushion and tried to become raptly interested in his sketchbook. “Friend, in the singular.”

  “Give it time, they tend to multiply.” His grandfather had an odd air of self-satisfaction, as if he’d thought of a joke he wasn’t in the mood to share. “What’s he like, this Julian?”

  “Um—I don’t know. He’s cool.”

  “What do the kids say nowadays—he’s groovy?”

  “Ugh, Zayde, don’t do that.” Paul pulled a face rather than smile. “Not groovy, just cool.”

  “You two get into any trouble?”

  “Of course not,” Paul answered quickly, but he knew as soon as he spoke that it wasn’t the right answer. “I mean, not really.”

  “A little trouble is a good thing for a young person,” his grandfather said. “All the old stick-in-the-muds are afraid of the young people making trouble and shaking things up. Might as well give them something to fuss about.”

  He thought that might be the end of it. The quiet was broken only by the low hum of commentary from the television and the occasional flurry of conversation in the kitchen. When his grandfather spoke again, he still gave the impression of telling himself a private joke.

  “Mind you,” he said, “you do want to be careful about girl trouble.”

  “There’s no girl.” Paul knew that this was another wrong answer, but he was too desperate to shut down the conversation to care.

  “There’s always a girl,” said his grandfather. “Especially once you get a couple of teenage boys together, and they have an audience they need to impress. I wasn’t born yesterday, Paulie, I know what boys get up to.”

  His grandfather appeared to read his revulsion as mere embarrassment. Paul stared at the television and curled inward like a dying spider.

  “A bit of girl trouble is normal. Like I said—everything in moderation. And it’s good for you especially, because it’ll teach you not to be shy when it comes time to find the kind of girl you want to marry. Just don’t let yourself get talked into any girl trouble you’ll end up regretting. Do you understand what I’m saying, here?”

  The distant strains of jazz from the kitchen radio had taken on a cloying sweetness. Paul abruptly wanted to escape the safe, soft confines of this house, to let himself feel everything its walls kept at bay.

  “It’s good, though,” said his grandfather. “We’re all glad you’re starting to make friends, Paul. Didn’t I always say it would get easier once you were out of high school? And it’ll only get better from here on out—when you’re a doctor and you’re married to a nice girl, you’ll look back on the hardest years and you’ll think, ‘I can’t believe how easily it all came together once it really counted.’ I believe that. I hope you can, too.”

  Paul’s family had been telling him this for years. It was the only story they knew, and they told it relentlessly because they thought they were doing him a kindness. All he could do was force a smile and hope that they would all be gone before he had a chance to disappoint them.

  “It’s fine if you don’t like it. Just give it a chance.”

  There was a check from his parents burning a hole in Julian’s pocket—for expenses, allegedly, on top of what they spent on his room and board. There was always plenty left over after the few expenses he did have, and it didn’t seem to occur to Julian to save it. Instead it went toward small relentless gifts, and the movies and meals he insisted on paying for. Today he seemed to be spending the bulk of the money on records. Paul counted seven so far, and not one that he would have picked out himself. Julian was most enthusiastic about the one he’d selected now. It was a replacement, Julian claimed, for one his father had taken away and burned. The anecdote was so outlandishly cruel that Paul wasn’t sure he believed it. He would have called it a lie outright if not for the matter-of-fact way Julian told him, as if he didn’t consider it remarkable at all.

  Awful as the story was, though, Paul nearly understood why it had happened. The singer’s photograph made him look very much like a woman, rawboned and imperious. Paul couldn’t look directly at the record sleeve without feeling a flood of embarrassment, so he avoided seeing it, as if he were shying away from eye contact with an acquaintance he didn’t want to acknowledge.

  The listening booths were tucked away behind the jazz section, far from the front counter where Audrey and her friend were pretending to be busy. The booth was so narrow that there were only inches between him and Julian, no matter how small Paul tried to make himself. Julian, however, didn’t appear to mind. He let Paul hold the stack of records while he squirmed free of his peacoat; Paul tried not to notice the way the striped fabric of his T-shirt pulled and slid over his torso as he moved.

  “Ninety seconds. Not even the whole song.” Julian closed the distance between them to hand him the headphones. “Either you’ll be in love by the end of the first chorus or you’ll never get it.”

  The booth walls blocked the sounds of the store, but the headphones muffled even the hush; all Paul could hear was his own heartbeat and a soft hiss of static. The closeness of their bodies was overwhelming—the shadows at the hollow of Julian’s throat, the clean wintry smell of his skin. When he sidled past to put on the record, his hand brushed Paul’s chest. It was an accident of proximity, but it still sent a jolt through him. He pulled off the headphones and started to recoil, but Julian stopped him with a glance.

  He almost expected Julian to hit him. Instead he lifted the headphones again and placed them firmly over Paul’s ears.

  “Listen.”

  Julian watched his face, patient and prompting, as if he still cared about Paul’s verdict on a song he could barely be bothered to hear. Julian’s smile was impassive and absolutely opaque.

  Paul had heard parts of the song before, drifting up from Audrey’s basement bedroom or in snatches from the car radio. He’d thought it pleasant enough, if a little frivolous, but now he felt too sick from shame to keep listening.

  “Didn’t like it?”

  “I’m weird about music,” said Paul to his shoes. “Sorry. It doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s any good, I just . . .”

  Julian stopped the record and returned it carefully to its sleeve. “It’s all right. We don’t have to be twins.” He said it carelessly, but that only worsened the sting.

  They emerged into the low thrum of The Dark Side of the Moon playing on the PA system. Audrey and her friend Joanne looked up as they approached, but Joanne quickly decided they weren’t her problem and went back to sorting the singles rack. She was tall and glamorous, with a tasseled macramé vest and an immaculate Afro. Like most of Audrey’s friends, Paul could tell she’d been a kind of cool in high school that he was constitutionally unable to comprehend, much less emulate.

  “Sure you don’t want to take home the whole shelf?” said Audrey. It was a sharper remark than she pretended, but Julian feigned cheerful oblivion.

  “I want to get his, too.” Julian caught Paul’s elbow when he tried to retreat. “Don’t be dumb, it’s your birthday next month anyway. This one still hasn’t forgiven Dylan for going electric, has he, Audrey?”

  “He likes what he likes,” said Audrey coolly, though she’d been teasing Paul about his music tastes for the better part of a decade. “It’s good that he’s got guns to stick to, instead of turning
his record collection into a performance of the kind of person he wants to be.”

  “Well, I find it very charming,” said Julian, scrupulously amiable but brooking no argument. “I hope that was clear.”

  Paul reluctantly allowed Julian to pull his lone record out of his hands. He could feel his sister watching him, but he refused to meet her eyes.

  “Do you have any idea what Ma’s doing for dinner?” Audrey asked him over Julian’s shoulder.

  “She isn’t.” Not wanting to look at either of them, Paul stared at the bracelets on Audrey’s wrist. “It’s fine, there are TV dinners.”

  “Ugh, hell with that, I’ll make us some spaghetti or something.” She exaggerated her annoyance to conceal her worry. “Want we should do the candles this week, at least? I’ll be in a little late, but no one wants to eat when the sun goes down at fucking two in the afternoon anyway.”

  “We’re not going to be home, I don’t think.” It was only after speaking that Paul noticed the jarring, conspicuous we; Audrey’s lips twitched when he said it, as if she were fighting the urge to echo it in disbelief. “Sorry—next week, for sure. I’ll help cook and everything.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Audrey slid Julian’s change across the counter, but Paul could tell she was still watching him. “All right, enjoy, stay warm out there . . . See you at home, Pablo.”

  It would have been better to pretend the jibe barely registered. Instead he froze and pressed his elbows into his sides to keep from covering his face. Audrey could only have heard the nickname by listening in on a private conversation, and her scrutiny felt all the more invasive because she treated it like a joke.

  Julian paused, forearm propped on the exit door. He glanced back at Paul, eyebrows raised as if in polite impatience.

  “Don’t,” Paul said quietly.

  “What, isn’t that your name now?” said Audrey with skeptical amusement, but her smile faded when he didn’t laugh.

  “Not to you, it isn’t,” he said, and he hurried to join Julian at the door before she could protest.

  As they made their way along the icy sidewalk, Julian pushed down the back of Paul’s scarf and rested one gloved hand on the nape of his neck. The touch moved hot through Paul’s body, but Julian’s eyes were serene, even cold. Julian held Paul’s gaze for a long moment. Then he smiled, straightened his spine, and pushed Paul to keep walking.

  “They’re nice people,” Julian said carelessly, and it took Paul a moment to parse that he was changing the subject. “Your family, I mean—they like you. But they don’t understand you, do they?”

  It was the first time he’d ever known Julian to miscalculate. It was a strange mistake for him, trying to chip away at something that wasn’t there. It was ugly enough to know that Audrey thought he needed protecting; no matter how many vulnerabilities Paul had let Julian collect, he couldn’t let them lead Julian to believe the same thing.

  “I don’t know if I want them to understand me,” Paul answered, and he felt a little less powerless when he saw the falter in Julian’s smile.

  6.

  Julian could never sit still while he was talking to his parents. He drummed his fingertips on the wall of the pay phone kiosk, biting the inside of his cheek as he listened. Paul leaned against the wall opposite him, watching the small, tense movements of the muscles in Julian’s jaw and neck.

  “Yeah, they’re not very good.” Julian spoke to his father in a flat, clipped tone. “I don’t know why you’re torturing yourself getting invested.”

  Mr. Fromme was following the college’s mediocre lacrosse team in what struck Paul as a poignantly pathetic attempt to cultivate a common interest with his son. Julian had even less interest in this subject than his father did, but without it they would have had hardly anything to discuss at all.

  “Did he really?” Julian looked toward Paul, rolled his eyes, and pulled his necktie sideways in a pantomime of a noose. “Well, how nice for him—so how does that one rate next to, I don’t know, the one at Harvard? . . . I’m not, Dad, I’m very happy for him, I know both of you have worked hard for this . . .”

  Julian always wanted Paul nearby for his weekly call home. At first Paul hadn’t understood why. Julian never mentioned Paul to his parents, even though he offered regular updates on the childhood friends whose letters arrived postmarked from New England college towns and tony boarding schools. He would sometimes go the entire call without meeting Paul’s eyes once; when he spoke to his mother he usually did so in French, which Paul knew was partly intended to prevent him from listening in.

  But there was inevitably a moment that Julian would retreat to monosyllables and long silences, and the lie of his self-assurance would collapse around him. Paul knew he was being trusted with something no one else would ever see. That Julian never discussed it afterward was immaterial. The mere existence of Julian’s vulnerability was an immense and terrible secret, and keeping it was as much a burden as a privilege. It sent a long ugly fracture through everything Paul knew about him, and he struggled sometimes to remember that Julian had enough resolve to hold himself together in spite of it.

  Something his father said made Julian’s face fall. He shut his eyes and drew a deep, slow breath. It frightened Paul how readily he yielded to the pain, almost as if he were so used to it that it bored him. By the time he exhaled, the grief had disappeared again; Paul couldn’t tell if it had passed through him or if he’d just absorbed it so completely that Paul couldn’t see it anymore.

  Julian didn’t meet Paul’s eyes, but he closed the distance between them and rested their foreheads together.

  “Ha ha. I suppose so.” His skin was warm, but the overhead lights cast long shadows under his eyelashes that made him look sickly and cold. “I’ll try. Thanks, Dad.”

  Calling home always put Julian in a volatile mood. After he hung up, he broke away from Paul unceremoniously and sidled out of the booth, rolling his shoulders as if he were shrugging off a too-tight jacket.

  He lit a cigarette as he climbed the stairs to his dorm room, not looking back to see if Paul would follow him. Paul thought about leaving until Julian’s ill temper had ebbed; he decided, as always, that there was more honor and loyalty in enduring it.

  Julian didn’t slam the door behind him, which was the only evidence of an invitation. Paul lingered in the doorway while Julian picked up an ashtray and threw himself onto the bed. He crossed his booted ankles on the quilt and blew a mouthful of smoke at the ceiling.

  “If I have to deal with one more person today, I’ll fucking kill myself.”

  Paul almost snapped at him, but he didn’t want to explain why the threat made him feel sick. Instead he said, very quietly, “I can leave.”

  “Don’t be dumb,” said Julian, “you don’t count.”

  That stirred something inside him, something ill-defined but instantly calming.

  Paul sidled inside and shut the door. Julian watched impassively before rolling to one side to ash his cigarette. Paul pocketed his glasses and sat on the bed, still a little wary, but Julian pulled him down by the back of his shirt.

  “I don’t feel like getting lunch after all,” Julian said. If he was sorry, he didn’t sound it. He wrapped one arm around Paul’s neck and held him in place.

  “It’s fine,” said Paul. “I’m not that hungry.”

  They lay like that for a long while, Julian watching the ceiling, Paul watching him. He tried to pour his consciousness only into the parts of his body that Julian touched. He wanted to forget everything but the way Julian’s blood ran a little hotter than his own, how the warmth of him pooled just below his rib cage and at the hollow of his throat.

  “I don’t understand why you haven’t tried it yet,” Julian said carelessly. He glanced at Paul’s mouth, so fleetingly that he might have imagined it. “I wouldn’t stop you, if that’s what you’re worried about. You could do anything to me and I’d let you.”

  It didn’t surprise him that Julian had asked, but he s
till felt a shock of shame—not at the desire itself, but at the fact that Julian could see him. He wasn’t ready to be seen, not yet. He hadn’t done anything to earn it.

  “It just—” He started from the beginning, trying to steady his stammer. “It feels like it would be disrespectful.”

  “I don’t need you to treat me respectfully. I’m not made of glass.”

  When Paul still didn’t move, Julian sighed and turned his gaze back toward the ceiling.

  “Tell me you love me, at least,” he said quietly. “Please. I need to know somebody does.”

  When Paul shut his eyes, he could pretend someone else was speaking. Someone he hadn’t become yet; someone who deserved to speak.

  “I love you,” he said, and once he’d spoken, the words took hold of his tongue like a prayer. Julian pulled him nearer, but he didn’t dare open his eyes. I love you. I love you. I love you.

  7.

  Their classmates never seemed to find the film clips troubling. Distasteful, perhaps, in the same way as a flayed specimen or a foul chemical smell. When Paul couldn’t stand to look, he watched the others instead, their faces lit moon-white by the screen. He’d kept an eye on the girl from Physics a few weeks ago, while the class watched Japanese children wither slowly from cancer in unforgiving black and white. Here was her discipline’s crowning achievement, mirrored in the lenses of her glasses so he couldn’t quite see her eyes. He should have seen shame in her face, but it wasn’t there. All he saw was distant revulsion.

  His classmates’ faces were the same today—politely repelled, with no evidence of anything so unscientific as an emotion. Today’s clip wasn’t as showy as some of the others had been. There was no gore, no disfiguration, no animal vivisection in service of some “higher purpose.” But when Paul watched it too closely, he could hardly stand to keep his eyes open.

  The experiment was notorious; Paul hadn’t heard of it, but Julian had. It was a dire practical joke, played decades ago on unsuspecting Yale boys who still wore suits to class. They weren’t the subjects, the researchers claimed—they were just helping, seeing if they could help a fake subject at the other end of an intercom pass a quiz by punishing him whenever he got an answer wrong. A little zap of electricity, barely painful, until they were told to turn up the voltage notch by notch and the victim begged them to stop.