These Violent Delights

by Micah Nemerever

  Paul should have been eager to prove that he was still strong and unafraid and no longer needed Julian to take care of him; it should have been so self-evidently true that he didn’t have to prove it. But he slid under the blankets and rested his head on Julian’s arm. He couldn’t remember ever being the person he’d decided to become.

  Against the scrim of Julian’s skin, the cardigan was bright with witch hazel and camphor and kitchen steam, smells Paul barely recognized as belonging to his own body. It was uncanny in the same way as the smell of the Fleischers’ empty house after a week in Cape May—the sudden sharp awareness of something long familiar. Julian pulled him close and settled against the mattress again. Neither of them relaxed.

  “Do we know what we missed?”

  To explain the mistake would mean admitting that it hadn’t really been both of them, for all that Paul had promised they would never know. To Paul it was an academic difference, but he knew, even without understanding why, that Julian would take it badly. Uncertainty had made Paul needlessly spiteful for days; he owed Julian kindness more than he owed him the truth.

  “Water is denser when it’s cold,” he answered. “It’s my fault. I didn’t think of it.”

  “Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter.” Julian yawned and closed his eyes. “I don’t think it’ll make much difference, anyway.”

  “Not much,” said Paul, and for a long while both of them pretended to sleep.

  4.

  He pushed his run earlier every day, first to five and then to four. Every morning before the others woke, he would creep into the nightlight-dark bathroom and fill the tub with cold water. He’d read somewhere that the Spartans had done it to acclimate their soldiers to pain, and that the same principle once applied to mental patients. He held himself underwater until his muscles were taut and screaming. When he held his breath and lay back he could hear only the exhale of the water.

  He never became solid. There were soft places on his body that would never fill in with muscle. (“You’re such a stringbean, look at you,” Julian would say, closing one hand easily around his wrist.) Every smell and sound landed in him at full force, until his skin felt as if the slightest pressure could dissolve him. A single teasing barb from Audrey was all it took one Sunday to reduce him to furious tears—she retreated in bewilderment while his grandparents stared, so alarmed that at first they forgot to pity him. But of course he was sensitive. He’d always been sensitive. Paul had never given them cause to expect better.

  Each morning he slid down into the crushing cold, and when he emerged he told himself it was one more thing he had endured. Each morning would glaze another layer onto his skin; one day, if he persevered, it would be thick enough to withstand anything.

  It happened constantly now, and the humiliation fed it like oxygen. Once the tears started coming, it was nearly impossible to stop—and there was never a good reason, nothing he could articulate without feeling even more pathetic. When he took inventory of the day, with its accumulation of small agonies that he should have been able to tolerate, the whole thing felt senseless. A truck horn blaring close enough to make his ears ring, the film of dirt the rain left on his skin, one too many of Julian’s condescending endearments. It shouldn’t have sanded him so raw, but here he was, and of course Julian refused to pretend not to notice.

  “You weren’t lying about wanting to, were you?”

  Paul kept his eyes shut and tried to pretend Julian wasn’t there. But Julian, as always, reacted to the first sign of weakness by pulling it free and inspecting it. There was never any escaping him.

  “No, I did, it’s just overwhelming sometimes—I’m being stupid, I’m sorry, please just ignore me.”

  He felt Julian lean up to kiss his forehead. It was all he could do not to shove him away.

  “I’m never going to ignore you. You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t like looking after you. It’s just that you’ve been—”

  “Don’t.” Paul curled forward and folded his arms tight. “Please, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Paul heard the beginnings of a sigh, but Julian quickly smothered it. He broke away and got up from his knees; Paul opened his eyes, watching him untuck his tie from the front of his shirt and shrug back into his cardigan.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. Julian rolled his eyes and retreated into the kitchen.

  Paul dragged the back of his wrist over his eyes and pushed up from his chair to refasten his belt. He heard the refrigerator opening, then the hiss and snap of a bottle cap.

  He couldn’t say afterward what made him do it. Julian concealed his exasperation, and he was very kind, in the way that told Paul how much resentment hid just out of sight. Paul reluctantly worked through the ginger ale Julian had given him, while they sat side by side at the head of the bed and Julian read aloud from a translation of Akhmatova.

  “You should tell me about the others,” Paul said.

  Julian trailed off midsentence. His face was steady, but Paul could tell he’d heard a note in his voice that he didn’t like.

  “The other what?” he asked indifferently. He turned his eyes back to the page, expecting to find his place again once he’d dismissed the question. Paul could feel himself smiling, but he didn’t know why.

  “Before me,” he said. “The other boys like me. What happened to them?”

  Julian went very still. He made no attempt to hide his panic.

  “There’s never been anyone like you.” His voice was faint and almost pleading, but Paul didn’t stop.

  “You know what I mean,” he said patiently. “It’s all right, Julian, I don’t mind. I’m not jealous. I’d just like to know about them.”

  Julian adopted an affect of haughty disdain, far too abruptly to be convincing. He sighed and paged through his book. “This is the most boring game of yours,” he said, “and you come up with endless variations on it, it’s really quite—”

  “I want to hear how you talk about them,” Paul said over him. “How you describe them. It’s all right if you want to make fun of them. It won’t upset me if you hurt them, it’s better if you did, I know there’s no way they could have deserved you.”

  Julian gave a miserable laugh.

  “I’m so goddamn sick of hearing about what you think people deserve. Christ, is that why you’re asking? Is it because you want to feel superior, or do you just want something new to accuse me of when I’m not paying enough attention to you?”

  Paul hated himself more with every word, but he had never felt less like crying. He would rather be cruel than weak, even if Julian found weakness easier to manage.

  “It’s as if you respect me less, now.” There was a bitter false brightness in his voice that frightened him. “You treat me like I’m delicate. You used to hold me to a higher standard—you used to respect me enough to show me you thought I was capable of being better than this—but now it’s as if you’d rather I failed. Tell me,” he said, “tell me what happens when people fail you. I’ll be strong enough to handle it, but I need you to expect me to be.”

  Slowly and with meticulous calm, Julian let his arm fall from Paul’s shoulders and put a few inches of distance between them.

  “My roommate at prep school,” he said. His voice was flat and airless. “He used to climb on top of me when he thought I was asleep. He didn’t even take off his clothes, it didn’t count, I only let him do it because he was a little good-looking and I felt sorry that he didn’t have any other friends. Is that the sort of thing you wanted me to tell you? Do you really think I rate you about the same?”

  “I don’t have any other friends, either. Maybe you feel sorry for me, too.” When he finally wanted to stop talking, he couldn’t remember how. “I know what you’re doing, you tell little pieces of the truth and hope I’ll mistake them for the whole thing. Your mother told me there was more than one, and that you got rid of them all.”

  “She’s a fucking liar,” said Julian.

  So are you, he c
ould have replied, but at last his voice had failed him.

  He wanted to apologize, but he knew Julian would reach into the wound and tear it deeper rather than console him. Julian gave him a long, pitiless look, then pulled his knees to his chest and turned away.

  “Go home, Pablo,” he said blankly. “You were right. I think I liked you better before.”

  5.

  He could tell how dire the fight had been because after smaller ones they didn’t give each other the chance to recover. Even if they couldn’t yet stand the sight of each other, they always drew together again, compulsively. When Paul went to his old high school for his morning run, he expected Julian to appear by the track—windburned and smiling, his double-breasted wool coat buttoned to the chin. He would have brought one of his silent peace offerings, a thermos of hot chocolate or a new book. They would park in a deserted place, and while they were in the passenger seat Julian would keep his hand braced against the ceiling, and afterward they would pretend to forgive each other until it stopped being a lie.

  But when Paul finished his last lap, the parking lot was still empty. He walked home in the cold; whenever he reached a familiar corner, his chest swelled with hope and panic, but it was early and the streets were quiet, and he shouldn’t have expected anything else.

  At nine o’clock Paul called him, so promptly that he could still hear the church bell tolling at the far end of the line. He wanted Julian to laugh at his desperation, but Julian cut off his apologies before they’d left his mouth.

  “Tomorrow. There’s no point, you have class today anyway.” Julian’s voice was edgy and impatient; he still wasn’t sleeping well. “Sorry, Pablo,” he added, and this time there was a half-hearted veneer of fondness. “Maybe we can go for a drive this weekend, just a day trip somewhere—this city is making me crazy, I’m so goddamn bored . . .”

  Paul sat for a long while at the base of the stairs, phone cord pulled taut around the banister, listening to the low whisper of static after the click. Audrey paused in the foyer to look at him. He forced a smile and waved her off, and she sighed.

  Later it was supposed to snow. The sky was flat gray and the wind bitter with coal smoke. Paul borrowed a loaner car from the garage to drive out to the research station, what would be his last field practicum of the semester; before he left, he had to flick the windshield wipers to scrape away a thin black film of ash.

  He hadn’t slept well either, though he couldn’t say why. The hours were the same as they usually were, but they had passed too quickly. On the drive out of town the scenery flitted through him, as if he’d never seen the beauty in it and never would. He tried to listen to the news, but the radio was broken. The forest was muffled by winter, clouds grazing the canopy.

  The research station lay beyond a sharp bend in the road, concealed by a thick stand of trees. Paul was among the last to arrive, but he noticed the car right away. A black Ford, the same model his father had driven.

  He knew what it was, what it meant, before he could brace himself to know. He flipped down the visor mirror and studied his face, certain he would have to correct something. His skin felt mask-tight, but he looked no different than he always did.

  The station’s generator got temperamental in the cold, and the lights were guttering. His classmates turned at the sound at the door, but Sullivan only looked at him for a moment. Her brow was creased, shoulders squared; she’d forgotten to take off her parka.

  Even without the badge clipped to his lapel, Paul would have recognized the stranger as a police officer. There was always a commonality to the way they carried themselves, a peculiar combination of alertness and businesslike disinterest. He was a black man in his early forties, neatly bearded, with round wire-framed glasses. Like all police officers he wore a fortress around himself, as much to keep himself contained as to hold any dangers at bay. Paul could nearly put a name to his face by imagining a black band around his badge. The detective glanced at Paul, and his gaze lingered just a moment longer than it should have. He might have been doing similar calculations in his head, trying to remember the face of a red-haired boy he’d seen at a funeral two years before.

  Paul joined his classmates at the worktable. One boy leaned toward him and answered the question before Paul could pretend he needed to ask.

  “It’s some kind of a drug theft thing,” he said at Paul’s ear. “Apparently no one told him we’re all boring eggheads out here.”

  “Pity if the final gets canceled,” a girl whispered, and everyone but Paul shared a bleak laugh.

  He looked away and busied himself unzipping his backpack. Sullivan and the detective spoke so softly that they were drowned out by every rustle of his classmates’ clothes.

  “. . . Public Health and the medical school have their own supply, and it’s all accounted for,” the officer said. “It’s only the biology department that uses that one.”

  Then Sullivan, a few moments later, after a symphony of shuffling papers. She fidgeted with the end of her ponytail as she spoke. “. . . Doesn’t necessarily mean it was one of ours. I’m sure some enterprising physiology student could read up on it even if . . .”

  “I understand, ma’am—Professor, excuse me.” The officer’s smile was diplomatically impatient. “But since this is the only facility in your department that . . .”

  Paul’s classmates were nervous and giggly, and he had to give up on listening. He opened his field notebook to a back page and ground his pencil to a stub as he blacked the graph paper square by square.

  Sullivan’s conversation with the detective hit a lull, and she relaxed just enough to remember to take off her parka. The detective smiled again, but he shrugged off his own coat and folded it over his arm. He wore a canvas-strapped wristwatch, and the effect of his crisp suit was undercut slightly by his comfortable walking boots. He struck Paul as a dangerously practical man.

  “I was wondering,” he said, a little less quietly, “if I might be able to chat with your students.”

  Sullivan blanched. Then she wrung her hands, slowly, as if she couldn’t quite feel them.

  “It’s a standard formality—we’re checking in with everyone who’s done work out here,” he said, as if this ought to reassure her. “I mean, it can wait, but it’s more efficient when we don’t have to do it piecemeal, so I’d sure appreciate it.”

  Sullivan acquiesced with her face and shoulders before the resignation reached her voice. She clasped her hands tight, then let them fall.

  “These are smart kids,” she said, “and all of them are here because they want to make the world a better place. I don’t think you’re going to find what you’re looking for.”

  The final was not canceled; Sullivan gave them the packets to take home, though a few of Paul’s classmates got started on theirs for want of anything better to do. In alphabetical order they were called back to the storage annex, where the detective had set up a pair of straight-backed chairs. The first few students were in and out quickly—he only wanted names and addresses, they promised the others, and threw themselves back into their chairs as if they no longer had to worry. But Eisenberg, one of the upperclassmen, was kept in the annex for a good half hour. He emerged looking more irritated than shaken, but the others greeted him as if he’d returned from a battlefield.

  “What was that all about?” one of the girls demanded, but Paul didn’t get a chance to hear the answer.

  “All right, Mr. Fleischer,” said Sullivan. His blood chilled; she had always called them by their first names. “You can go on in.”

  When he entered the supply room, the detective rose to shake his hand, a little ungainly in the confined space. Paul had to remind himself where his own hands were; he was overwhelmed by the flickering light and the nearness of the walls.

  “I’m Detective Benton,” the officer said. His handshake was firm and cool. Paul stared at the rims of his glasses to simulate eye contact and tried in vain to return his smile. “You look a little familiar, have I seen
you somewhere?”

  His mouth might as well have been full of sawdust. “Um—Paul,” he answered. “Fleischer. You probably knew my dad, sir.”

  Behind the shine of his glasses, a familiar expression flitted through Benton’s face—remembering a story, then remembering how it ended. It wasn’t quite sympathy. Paul might have liked it even less if it were.

  “Of course. You look a lot like him. He was a good man,” he added, as if to put Paul at ease. “Good cop, too, but the other thing’s a lot less common. How’s your mother doing?”

  “She’s all right, sir. Thanks for asking.”

  Benton didn’t sit until Paul did. He unbuttoned his blazer and leaned back in his seat; behind him the open shelves glittered with specimen jars.

  “Fleischer,” he said. He lifted the cover of his notepad and glanced down, just long enough to put a knot in Paul’s stomach. Then he nodded, just barely, and flipped to a fresh page.

  “So what other classes are you taking?” Benton asked. “Anything in the biology labs?”

  His name, of course, was on the log sheet of the supply room in the life sciences building. It was alongside dozens of decoys, but not nearly enough—not the right ones.

  “Microbiology.” His mouth stumbled over the M, one of his childhood enemies; he hoped the weakness would make him seem harmless. “I mean, I was, I just had the final on Tuesday.”

  “You like it?” asked Benton conversationally, and he gave a brief courteous laugh when Paul shook his head. He looked at his notepad again, and Paul held his spine straight to keep himself from squirming. “October thirtieth, about noon,” Benton said, “you stopped into the supply room for ‘agar’—not sure if I’m saying that right, I majored in poli sci—”

  “The stress is on the first syllable, sir,” said Paul, and immediately realized he should have kept silent. He could no longer pretend to be a cipher; yielding even a fragment of his personality gave Benton a reason to remember him.