by Tadzio Koelb
Even as he made the introduction he desperately acknowledged that the threat was not defused, not ever really deactivated, just postponed perhaps, or simply ignored as it ticked away the time until everything might fall apart if he wasn’t careful every minute. Kunstler forced himself to think of the plan, the closeness of his desires after so many failed attempts, the reason to stay, and so he thought it, told himself again, this time in a kind of terrified satisfaction: Yes, I should have known that. I should have known it would be the dancing.
Kunstler turned to the bar and ordered the next dose of encouragement: gin for the girl, straight scotch for himself, soda and ice for the stranger. Kunstler drank most of his fast, unable to stop himself. He would be armored against compunction and indecision, he would be numb to all distraction; nothing must get in the way. He already knew that she would complain about the taste of the straight gin, that he would have to convince her to drink it anyway. “Better make me a gin and Italian, too,” he told the barman. “I’ll be back for it in a minute.” He dropped money on the bar, tipped the last of his scotch into the glass of soda he had ordered for Price, and set out across the dance floor.
The girl Inez was deeply drunk now, a disoriented, lurching drunk in which Kunstler hoped she would be lost to a world as much imagined as perceived, her thoughts hooded and obscure, so that he and the room—and with them, the waiting shadow and his plan—might be reduced to the silhouette of a pliant and forgiving dream, and he hoped that if in the morning she remembered it at all, it would be so strained and distant she could still coyly say, “I enjoyed last night,” that fixed and invariable oration that was her blessing and her pardon, granting clemency and absolution and confirming again the grand, unspoken entente that guided them—the one by which she was his and he, in his own way, hers. They wouldn’t look at each other when she said it.
Kunstler had only been able to hope he was timing the drinks right. It was important to arrange it just so: if the girl would need to be lost in herself, whirling and away, the stranger had to be brought to a point of forgetful compliance without wilting past it into uselessness. Sometimes he had taken the men too far, left them vomiting in restrooms or passed out on vinyl booth seats.
Inez almost spit on him. “Oh, hey, Abe,” she said. “Why, that’s just straight gin.”
“Is it? I guess the guy didn’t hear. I’ll get you a right one, but I paid for that, you might as well drink it. Go on, drink up, give me the glass back. How’s yours?” he said to Price.
“Swell.” Price smiled gently. “Although in fact, it’s a bit weak, really.” Kunstler sniffed the glass of soda water and ice and made a face. “Call a drink like that weak, means you’ve had enough, I guess,” he said.
“You’re probably right. I sure know I’m feeling it.” He spoke with a loose-necked movement, his eyes dark incisions afloat on the pale sea of his face.
“Gee, I hate it straight,” Inez said. She handed her empty glass to Kunstler so clumsily she nearly dropped it.
“I’ll get you something good to wash it down.” He returned quickly with the waiting cocktail, and stood by as she first tasted it carefully, then swallowed a mouthful. “Better?” he asked her.
“Yes, better. Better, butter.” She laughed. “Better, butter think I’m drunk.”
“You want to make something of it?” Kunstler asked.
“You’re poking fun now.”
“Sure,” said Kunstler. She started to slip a little then, a slight spin and a slide towards the floor. Kunstler caught her by the elbow, sticky with sweet vermouth, and guided her to a chair. To Price he said, “I think maybe we had better help her to get home.”
“Oh, you two aren’t? I mean, I thought maybe.”
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe you two. And that then, I suppose I thought maybe you’d try to sock me.” He gave a little laugh. “Because, you know, sometimes when we were dancing, see? Gee whiz.” He drank some more.
“I get you. Let’s take her home. It’s not safe for her walking around like this.”
“Because sometimes when we were dancing, you know, and, oh brother—I sure don’t want any trouble.”
“That’s right, no trouble. Take her other arm,” he instructed Price, but it was Kunstler who eased the two of them into the backseat of the car.
Steering them through the hot summer-night streets, Kunstler realized that he was drunker than he had intended. From the backseat of the car the stream of Price’s voice rose sometimes above the buzzing rush of the engine, but from what Kunstler could see in the mirror Inez slept through whatever he was saying. She roused enough when they were parked to get out by herself, mostly, and to say, “Well, well,” a few times while Kunstler led them to the door of their building.
He had Price help Inez most of the way up to their landing, following close behind them in case one or the other should slip. He sat Inez on the stairs while he snapped open the lock, turned on a light, and shepherded Price to the seat in the small foyer. Getting Inez back up again was a job, and in the end Kunstler had to lift her. It was not like before: her body now was heavy and disobliging, her head rolling, unpredictable. He made his way carefully into the apartment and thought to himself, This is the second time I have carried her through this doorway, I guess we must be good and married now.
In the bedroom he laid her on her stomach. He was aware how much he wanted her. Even as he helped her find the pillow of her bed and his design took shape, as he removed her shoes and started to unhook her stockings, it had the power to distract him: the thick spill of her thigh in its nylon, the promise that swung with her breasts, the irregular upper lip sweeping through the rupture of her mouth. He thought of her saying that spooning was her favorite part, but insisting that he shouldn’t worry, that she liked the rest well enough after something to drink. There was plenty of drink in her now; he had seen to that.
Back in the living room, Price was asleep. The apartment door hung open to the landing and the stairs, the looping funnel through the building to the world outside. Kunstler carefully closed the door, and locked it, then stood looking down at the sleeping man.
In Price’s face Kunstler saw something of the man whose name was now his own name, the man who had been lost to the war and the kitchen and the furnace, a resemblance both desired and somehow insufferable. Kunstler had to fight an urge to cup that face in his hands, had to focus instead on the thing that would follow, the pale shadow, the thrust of the human limb, the coalescence of all his plotting into a moment of action. He would do this because he understood what the girl didn’t: that it wasn’t people they needed, certainly at least not the people they could meet, who would be forever detached from them and so a threat. Rather it was someone of their own that was called for—someone like them, someone of them and for them, someone who couldn’t be lost but was irreversibly and conclusively theirs, a rebirth of the man from themselves, that they could share him, that he would be theirs alone.
This thing, this indefinite capacity, was in him. It was the engine of his progress, had been the figure pointing the way, a signpost indicating the direction of the future, a switch waiting to be flipped. He had responded with all the power of his worker’s arms, the factory resident within him, lashing out instinctively, without thought, without intention, and released from the man the slow dark lake, and with it his inheritance, the thing he would become. In that moment he had been reborn and thus born, a gift, and he would repay it to the man who reposed in him, for whom he was the very tomb from which to rise, for whom the blue-edged bandages pinned around his chest were the half-open shroud. He ran his hand along the downy face and Price opened his eyes.
“Oh, well hey, mister,” Price said. “Are we there yet?”
“She wants to see you,” said Kunstler in his hoarse little voice like a crushed tin can.
“Is that right?” Price offered a diffuse smile. “Honest Injun?” He made a motion to get up.
“You need a hand, there?
”
“I’m just jake,” he said, but accepted Kunstler’s help. Kunstler pushed him slowly down the short hall, and sat him next to where Inez was lying on the bed. “Daddy’s home,” Price said. “Time to get up.” He closed his eyes and swayed.
Kunstler wiped his forehead on his sleeve and set to work. First he tried to raise the girl onto her knees, but she was caught somehow on the skirt of her dress and in the semi-dark he couldn’t figure out where exactly it was holding. Kunstler said God damn it under his breath. He got up and walked around to the bed’s other side, where he had space to lean forward and grip the hem. He pulled hard, so the whole thing wadded around her waist. The jerking shook the mattress, and Price began to topple.
“Oh, shit,” said Kunstler. He said it again and again, shit shit shit shit shit, as he ran all the way around the bed to catch the sagging form that slipped gently sideways towards the floor. He righted the falling man and gave his shoulders a light shake. “Hey, there, brother. Hey, buddy,” he said. Price came around with a start, and said, “Oops.”
The summer heat was oppressive in the bedroom, and Kunstler had sweat completely through his shirt. He didn’t want the windows open, as he intended to keep whatever sounds they made to themselves, but now he had to keep blinking hard to keep the salty drops from stinging his eyes. Holding Price with first one hand and then the other, he tried to shake off his jacket, but the right side caught on his shirt-cuff button and wouldn’t come loose. For a moment he stood, left hand holding Price by the top of his head, right hand trapped in a long trail of inverted coat sleeve, frustration rising in his chest. “For the love of Christ,” he said out loud. He put one foot on the bed, and rested Price’s face against the inside of his lifted thigh. The jacket he removed roughly with his free left hand and threw across the room. In a fake British accent, Price said, “Steady there, old man,” and then in a kind of singsong, “I’m Manson Price, sir, and I’d like to speak to the captain of this ship.”
Kunstler settled Price back against the headboard. This time Inez was supple and free, and he was easily able to fold her at the waist and arrange her knees apart. He looked at her for a moment, the cleft of her body rent and exposed. With a mouth-wet finger he began to part the tangled hair between her legs. She made a small noise, a sort of mewing in her throat, and Kunstler whispered tenderly to her that she shouldn’t worry. “You just have to be ready, is all, and then it will be just fine.” He rested his face against her leg while he worked on her, and breathed in the smell. The girl soon started to press back against his fingers, which now slid easily. The room felt incredibly hot, and Kunstler wiped his brow against his shoulder.
Kunstler went to Price and gave the man a shake and a light slap. “Don’t pass out,” he said quietly, almost desperately. “Just don’t pass out on me.”
“Excuse me,” Price said without opening his eyes, “but have we met?”
“Time to get to work,” Kunstler told him. He undid Price’s belt and fly and tugged the pants out from under him so they fell to his ankles. “Come on, friend,” he said. “Daddy’s home, remember? Time to get to work. Come on.”
“What’s the rush, Skipper?”
“It’s Inez,” Kunstler said gently. “She’s waiting for you. Are you going to keep her waiting?”
“I certainly ain’t.”
“No, you’re not, are you?”
“No. No, I certainly not, am I ain’t,” Price said. “Although.” His face folded then into a sad smile and he sighed.
“Sure,” Kunstler told him. “Don’t worry, we’re going to fix it. Everything is going to be just right.”
“Daddy’s home.”
“That’s right. Now, let’s go, brother. It’s time to get to work.”
Walking was difficult for Price with his pants down around his ankles and even over the short distance from the headboard to the foot of the bed he nearly fell twice. Kunstler stood him behind Inez and pulled down his shorts, but he could see Price wasn’t ready.
He took Price’s hand and ran it along the cleft between Inez’s open legs. He pressed his mouth right to the man’s ear, and asked him, “Do you feel that?”
“I…yes,” breathed the other. Their hands together were getting slick.
“You feel it? Yes? Do you want that?”
Price inhaled deeply. “I plead Fifth,” he said, but accepted Kunstler’s slippery finger gently into his mouth.
“You recognize that, right? You want it, right? Yes? Don’t you? Good. That’s good. Okay, let’s see if you’re ready for it. Let’s see if you can do your bit, here, all right?”
“Yes,” said Price again. “What the hell, I might as well.”
With his scented palm Kunstler gently brushed Price’s cheek, only a little rougher than his own, and then suddenly kissed him at the corner of his mouth.
“Well hey,” said Price.
“The good stuff is coming,” Kunstler told him. “You just have to be ready for it.” Price’s eyes were still so heavy they barely opened, Kunstler could see, but he was getting hard now. Kunstler spit in his palm and then held it out to Price.
“Spit in my hand there. Go on, spit in my hand, now, like we’re making a deal.” Price let a wad of saliva fall down his chin. Kunstler ran his wet fingers around Price’s cock. He kissed him again, this time fully, his tongue inside the other’s mouth, straddling the man’s thigh and riding it in terse jerking movements. He slipped around behind him and pushed him a short shuffling step forward until he was right against the kneeling Inez, and then guided him inside her. Price was only moving slowly, so Kunstler slid his wet finger into him from behind, and like that the three of them rocked back and forth until Price stiffened into a noise.
* * *
·
Price had passed out, so getting him dressed and on his feet again was hell. He threatened to vomit twice on the way to the living room. When they finally reached the landing Kunstler held Price up by the lapels. “You okay there?” he asked.
“I’m tired,” Price said. “Serious, I just need lie down, if that’s enough with everyone. I don’t need fancy, understand. Just floor will do.”
“Not yet. You can sleep later, when you get home.”
“I’m sure that’s right. But, I’m the floor, you know. And is this trip really necessary?”
Kunstler looked down the stairs for a moment, and tightened his grip on the man’s jacket. He thought briefly of a slow dark lake of blood from a man’s head, of a fist against a face and a body falling to the floor, meat heavy on unhinged bone, a heap at the bottom of the stairs; then he looked through these thoughts to the face of the drunken Price.
“Hey,” Kunstler said. He gave him a light slap on the cheek. Suddenly he asked, “Buddy, hey. How old are you?”
“I’m, my take Fifth,” Price mumbled. “The grounds that incriminate me.”
“No, come on. How old? Nineteen? Twenty?”
Price nodded. “Nine ten,” he said.
“Jesus Christ,” said Kunstler.
“Don’t get sore, mister, it ain’t my fault. And don’t take it wrong, I know. Sometimes when we were dancing, see, and the thing is, I think your friends in there liked me. I sure liked them.”
“I guess they liked you fine. But now it’s time for you to go,” Kunstler told him.
Price nodded again. “Just a rest, pal, little bit.” He made as if to sit, but Kunstler held him up, and Price had no strength to struggle.
“No. You have to go. Got it?”
The young man nodded. “Into sunset.” Kunstler pointed him at the stairs, but it was clear that he would never make it down on his own, so together they trundled slowly to the lobby. Just before Kunstler let Price out the front door, the young man leaned into him and said in a voice conspiratorial and sly, “Less and another.”
“What?” said Kunstler.
“Less you me go, have a other drink.”
“No,” said Kunstler. “No more drinks. You have to get
out of here.”
“I know, I know, but wait,” said Price, his face crumpled with concern. “What about that, mister? Huh? How about ’em?” he whispered.
“How about what?”
Price looked at him with something like concern, an almost tender gaze, and in a voice filled with the happiness of promise, he whispered, “Waffles. Mister, how about waffles?”
Kunstler kneed the door open and gave Price a push, watched him reel as far as the next building. Then he looked around the tiny lobby, as if he worried someone else might be there undetected. After a deep breath, he went back up the stairs to Inez.
The girl was still folded at the bed’s end, her legs forked, her face flattened into the sheets, one foot starting to travel towards the floor. Her bare thigh caught the light from the hallway. Her mouth was open and her breathing came rough and loud. Kunstler rolled her on her side and rearranged her legs. “You should put your knees up to your chest, now, like this,” he said to her. “I heard somewhere it works better that way.” He lay down beside her, and put an arm around to hold her in position. “See,” he whispered. “Now we’re spooning. Just the way you like.” He wondered how many times they would have to try before it worked.
part two
1971
Kunstler would have to go looking for him. There was no choice. For two sleepless days he had missed work so that the boy’s mother wouldn’t be alone in the apartment for the boy to come back to, keeping watch the whole time from the seat that let him lean out of the kitchen to see the front door. He had to keep them apart, at least until he found a way to deal with the boy. Now that she was finally going back to her job, he could go out and search. There was no other choice, even if he didn’t have an idea where, even if he hadn’t thought yet what he would do when he found him.
