Numbers

by John Rechy

  “In my mouth—quick!” the tattooed youngman gasps, rubbing the liquid over his own cock and balls.

  Fighting the part of him that resists—as he feels that causes him to move back, shaking his head.

  Johnny bends at his knees, toward the other’s face.

  Gurgling frantically in order not to allow it to escape, the other’s mouth receives Johnny’s piss, the flow uninterrupted until suddenly Johnny’s cock grows very hard; and the flow of liquid stops. Pumping brutally and for a long time, Johnny forces himself to come—thrusting his cock over and over into the other’s mouth.

  Thirty-six!

  Groaning, the youngman with the tattoos comes too.

  Johnny stands up dizzily—bewildered by what he’s done—as if he acted in another’s dream—another’s nightmare. He looks down at the other’s wet vest and pants, wet face—and quickly away as if he were viewing himself through the other’s eyes and seeing a savage part of himself which he prefers not to see—not to exist.

  Outside the Arena, the two stared at each other with the blazing anger of bitter enemies.

  And Johnny Rio feels very depressed. That’s not my scene, he protests to himself.

  The depression is compounded by the fact that there’s still no “reason” to prop the swaying structure of his existence—compounded even further by the fact that the man with the two red X’s branded on his back, slowing his car when he noticed Johnny, would have clearly stopped if Johnny hadn’t driven away hurriedly.

  That guy’s still after me and he thinks eventually I’ll make his weird scene.

  The thought lashes at Johnny.

  Just one more!

  Parked by the Forest. Sitting groggily inside his car.

  As if that will resurrect him, Johnny breathes very, very deeply; and the odor of the Cloud, which is smoke and fog—the odor of the city of lost angels—accosts him:

  It’s the odor of something burned—but not yet final like ashes.

  And at that precise moment—on a threshold of his mind just barely below the level of his consciousness—Johnny Rio finally knows this:

  There never was a reason, I’m just here and that’s all.

  And thinking that, he’s grasped by an enormous craving whose demands are already multiplying, squaring themselves, burgeoning geometrically—a craving that expects no surcease.

  Johnny feels an emotional howling.

  I’m afraid! his mind shouts.

  Turning quickly toward the Forest, he sees a man standing a few feet away, obviously waiting for him. Johnny opens the door of his car and he gets out automatically.

  The dark shadow lurking on the highest hill of the Park draws his attention again.

  He looks up.

  Swaying toward hallucination, feverish, Johnny closes one eye; and cocking his finger in imitation of a rifle, he aims at the Heavenly Sniper.

  “Pinggg!” he says aloud.

  Now he goes to the Nest, and the man cruising him follows swiftly.

  Johnny Rio leans against the trunk of a tree. The man bends down before him.

  Thirty-seven!