by Hurt
Khalid noiselessly dashed to the door and opened it. The silence after seemed oddly long, and then Galen heard Khalid politely saying, “Yes? Can I help you?”
Something about the tone of the male voice at it said, “Is Vanka here?” made Galen step into the living room where he could see the visitor. A twenty-something Ben Affleck type, his T-shirt too tight, his face already set in an expression of possessive indignation at finding Khalid, so beautiful and so half-dressed answering Vanka's door.
David, no doubt.
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“She is, but she's asleep,” Khalid answered in his serene way, his voice lowered to prompt the guest to be quiet, too, for Vanka's sake.
“That's too fucking bad,” the man on the porch replied, not raising his voice, but lacing it with menace.
The man hadn't so much as glanced at Galen, and it occurred to him that he was nearly invisible, standing right in the middle of that dim room. Lover's pride almost made him wish the guy on the porch would pull something, just so he could see the man's shock when he found out how much stronger Khalid was than his slight build gave away. But of course Khalid would never let things go that way.
“I'm Khalid,” he said, his gentle voice unchanged by the other's rudeness. Khalid reached out and offered the man his hand.
“David,” the other answered tersely, shaking Khalid's hand perfunctorily.
“David, of course.” Galen could hear the warm smile in Khalid's voice. “Please, come in.”
Khalid stepped aside and David entered, looking more awkward than belligerent, now.
“This is Galen.”
Even more unsettled at finding another man in Vanka's living room, one who'd stood in plain sight but had gone unnoticed, David shook Galen's hand. The usual look of startled recognition flickered over David's face, but there was enough going on, he didn't pursue it.
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“David,” Khalid said, keeping his voice soft. “I'll go and tell Vanka you're here.
First, though, there's something you should know. She's all right, but she's had an operation.”
“Operation? What operation?” Things were really stacking up too fast for David.
“I'll let Vanka tell you about it. Only, the incision, you can't embrace her.
Understand?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I understand.” Now David's voice was quiet. And then something made him turn and in his new-found, quiet voice he said, “Christ, Vanka.”
She'd come half way down the hall and was standing there in shorts and her big, baggy hoodie, despite the nintey-plus degrees. For a second Galen saw her as David must have seen her. Tired. Thin. Weak.
Sick.
“Hi, David.”
“What the hell is going on?” David asked, sounding more exasperated than aggressive. Vanka opened her mouth to say something, but David didn't give her the chance. “Fuck, Vanka, you don't answer my calls; you're never home; I finally track you down here, and the place looks and smells like a goddamned opium den.”
Galen guessed it was the weed and Khalid's naked torso that, in David's world view, made this tidy, cozy little house warrant the opium den label.
“And jesus, look at you. What kind of trouble are you in, Vanka? Everyone's worried to fucking death, and it's not—“
“David.” Vanka's voice was quiet, but she delivered his name with a note of finality, and David went silent. Then, her voice gentle, she said, “I'm sorry you've been 249
worried.” She stepped forward and touched his hand. “Come on. Let's go outside, and I'll tell you everything.”
Galen and Khalid went back to washing the dishes, Galen half glad and half not that the running water and clattering of the dishes made it impossible to hear their conversation. Whatever kept pulling his attention back to the garden wasn't jealousy.
More like a certainty that whatever was being said would reveal something of Vanka to him. She was so open, so artless in some ways but had a knack for slamming the doors she didn't want crossed. Ashamed to let Khalid catch him watching, Galen made a heroic effort to keep his eyes on the task at hand. But as he was opening a cupboard and putting away the coffee mugs, he glanced outside, and David was on his knees at Vanka's feet, his face buried in her lap, his back convulsing.
* * * *
Having slept off the heavy melancholy of David's visit, pouring a glass of juice and carrying it out to the backyard, Vanka felt a little surge of gratitude that it was her breasts, and not her arms or legs she'd lost. She had these little moments, now and then, when it was hard to remember what was so awful about it, really. Everything she'd ever done, she could still do: walk, climb, operate a camera, edit. Fuck, even. At least in theory. Except it didn't feel like the same her would be doing those things. She didn't feel the same way about herself.
If it was possible, Khalid was even more beautiful, sheathed in the sun's light.
Vanka took a chair in the shade of the big olive tree's pale limbs and silvered leaves.
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“Galen had a meeting downtown,” Khalid told her, not squinting, but keeping his eyes closed against the sun, except a sliver of white and gold behind the shade of his long dark lashes.
“Khalid. That afternoon, after Galen left for Chile.”
“Mmmm?” he practically purred, that throaty sound driving a thrill and then a punishing little sting through her almost simultaneously.
“You said Galen would be happy, us together like that.”
“Yes.”
“He didn't seem too happy when he saw the video.”
There was a long pause before Khalid asked, “You showed him?”
“He found it.”
“He was angry?”
“Not angry. Sad, I think. I don't know. He just seemed weird.”
Khalid was still and quiet for a long time.
“Vanka,” he finally said, “do you remember, you asked me that day, why did I agree to fuck you for Galen?”
”Yes.”
“I told you then, I was eager to do something he asked, because he had almost never asked anything of me, as a lover.”
“Yes.”
“Only one other time, he asked something of me. It was I think two years ago, Galen asked me to let him film me. It was very hard for him to ask, I think. His face and his voice showed that it was hard for him, and I understood why. And it was the first 251
time, in some ways, the only time, he spoke to me, asked something of me, as a lover.
And I refused.”
A little twinge grabbed at Vanka's gut. Khalid, so in love with Galen, had told him
” no.” And he'd said “yes” to her.
“Why?”
“It's another of my long stories,” he said.
She just looked at him, wanting to know.
“I left Algeria, left my family, very young. Fourteen. My two older brothers both had been killed in the civil war, and my mother could think of nothing but getting me out of our country, away to some safe place.
“My father had some connections in Paris; he'd had his education there, and had worked there in his early twenties. He managed to arrange a visa for me. So I went.”
“Alone?”
“Alone. There was some idea I would go to live with some friend of a cousin of mine, but no one had been able to reach him, beforehand, and when I arrived in Paris, he did not live any more at the address I had for him.
“It's a usual story, for boys and girls like me. I had only a little money, I knew no one. I was afraid that soon I would not have enough money to eat, so I slept on the street so I would not spend what I had to rent a room. Even so, the money went too quickly. I tried every day to find some work, but there were more people than jobs. Older people than me, French people, had no job. Nobody would hire me. A few times some kind person would give me some little job to do for a little money, but it was impossible to make enough to live on, like that. And I did not want to beg.
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“Every day, eve
ry night, I watched the boys on a certain street, leaning against walls, smoking cigarettes, waiting for the cars. Men would stop at the curb and call out to one of the boys, and he would get into the car, and the car would drive off.
“I understood what this was. At first the idea frightened me. Already I knew I wanted to fuck men, even though I had no experience—not with boys or girls, except for little, childish things. So it was not as hard for me as it must have been for some of the boys. But intuitively I felt that I would be weak, and the man in the car would be strong.
But the less money I had in my pocket, the less that danger seemed. And in truth, even the danger had some appeal for me. As a boy, dangerous things always excited me. It was one reason my mother was so anxious to send me away, away from that place where many factions would eagerly give a boy a weapon and take him into war.
“So, for a while I watched. And then, one day, I went and talked to one of the boys. He told me how it worked, how much to ask for. And then I joined the line.
“I was very popular. My first week, I made more money than my parents had given me to live on. I rented a small room, but I needed very little money. The other boys all smoked and drank and did drugs, but I never wanted to do those things. I thought I could survive by working only one or two nights each week, or maybe one week each month. The rest of the time I could write, as I had always wanted.
“But then I had an idea I could earn enough money to bring my father and mother over, and even to help support them there in Paris. And so I worked every night, and lived and ate as cheaply as I could, to save the most money as fast as possible.
“One of my customers was a man named Michele. Always he chose me from the line, never another boy. Most of the boys had one or two like that, men who only wanted 253
them and no one else. The first few times it was just sex, something quick, there in his car. Then he began to take me to hotels, to keep me the entire night. He began to ask me about my other clients. He wanted to know everything—what the men looked like, how they dressed, did I like any of them more than the others. He would ask me what these other men would have me do, and make me say everything in a lot of detail, always asking what I liked, what I did not like. More and more he was jealous, and certain men he did not want me to go with anymore. Finally, he said he would pay me twice what I made if I would give up the line and have sex only with him.
“I agreed to this arrangement, mostly because it meant I would have enough money to get my parents out of Algeria sooner than if I kept to the line. And it also was safer. Michele I knew. But getting into the cars of strange men every night, always there was a chance something very bad would happen.
“In the beginning things seemed very good. I was happy not to be in the line every night, cold, afraid of the police, afraid of the customers. I had time to write. And soon Michele moved me into a small apartment in a better neighborhood, because he was disgusted by the poverty in the building where I'd had my little room. So now he not only gave me more cash than what I had made before, but also my rent was free. He even began to make some inquiries, seeing about arranging to get my parents into France.
“But also, Michele began to be different with me. He had a sadistic side, and it came out, more and more. All the things I had told him before about the other clients he began to use against me, to make me do the things I hated most. He took pleasure from 254
embarrassing me, from treating me like something he owned. And sometimes he filmed us while he did these things.
“I was thinking every day of ending our arrangement, of finding another cheap little room somewhere, of going back to the line if I could still find no other work. One day I told him this, and he beat me. So badly that I knew I could not go the line for a long time, because I looked so bad. But when I healed, I waited until I knew he would not come for a few days, because he was away with business, and I left.
“I got a room in a different arrondisement—a different neighborhood—and sold myself at a street corner far from where I'd worked before, hoping he would not find me.
And a few weeks later I was lucky to find a job washing dishes in a cafe. It was less money, much less, but after Michele I could not bear to be touched by the men who paid for me. And already I had saved enough, I thought I could help my parents.
“You can imagine, I had been lying to them about my life in Paris. Every week I called them and told them stories about the people I worked for, running errands and doing small jobs. Now I called, and my mother would not come to the phone. After a little time my father told me why. Michele had used the address I had given him when I believed he was helping me to find a way to bring my parents over. When he had returned to Paris and saw I had left him, he had sent them the video tape he had made of us.
“My father told me that my mother had watched it all. Almost an hour of the man fucking me and doing much worse, because she had the idea some bad man had kidnapped her child and was doing these things to him by force, that if she watched the tape maybe she would see the bad man's face, or see some sign of where her son was 255
being held captive. But at the end of the tape she saw her son, naked, relaxed and laughing with the anonymous man holding the camera.
“My mother was a very religious woman. In her eyes, for a man to have sex with another man is a bad sin. But my father, he is irreligious. Strictly rational. And he told me, after he'd told me what he and my mother had seen on that tape, that he had known for a long time that I would be with men. What hurt him was that I had given myself to a man like Michele who would take such pleasure in degrading me, a man who would do a thing like sending that tape to the parents of his lover.
“I had misjudged Michele. I had tested him, when I told him I would leave. I thought possibly he would threaten me with something like what he did. But in the end, he did not use the tape to keep me. He only used it to hurt me. To make sure that if I would not love him, that my mother and father would not love me. He broke my mother's heart simply to punish me, not because he loved me, but only because I hurt his vanity.
“So my parents never came to France. I have been back to Algeria twice, and stayed in my parents' home, but after that day my mother never spoke to me again. And three years ago, she died.”
“Khalid.”
Some physical force seemed to pull her to him, where he'd gone to lean against the gray-white trunk of the olive tree. He gazed down at her with his placid eyes and kissed her wet cheeks, then pulled her carefully to him.
“I could have told you, simply, that I'd been betrayed by a lover. But I don't want you to think I said 'no' to Galen because I was afraid he would betray me that way. I love Galen. I trust Galen. It's just that what happened before, I thought I could not forget 256
that, and do that thing Galen asked of me with sincere pleasure. And I don't want to do anything, with him, that is a lie, That is why I said 'no' to Galen.
“And with you, Vanka, at first I said 'no' to you, also. But how sad you looked, even before I said the word, I think, the moment you sensed I would refuse, you looked so broken. I saw it was not only for fun you asked that of me. I knew what your scar was. I knew, from Galen, that you were keeping very quiet about your illness, not only to him, but to all your friends, your family. And I imagined, then, something like the truth.
That things were changing for you. That you wanted this . . . memento of how you were then. And you'd been so sweet, so tender with me that afternoon, I think some deep . . .
affection for you washed away my bad feelings about doing that. So I really wanted to, that day. With you. And truly, once we started, I forgot that ugliness from the past. I didn't think of it once, while you were with me.”
She couldn't resist reaching up with both hands, molding them to the contours of his cheeks and jaw, or fixing her eyes on his. Awe, adoration, something swelled up in her, like helium was flying through her veins, almost lifting her from the ground.
“Does Galen know all this
?”
“Yes. He knows my story, from Paris. And I think he understands why I let you film us together.”
* * * *
“She's asleep?”
“Unconscious is more like it,” Galen half-whispered, setting Vanka's dishes in the sink. Eight o'clock had gotten to be her regular bedtime since she'd started the chemo.
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Behind him, Khalid's faint footfalls came closer, until Galen could feel the heat of the other's body. Panic flared. Galen turned, already almost pinned at the counter.
“Khalid,” Galen warned.
“Keep quiet,” Khalid came back, his voice soft, but demanding compliance. “If you take it easy, Galen, I won't have to fight you, and Vanka won't hear anything.
Adrenaline flooded his chest. Fuck. This, happening here. Vanka just down the hall. As Khalid moved to close the few inches separating them, Galen wedged his hand between them. Instinct.
“Galen. Put your hands on the counter. Otherwise, I'm going to tie you. And if Vanka stirs, I might not be able to get you untied quickly enough.”
Galen took his palm from Khalid's chest, and gripped the counter behind him.
“All day I've wanted you Galen. I've hurt with wanting you, almost from the moment I arrived this morning.”
The heat, then the firm, living pressure of Khalid's body pressed against his chest, his groin, his thighs. Galen flexed, but stayed still, letting Khalid bring his mouth to his ear.
“From the time you opened the door Galen, I felt you needing this.”
Heat flamed across his cheeks, and Khalid's grin—not his serene smile, but his teasing, sadistic grin—bent the full, soft lips inches from his face.
“All day, I felt you needing this. Just as I know now, without touching you, that you're hard for me. Aren't you?”
At the challenge a fresh flood of heat surged through him, as if to prove Khalid right.
