Eye Contact

by Michael Craft

  So the scenario is set. Though David and Manning lead separate lives, each its own story, tonight’s chapter is a shared one, and it draws steadily toward a mutual climax that neither can now edit or revise. Though their motives and instincts may differ, they both respond to the same cues. This scene can end only one way.

  Manning’s hands are still busy on David’s chest. David’s hands have been working the lump in his own shorts. Now he slips the waistband below his hips, lets the shorts drop to his feet, and kicks free of them. With one hand, David masturbates against the khaki of Manning’s slacks. With the other, he grapples to unfasten Manning’s buckle.

  From his voyeur’s perch overhead, Manning watches the two men’s bodies tangle before the fire. Finally, he averts his eyes—knowing, even with the limited cogency of this moment, that such scenes are more vigorously enjoyed from the perspective of the imagination.

  Wednesday, June 30

  DAVID AWAKES EARLY the next morning, well before six. He didn’t think to close the blinds in his room when he finally went to bed last night, and the eastern sun now skims across the water and through the window, reflected in the dresser mirror, targeting his bed. It hurts to open his eyes.

  His nipples are sore. His face is sore, abraded by the night-stubble of another man’s beard. And his penis is sore. But these are minor agonies, the price of an evening’s pleasure, a bargain by any measure.

  He lies in the bedroom at the far end of the cabin, alone. He and Manning shared every known intimacy (and invented a few new ones) in front of the fire last night. With their repertoire exhausted, it was finally time to sleep, and each took to his own bed. Half awake now, blinded by daylight, he kicks the covers off the bed and feels his genitals. His morning erection invites attention, and the escapades of a few hours ago are still fresh enough in his mind to fuel some steamy jack-off fantasies. So he gives it a shot—but quickly concludes that his efforts will get him nowhere. There’s simply nothing left for now.

  Lacking sufficient energy to get out of bed and close the blinds, he rolls over, shading his face with an arm. There’s time for more sleep, but it’s so quiet up here—no traffic, no car alarms, no garbage trucks, nothing. Well, birds, sure. A hungry duck. God, that’s annoying. And what’s that other sound? Movement in the cabin, beyond the living room. Mark. Was that the door? Someone is being careful to be quiet, but David has definitely heard the sound of the screen door.

  He puts on his glasses, gets out of bed, finds his workout shorts, steps into them, and pads out of the bedroom to explore. There’s a light on in the bathroom, as if Manning was in there earlier, while it was still dark. The living room is much as they left it last night—no particular disarray, just a couple of empty glasses. The spent embers of the fire smolder like a tired cliché, a tangible metaphor, there in the grate.

  David pokes his head through the doorway into Manning’s bedroom and finds that he’s already up and packed, bed made—what a neatnik. But Manning isn’t in the room. The outside door is open, so David crosses to it, folding his arms over his chest to shield his cold-sensitive nipples from the damp morning air. Through the screen, he sees Manning with a terry cloth towel, wiping one of the car windows, wet with dew. He’s scrubbing intently, frowning. “Hey there,” says David, speaking in a stage whisper that seems appropriate to the early hour.

  Manning looks up. “Hey there, yourself.” He smiles. “Sorry if I woke you.”

  “No, of course not.” Awkward pause. David asks, “Why the big rush?”

  “No rush.” Towel in hand, Manning comes to the door and steps inside. “I had trouble sleeping. Thought I’d better make myself useful.” He sets the towel on a dresser and unzips his jacket. Seeing that David is shivering, he closes the door. “By the way”—he gives David a hug, not a kiss, nothing intimate—“good morning.”

  David holds on to Manning a moment longer than Manning intended. “Yeah. Good morning.” He pecks the side of Manning’s face.

  “Let’s talk, David.”

  “Sure.” David sits on the edge of the bed, hands folded in his lap.

  Manning paces once in front of him, turns to address him, but does not look him in the eye. Predictably but uncertainly, Manning begins, “About last night …”

  “Mark,” David interrupts, “let me make this easier for you. I know you’re committed to Neil. I don’t want to wreck what you’ve got, and even if I did want to, I doubt if I could. I understand that you have qualms about what happened, and because you do, I do. But I’ve got to tell you—it was prime.” He grins up at Manning, his boyish features flushed with the morning-after glow of a sated libido. He really is a sight, sitting there on the bed, twiddling his toes. It’s enough to lure anyone into a quick romp.

  Manning isn’t blind, and he’s only human. His knees go weak at the very thought of what he could have—right now, again—if he gave the slightest hint of interest. His guilt, after all, is already complete. They have plenty of time. Another hour’s ecstasy may prove anticlimactic, but it won’t make his soul any blacker, and he’ll get no gold stars for refraining. He need only extend a finger to touch that little silver barbell, and David will be ready for action. They may never have this opportunity again.

  But even as Manning weighs these possibilities, he knows there’s a flaw to his premise. The cold truth—the summation of the issue that robbed his sleep—is that he feels little if any guilt about last night. What troubles him most this morning is the feeling that he should feel guilty, plus the knowledge that Neil will never be able to appreciate the incident so analytically, if he finds out about it, and Manning is further vexed by the question of how much, if anything, he should tell Neil.

  He knows, as surely as he breathes, that he was powerless to ignore the unexpected stimulus that confronted him last night. He was sapped of his will. Not that he was morally weak or lacked integrity, but rather, he simply could not fail to react as he did. Any jury of twelve reasonable peers would surely conclude that he must be held blameless, not guilty.

  This morning’s situation, though, is another matter. By virtue of last night’s experience, he now knows exactly what erotic power David holds over him. Last night was something like temporary insanity, but that’s a defense that cannot be invoked twice. Opening himself to future sex with the kid would brand Manning with the blackest, lowest stripe of guilt. Even so …

  He tells David, “You’re right. Last night was indeed ‘prime’—I’d be a liar to tell you otherwise. But it can never happen again, David. It will never happen again. Do you understand that?”

  “I understand.” He sighs. “I don’t like it, but I understand.”

  Confident that they’re in sync, Manning sits next to David on the bed, telling him, “I hope this won’t affect our relationship—at work, I mean. You’ve been doing a great job for the Journal, and during the past week, I’ve truly grown fond of you, getting to know each other as we have.”

  David’s grin almost erupts into laughter.

  “I mean,” Manning clarifies, “I’ve grown fond of you as a friend. Neil has, too. I hope we can continue to see each other socially, the three of us.”

  “I wish Neil had been here last night,” says David.

  “So do I. Then nothing would have happened, and we wouldn’t be in the midst of an awkward conversation this morning.”

  “Like hell.” David is wide-eyed. He rests his arm across Manning’s shoulder. “Neil could have joined us. Talk about rad!” He isn’t joking.

  Manning offers no comment.

  “Hey,” David continues, dropping his arm, drawing one knee onto the bed so he can face Manning, “why not? I don’t want to come between you guys, but in the literal sense …” He trails off suggestively.

  David has painted a vivid picture, and Manning’s mind sketches at least a dozen variations of the contorted scene. Might David’s suggestion be something that Neil would actually buy into? Manning knows that it would signal a subtle but deep shift in t
heir relationship. What would it mean? As a couple, would they be stronger or weaker as the result of it? He tells David, “It’s an intriguing notion, but not yet. I don’t know if I’m ready for that, or ever will be.”

  “Squaresville.”

  Rising from the bed, Manning shrugs with a smile. “I’m old.”

  “Sure, Gramps.” David also rises, plants his hands on his hips, and eyes Manning up and down. “All I know is, this kid got the workout of his life last night.”

  Really? Well. Manning decides that if he doesn’t switch topics, this conversation will get him into trouble. He suggests, “Why don’t you start putting yourself together? I’ve got some fussing to do with the car, then we can tackle a major breakfast before we leave.”

  That sounds just fine to David. Nodding, he starts to leave the room, but stops in the doorway to the living room, facing Manning. He leans against the jamb, nipple ornaments glistening. Big smile. “Seriously, Mark. It was incredible last night.” And he turns, leaving the room.

  Manning stands there mulling all that has happened, uncertain how or when to broach it with Neil, then he shakes his head, dismissing these thoughts for now. He grabs the damp towel that he dropped onto the dresser and picks up another, a dry one. Zipping up his jacket, he opens the door and steps outside.

  Though it did not rain overnight, everything is wet with dew, including the car. Parked beneath the drooping branches of pines, its black paint appears beaded and frosty, littered with needles and flecks of stuff dropped from the trees. After yesterday’s long drive, Manning wanted to get the car washed, but he and David haven’t left the resort since their arrival, and now it’s almost time to return. Since the car is normally garaged overnight, Manning was unprepared for the sight that awaited him this morning. At first disheartened (he can’t stand the idea of setting out for a long drive in a dirty car), he then resolved to take advantage of the situation. Since the car is thoroughly wet, he can at least wipe it down, hoping to swab away yesterday’s road film as well as the overnight detritus from the trees—sort of a sponge bath. It’s worth a try, Manning tells himself, making a mental note that he should always store paper towels and some glass cleaner in the trunk.

  He starts with the hood, the most crucial target of his efforts. He picks away needles one by one, then sets to work with the bathroom towels, the damp one followed by the dry one. Swirling the second towel, hoping to buff up a shine, Manning soon learns that while he can dry the car, he cannot clean it. It was peppered with droplets of sap, invisible beneath the dew, but now smeared by the towel, causing a random pattern of ugly swipes to appear on the paint. He cannot simply whisk away the grime—hot water, sudsy with detergent, is needed to cleanse it.

  Giving up on the hood, he works his way to the side panels. And then he notices it. A stone, possibly an errant chunk of gravel that had spilled from a driveway to the road, has dinged the front passenger’s door. There’s a dimple in the metal and, at its center, the period-size crater of a missing chip of paint.

  The sturdy sedan, which was perfect, in which Manning had invested his pride as well as his cash, has been tainted. Though the damage is slight—indeed, this loss of automotive innocence was inevitable—it must be patched, quickly and thoroughly, lest it spread, corroding the car to its very frame.

  Manning rubs the pitted, exposed metal with his fingertip, nursing the wound with a dab of spit.

  Only a few minutes later, on the top floor of the Journal Building, Lucille Haring boots up her computer terminal in Nathan Cain’s unlit outer offices.

  When she arrived, she caught the security guard dozing at his post and told him she’d seen men shot for less. She was joking, but never cracked a smile, and the guard fumbled with his key to admit her. While passing through the door, she asked, “Did the Colonel spend the night in his quarters?”

  “No, ma’am. He left the tower before midnight.”

  Good. She gave the guard a curt nod, shut the door behind her, and marched straight through the labyrinth of quiet rooms to her desk.

  It will still be nearly two hours before the rest of the staff arrives, but she needs all the time she can get—there’s work to be done.

  Her computer clicks and whirs, displaying cryptic start-up messages on its monitor. It pauses now and then for passwords, like a dog begging for scraps of breakfast. When she enters the codes, the machine churns onward, gobbling the information from her fingertips. While waiting for this electronic feeding-frenzy to digest itself, she sits erect in her chair, drumming the desk. Shafts of orange morning light angle in through the room’s windows, partly obscured by the hulking cabinetry that houses yet another phase of the office’s newly installed computer power.

  At last the desired prompt appears on the screen. What is her command? Though she knows she is alone, she instinctively checks over both shoulders before proceeding. She unbuttons the breast pocket of her pleated jacket and fishes out a little key, which she uses to unlock the file drawer of her desk. From the drawer she removes an unlabeled folder and spreads it open on the desk. Inside is a stiff cardboard envelope. And inside that is an unlabeled diskette. She slides the disk into her A-drive, types a command, and hits the “enter” key.

  As the computer begins to churn, Lucille Haring holds her breath. Outside the window, an unmanned scaffold winches into view, hauling more equipment roofward. Then a message appears on the computer screen: “Welcome, Mr. Cain.”

  Lucille Haring smiles—she’s in.

  By midafternoon, Manning is seated back at his desk in the Journal’s city room. He’s been away only a day and a half, but there’s a pile of pink slips by his phone and enough voice mail to crash the system. He’s barely made a dent in all this when Daryl waltzes into the cubicle with another fistful of messages. “My my, gorgeous,” he coos, “aren’t we casual today? Tennis, anyone?”

  Manning didn’t think to pack his office “uniform” for the trip to Door County, and he didn’t want to take time to stop at home and change while driving back into the city. He wears a white camp shirt, chinos, and topsiders. He tells Daryl, “Not that it’s any of your business, but I was on an overnight assignment.”

  “Where?”

  Manning grabs the sheaf of pink slips. “Wisconsin.” He tries to organize the mess of notes, diskettes, files, and morgue folders that clutter his desk.

  “Huh?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Daryl, it’s a state. North of here.” He looks up from the rubble. “They make cheese.”

  “Oops.” Daryl flashes the whites of his eyes. “Sounds like bwana got up on wrong side of the bed this morning.”

  Manning exhales. He swivels his chair to face the copyboy. “Sorry, Daryl. As a matter of fact, I didn’t sleep well. The Nolan and Zarnik stories are getting more convoluted, raising lots of new questions, but no answers. What’s more …” He hesitates, then stops. He was going to mention his car’s door-ding, but that would sound absurdly trivial. “Never mind. This hasn’t been my best day.”

  Daryl knows that Manning is investigating Zarnik’s identity; the reporter confided that much of the mystery to him on Monday and asked him to do some research in the Journal’s morgue. Responding now to Manning’s despondency, Daryl moves behind the chair and places both hands on Manning’s shoulders. His tone is instantly soothing. “There there, sugar. You just keep digging. Keep your eye on the coveted Brass Bird.”

  “Thanks.” Manning reaches up to pat one of Daryl’s hands. “Sorry to say, the Partridge committee would be singularly unimpressed with this investigation.”

  Daryl steps in front of Manning and parks on the edge of the desk. “What have you got so far?”

  Manning has other things to do right now, but a summary might help focus his thoughts. He tells Daryl, “Zarnik is a fraud, but who is he, and why? I’ve learned that he’s probably a professional actor and that he may have some connection with the Christian Family Crusade, but there’s nothing to suggest a motive for his claimed astrono
mical discovery, which is bunk. The Pentagon has expressed interest in his research methods, which are nonexistent, fearing that the time lag between his announced discovery and its independent verification may open a ‘window of opportunity’ for something menacing, but what?”

  “I see what you mean, love—plenty of questions, damn few answers.”

  “Not yet, at least. What really intrigues me, though, is the possible link between Zarnik’s ruse and Cliff Nolan’s murder. I couldn’t help sensing a connection from the very moment when I discovered Cliff’s body. His laptop computer was missing, and it has never been found. He was working on a story when he was shot, and I have every reason to believe that it would have exposed Zarnik as a fraud. The woman next-door to Cliff said that he was playing loud music on the night he was killed, and in fact, when I found his body two nights later, the stereo system was still humming loudly, cranked to the max. I wondered what music was playing when Cliff was killed, and I just got an answer.” Manning plucks one of the message slips from his desk.

  Daryl leans forward, but can’t read it.

  Manning tells him, “Jim, my detective friend at headquarters, left word that the last CD played on Cliff’s stereo had no fingerprints on it. It was a recording of the Verdi Requiem. I should have guessed.”

  Daryl’s mouth hangs agape as he ponders this revelation. “Sorry,” he says after a moment, “I don’t follow you at all. What was playing?”

  Manning repeats, “The Verdi Requiem—the traditional Catholic Mass for the Dead, as set to music by Giuseppe Verdi. He was a nineteenth-century composer of grand opera and other large-scale works. The Requiem is one of his most enduring and ‘popular’ pieces, probably the most bombastic. It’s a very long setting of the Mass, requiring a huge orchestra and chorus. The point is, I don’t know anyone who sits down and actually listens to the whole thing. The part that everyone likes is the “Dies Irae” section, near the beginning. It opens with four explosive bursts of sound, depicting the wrath of doomsday. Played loudly enough, those blasts could easily mask four gunshots. Cliff had four bullets in his back.”