by Poppy Brite
And of course she recognized the New Orleans cops. She had a long and bitter acquaintance with them, from her bust for a joint’s worth of marijuana at sixteen (which Zach had since wiped from her record) to the clumsy attempts at entrapment she had been subjected to at the Pink Diamond (“How much wouldja charge to show a little more?” they’d leer, tugging at the crotches of their tacky plainclothes slacks).
After the agent in charge had examined her driver’s license and realized that there was no computer equipment left in the place except the printer, he seemed to view Eddy as a minor threat at best. She still saw his mean, handsome face glowering in her direction from time to time as he snapped out orders, but she had mostly been forgotten. The printer quickly disappeared out the door in the arms of another sharp-dressed, eerily efficient Secret Service man.
“Zach moved out months ago,” she said. “I think he left the country.” No one paid any attention. A suit with a camera clicked off shot after shot of the desk, the bookshelves, the towering stacks of paper. Two others busily sorted and packed computer printouts, smudgily printed zines, cassettes and CDs. With a sinking heart she saw the folded page from the Times-Picayune going into one of their goodie boxes, along with a copy of the science fiction novel Neuromancer. That had been one of Zach’s favorite books. The main character plugged his computer directly into a jack in his brain and entered the matrix, where he stole information from huge, faceless corporations. To Zach, William Gibson’s seamy world must have read like the paradise of his wildest dreams. To these guys it was just more proof of sedition.
They unplugged the phone and the answering machine and took those too. They took poor Stefan; Eddy saw him being hustled out the door between two broad blue backs, a thin string of puke still dripping from his chin. She wondered what they’d gotten him for. Tampering with evidence, probably, for throwing his ID in the toilet. Eddy thought it had been a pretty good trick; too bad he hadn’t managed to flush and send them fishing in the sewers.
New Orleans’ finest, busting pitiful teenage geeks while old ladies visiting their husbands’ graves stood a good chance of getting robbed or raped in the cemetery. Real heroes. And robbed and raped was how she felt right about now, watching these cookie-cutter robots swarm over her home and sift through her belongings and not being able to do a damn thing about it.
As soon as this nightmare was over, Eddy decided, she would go to the bank and withdraw part of the ten thousand dollars. Not all of it, that might look suspicious, but enough to have around in case … what? In case she needed to leave in a hurry?
Goddammit, she thought, I haven’t even broken the law yet and I’m already as paranoid as Zach was. Is this any way to live? Is it worth the gnawing in your stomach, the constant urge to look over your shoulder? For Zach she supposed it had been; he was addicted to the thrill, the risk. But for her, this state of affairs would not do for long.
She didn’t know if she should go anywhere near that money, and wished she had been able to ask Stefan if it was safe. But Eddy thought she would feel more secure with wads of cold cash sewn into her mattress than with illegitimate funds lurking in any electronically accessible part of her life. She wished she had never seen a computer.
Right now, if she was to be perfectly honest, she wished she had never met Zach. He was the best friend she had ever had, he was generous and brilliant, he had introduced her to all manner of exotic things she might never have found on her own. But he was also confusion and trouble and heartache.
And, on top of all that, she missed him so badly she thought it might kill her.
Trevor was in a small square room with a high ceiling lost in the shadows of dawn, a room whose walls were painted shabby gray to match the city beyond. He heard rain hitting the loose panes of the window. Soon would come the sound of doors opening, boys’ footsteps in the hall, boys’ voices in the early morning stillness, and it would be time to get up, time for breakfast and school, the sameness of another day.
He often dreamed that he was back at the Boys’ Home, that he had been handed all those years like penance to do over and over again until he got them right … whatever right would be.
Trevor opened his eyes and found himself staring at the back of a neck in extreme closeup. The dark hair at the nape had been recently shaved and stood up in baby-fine bristles. The skin was translucent white, almost poreless. The neck curved down to a bony shoulder; Trevor saw his own hand resting on that shoulder, encircling the sharp knob of the bone. The rest of the body was nestled cozily into the curve of his own.
He was amazed that the sensation of another person in bed with him—the slow rise and fall of breathing, the vibration of the curious heart—hadn’t kept him awake all night. He was used to sleeping in unfamiliar beds, but always alone. What happened when you woke up in bed with someone? What were you supposed to do?
The shoulder moved beneath his hand, and Trevor felt muscles shifting liquidly, bones rotating in their sockets, the smooth texture of skin under his palm. He felt the spine arch and ripple against his chest. He realized he had never thought about how much anatomy you could learn by touching someone.
Then Zach rolled over and looked at him with those almond-shaped dark green eyes, those eyes that were the exact shade of a colored pencil Trevor had once worn down to a nub. It was a pencil he used for coloring deep waters and strange shadows, and it had been labeled simply JADE.
Zach looked at him and smiled without saying anything. Even yesterday, even before the rain it had seemed that Zach was seeing too much of him, was perhaps half-hearing his thoughts. I don’t mind being in bed with you, Trevor thought, not really wanting Zach to hear it but perversely hoping he would. I don’t mind being this close to you. I don’t seem to mind it at all.
Like a dark pulsar from the depths of his subconscious, on the heels of that thought came: Yes, you could learn anatomy by touching someone. But Bobby took that method to its worst extreme, didn’t he?
And that was when he noticed the tiny bits of paper scattered across the blanket, over the pillow, through the tangle of Zach’s dark hair.
He reached out and took one. Zach turned his head to look, and his cheek barely grazed the back of Trevor’s hand. Trevor held the scrap of paper close to his eyes, trying to see it in the poor light. It was less than half an inch square, but its heavy texture felt terribly familiar. He sifted through a few more scraps. Pencil marks, mostly unidentifiable lines and shading. But here and there a detail had survived. A hastily lettered word. A pair of lips sealed around the mouthpiece of an alto saxophone. A dark eye filling with blood.
Zach propped himself on one elbow, shook the stuff out of his hair. “What is it?”
But Trevor was already up off the mattress, out of the room, running down the hall and slamming into the studio. He had left his sketchbook neatly centered on the drawing table. Now it lay wide open at a crazy angle on the floor, its spiral spine pulled askew by whatever force had ripped out the five pages of his story. The sight gave him a sick sensation in his stomach.
He picked up the sketchbook. It felt dirty, as if the pages were lightly coated with slime. Trevor supposed they might be. He made himself hold it between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, made himself walk slowly back down the hall instead of caroming off the walls, beating his head against the door frames, or simply throwing himself to the floor and sobbing.
Zach’s hands were full of the scraps of paper. He was trying to examine them in the watery light from the window. Trevor held up the sketchbook. As Zach made out what it was, a stricken expression dawned on his face. “Not the Bird story?”
So he had read it, the little snoop. Trevor couldn’t bring himself to care much now. “Yeah, that’s it you’re holding.”
Zach spread his hands and let the fragments flutter to the floor. He rubbed his palms together to dislodge the ones that had stuck, then started brushing them off the pillow and blanket. “Did you … were you …”
He read th
e question in Zach’s face. Zach was wondering if Trevor could have torn up the story himself. The realization didn’t even make Trevor angry; he supposed it was a reasonable enough doubt. “I was in bed with you all night,” he said. “You know I was. I could just as well ask you the same thing.”
“But I didn’t—”
“I know you didn’t.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“Draw it again, I guess.”
Zach started to speak, stopped, then could not seem to help himself, “But … but … Trevor …”
“What?”
“Aren’t you pissed?”
“What? That you read my story?”
“No,” Zach said impatiently. “I’m sorry but … no. I mean, aren’t you mad that it’s gone?”
Trevor sat down on the edge of the mattress. He looked at Zach, who was leaning forward, his hands clenched into fists against his bare chest, his muscles tensed, his eyes very wide and blazing. “Well, you obviously are.”
“Why aren’t you? It destroyed your work and threw it in your face! How can you not be pissed?”
Trevor took a deep breath. “There’s something in this house. I think it might be my family.”
“Yeah, I think maybe so too. And you know what I’d do if I were you? I’d say so fucking what and get the hell out of here. If it’ll tear up your work, it’ll hurt you.”
“I don’t care.”
Zach opened his mouth to reply, could not find anything to say and closed it again.
“If I hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have drawn that story in the first place. Birdland gave it to me. What can I say if Birdland wants it back?”
“Try bullshit.”
Zach slid across the mattress and laid his hands on either side of Trevor’s head, his fingertips pressing gently against the temples. “This is your Birdland. And these.” He dropped his hands to Trevor’s, took away the mutilated sketchbook, wrapped Trevor’s hands in his own and squeezed. “If you came back here to find something, at least admit what it is. Don’t get to thinking you need this place for your art, because you don’t. That would be suicide.”
“Maybe I want to commit suicide,”
“Why?”
Trevor pulled his hands away. “Why don’t you just drop it?”
“Because your father did? Is that why you think it’s so fucking romantic? ’Cause if you do—”
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up and get your stuff—”
“—maybe you ought to think about this: HE JUST LOST HIS GODDAMN SENSE OF HUMOR!”
Zach reached for Trevor’s shoulder, maybe only wanting to grab it and shake it to belabor his point. Trevor didn’t want to be grabbed. He brought his right arm up to shield himself, and Zach made the mistake of trying to pull it down. Trevor saw his left hand curl into a fist, watched it draw back and piston forward into Zach’s still-talking mouth. He felt the skin split warmly against his knuckles, felt spit and blood smear across his hand. It hurt where it had connected with the hardness of teeth and gums. But it wasn’t his drawing hand.
Zach’s head hit the wall hard and he slid to the mattress, dazed. Above his bloody mouth, his eyes were a more vivid green than ever, wide, stunned, scared. Those eyes begged mercy. It was a wonderful emotion to see in someone’s eyes. You could grant it if you wanted. But you also had the power to refuse it.
Trevor pulled his fist back to do it again. His other hand curled around Zach’s wrist, felt the small bones grind deliciously beneath his fingers. He watched Zach’s eyes. This was what they had looked like before they died. This was how it had been on the other side of the hammer.
He’s right, you know.
Trevor stopped.
If Bobby couldn’t stand to live without his art, okay. Suicide is always an option. But he didn’t have to kill them. You didn’t have to spend the rest of your life alone. Momma would have taken care of you and Didi. Is saying he lost his sense of humor so far wrong?
He’d had such thoughts before, usually late at night in a cheap bed in an unfamiliar city. Now they came again unbidden and made him realize what he had been about to do. He had been ready not just to hit Zach, but to hit him again and again, as many times as it took … to shut him up? To kill him? Trevor didn’t know.
He shoved himself away from Zach, rolled off the mattress and lay on the floor in the dust and the ruins of his story. Half of him hoped Zach would come over here and beat the shit out of him now. Trevor would lie still and let him do it.
But half of him hoped Zach would stay away. Because the softness of Zach’s lips spreading and splitting open against his hand had felt so damn good …
Zach pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets and willed himself to disappear into the mattress. He was sure Trevor’s fist was going to smash into his face at any moment, and he only hoped that blow would knock him out before the next one came. He knew he should defend himself. He couldn’t land a punch, but he could kick.
But fighting back was the one thing he could not do. He had a stoic dread of physical pain born of hard experience: you took what you couldn’t avoid, but you didn’t ask for more. Zach had learned long ago that if you fought back, they only hurt you worse.
When the blow didn’t come, he risked a look, though he had a particular horror of being punched in the eye so hard that it just squirted out of its socket. But Trevor didn’t hit him again, Trevor was halfway across the room, lying on the floor with his arms wrapped around his head.
Zach swallowed a mouthful of blood, felt hot helpless tears spilling over the rims of his eyelids, stinging his wounded lips. Blood dripped off his chin, made deep red blossoms on the bare mattress, ran down his chest and traced the pale arc of his ribs in vivid scarlet. Zach felt it pooling in his navel, trickling into his crotch. He put his fingertips to his mouth and they came away slicked nearly purple. He looked again at Trevor, still curled miserably on the floor.
Why bother? I was right all along: the second you make yourself vulnerable to someone, they start drawing blood.
Yeah, but if a real vampire came along, you’d bare your neck in a second.
Zach almost laughed through his tears. It was true; he was always ready to take the flashy risks, always ready for the rush of impending doom as long as he could thwart it at the last second. But the slower-acting and ultimately more dangerous risk of involving his life with someone’s, of laying his soul open to someone, that was just too much.
He felt a surge of self-loathing. His whole life had been lived by the Siamese-twin philosophies of Do what thou wilt and Fuck you, Jack, I’ve got mine. Beyond all his digital daring he was a coward, unable to fight or love. No wonder he made such a good punching bag.
Trevor might be crazy, probably was crazy, but at least he was looking for the source of his craziness instead of running from it.
Trevor raised his head. His face was wet with tears too. He saw Zach looking at him, saw the blood, and his expression of uneasy calm crumbled into fresh woe. “You can leave if you want, I won’t … hurt you.”
“I don’t want to leave,”
Trevor tried to speak, could not make his throat work, lowered his face into his hands again.
“Trevor?”
“Wh …” He forced back a sob. “What.”
“Why don’t you get back in bed with me?”
Amazed, not trusting his ears, Trevor looked up. He saw Zach’s face, scared but not angry. Even with blood dripping fresh off his chin, Zach wanted him over there. Trevor couldn’t imagine why. He only knew that he did not want to stay here alone on the dirty floor of his childhood room, with his faded drawings staring down from the walls.
He crawled across the rough floorboards, through the drifts of torn paper and dust, toward the mattress. When he was halfway there Zach held out his hand, and Trevor crawled toward that.
Zach clasped the outstretched hand and pulled Trevor onto the mattress, into his arms. He pulled Trevor’s head into the hollow of his shoul
der, buried his face in Trevor’s hair. Zach’s body felt to Trevor like a reflection of his own; Zach’s bones seemed to interlock with his like atoms in the structure of a molecule. Trevor thought he could feel their very souls, their molten cores of pain, flowing together like white-hot metals.
How can you know that? Is this falling in love? And if it is, how the hell does anyone SURVIVE it?
He realized that he was sobbing and Zach was too, that their faces and throats and collarbones were wet with each other’s tears, that their skin was spattered and streaked with Zach’s blood. Zach’s arms were wrapped tightly around Trevor’s chest, and his sharp chin dug into Trevor’s shoulder. Trevor turned his head slightly and his mouth found Zach’s jawline, still bloody.
Without thinking, Trevor rubbed his lips across the blood, then licked some of it away. Then Zach’s mouth moved to meet his, and Trevor supposed this was kissing, this warm, strange, melting thing. He tasted salt and copper and the sharp smoky flavor of Zach’s mouth. Zach’s torn lips were very soft against his, surely sore. As they kissed more deeply Trevor felt the wounds come open again, felt Zach’s blood flowing over his tongue. He sucked at it and swallowed it. He had spilled it; now he could take it into himself. And it tasted so sweet, so full of the twin energies of life and death.
Zach’s hands traced light patterns across his chest, making the skin shiver into goosebumps. Trevor moved his mouth to Zach’s ear, smelled yesterday’s rainwater in Zach’s hair. “What are you doing?” he whispered.
Zach placed his lips against the hollow of Trevor’s throat and left them there for a moment before he answered. “Do you mind?”
“No, I don’t think so. I just don’t know …”
“Don’t know what?”
