It was the height of the cruising season and, along the Charles River from the concert shell to the Mass. Avenue bridge, dim figures waited tensely on docks and benches, trailed one another in and out of shadows, disappeared in twos and threes behind the concert shell or down the embankment or beneath low-hanging branches of trees.
The evening was dark, midsummer, and rainclouds hid the white sickle moon. On a bench by the riverbank Angelo was smoking a cigarette. He had just given some old guy a blow-job behind the concert shell, and he was resting now with a smoke or two before strolling home for a long pleasant evening with Kierkegaard's Either/Or. He wasn't in the mood for any more sex.
"Mind if I sit down?"
"It's your choice."
The man sat on the bench next to Angelo and looked out over the river.
"Nice night."
"Mmm."
"You, uh, interested in company?"
Angelo turned to look at him, taking in at a glance the raw silk jacket, the expensive shoes. He could smell the booze on the man's breath.
"Do I pass muster?"
But Angelo continued his inspection in silence. The man was forty, forty-five. Blond, jawline going slack, but still passable, a good chest, muscles. A former football player… from Lexington, or Winchester maybe. Married. And very nervous.
"I can pay."
Angelo smiled.
"Fifty? Is that enough?"
Doing it for money. Why not? It had been a long time since he'd done it for money.
"How about it? Sixty? I can't go any higher than sixty. That's all the cash I've got."
"You don't carry American Express?" Angelo asked him.
"Are you kidding? You take American Express?"
"Let's settle for fifty. Afterward, if you think I'm worth more than fifty, you can give me a tip."
"You know what I like about you?" the man said, slipping his hand into Angelo's crotch. "You look like a man, a real one."
Angelo removed the hand and thought for a moment. Was this one of those maniacs who proved his manliness by sucking off queers and then carving them up with a paring knife? He'd never run into one, but the law of averages said that eventually he would. He turned and stared at the man, taking in once more his glassy eyes, his boozey breath, his heavy good looks.
"Come on, come on," the man said. "I'm so hot I'm gonna come right here, just looking at you."
No, not a maniac. Just psychologically all fucked up. "What's your name?" Angelo said.
The man thought for a moment, and then said, "Jim?"
And so they went back to Angelo's apartment at 17-A Louisburg Square where they had a quick drink and then tumbled onto Angelo's bed, groping and writhing, breathless, until one came and then the other came, and then they lay on their backs, recovering.
Angelo stared at the ceiling and entertained his customary post-coital thoughts. What an interesting illness sex was. How unvarying: a fever in the blood, five minutes in the sack, and then complete recovery. Followed by boredom with the whole sexual enterprise, until once again—ta-daa!—the cock crowed. He wondered if heterosex was the same. He supposed it was. Imagine, though, if sex and love could somehow exist together; if you could do all that sucking and fucking with somebody you loved, somebody who loved you. That would be paradise, even for old Kierkegaard. Well, it was impossible, so you had to settle for the next best thing: loving one person, and sucking and fucking with another, usually a stranger. But whom did he love, really, when you got right down to it? Anybody? Himself?
The man lying next to him, Jim or whoever he was, got up now and began dressing. He put on his shorts, and his socks, and then, more quickly, he pulled up his pants, zipped them, tightened his belt. He looked very stern, almost angry. He had disappeared into himself.
Angelo lay on the bed watching him. He liked seeing a score get dressed, returning from the reality of sex to the pretense of daily life. It was a nice part of the ritual, to lie there naked and watch the transformation.
"Faggot," the man said in a mutter, fumbling with his shirt buttons. "Fucking goddamn faggot." He undid his pants, shoved his shirttails inside, and then zipped the pants again. He paused, his hands at his belt, as he looked over at the bed. He was tense, breathing fast. "Cocksucker!" he said. "Pussy!" He tightened his belt, yanking it hard, and then he stopped altogether and just stood there motionless, looking.
There was a long silence in the room.
He approached the bed, uncoiling the belt from his waist and winding it slowly, neatly, around his hand, looping the belt so that the buckle faced out.
Angelo lay there, watching. And then, in a single quick motion, he brought his knees to his chest and jackknifed his body off the bed and into a standing position, his legs spread, his back to the wall, ready for the attack.
The man was surprised, but only for a second. With his knee he nudged the side of the bed, edging it closer and closer until Angelo was trapped between the bed and the wall, with no room to move. He gave the bed a final hard push and Angelo, trying to keep his footing, slipped on the Kierke-gaards he kept piled on the floor, and fell sideways against the night table. He felt a hot liquid pain in his right side and for a second went black.
At once the man was over the bed and on top of Angelo. But he had no room to swing, and Angelo, beneath him, was striking out blindly, trying to push him off. As the man pulled away for swinging room, Angelo caught him in the neck with a hard right punch; he fell back on the bed, stunned. He lay there, trying to swallow, and Angelo stood above him, breathless with his own pain, still trapped between the bed and the wall.
Angelo recovered first. He put one knee on the bed and then the other; the man gasped but did not move. Angelo was propped on his fists, leaning over him; he couldn't get his breath; he couldn't see. He looked up at the man's face but even before he could focus on it, a terrific blow caught the side of his head and sent him backward, crashing against the wall. Everything went black and then red. He heard a strangled cry, "faggot," and then something hard and sharp creased his jaw. He felt another blow, and then another, to his face, to the side of his head, to his stomach, to his head again, and then he felt nothing. He was in a dark place where he waited for the beating to stop.
And so he was not aware that the man continued to punch him again and again, saying "faggot" and "cocksucker," and sobbing finally when he was too exhausted to speak. At the end, he lay next to Angelo's body, recovering, the belt still knotted around his hand.
Two stories above them, Sarah lay in her bath, thinking of Quinn and love. Why not? You had to choose, Angelo said, but then you had to face the consequences of your choice. She moved her hands gently across the surface of the water, letting them come to rest on her small, firm breasts. Quinn, she said to herself, yes, I choose you. From downstairs she heard a crash and then silence. She cocked her head, listening; it was probably Angelo's television. She went back to Quinn, and for a long time she imagined him running his hands slowly from her breasts down to her hips, circling the soft mound of her belly, and then back again to her breasts.
Gradually, through her mounting excitement, she became aware of more noise; a shout; a curse. And then suddenly, intuitively, she knew what it was. Angelo. Somebody was killing Angelo, some crazy pickup.
She stepped from the tub, splashing water on the floor and on the mirrored wall. Without wasting time on a towel, she yanked her gown from its hook and tried to pull it on. But she was wet, and the cotton clung to her arms. She pulled harder and the fabric ripped, but she didn't notice. She must not let this happen to Angelo, her only salvation.
With her gown flying open she ran down the stairs and through the living room out to the kitchen. She was barefoot, trembling. She opened the panel that held the spice rack and concealed the narrow stairwell to the apartment below.
"Angelo?" She called again, "Angelo?"
Downstairs there was silence.
She pulled her gown close to her and started down the stairs. She could hear her heart beating, or the blood in her ears, or the blood… She lost her thought, whatever it was, and leaned for a moment against the wall. She was faint. Her eyes glazed over and she tried to draw a deep breath, but she could not. She let out a small involuntary cry. And then, slowly, she continued down the stairs, terrified, in a trance. It could not happen. This could not be happening.
She pushed open the door to Angelo's kitchen just as someone, a man, disappeared down the hall. She moved slowly from the kitchen to the bedroom and stepped inside, not hearing the front door slam, not noticing the shoes he had left behind. Her eyes were on the naked body of Angelo, striped in blood, his head twisted at an impossible angle. So, it had happened to her again.
"I am to blame," she said softly, confessing. "The fault is all mine. I did it. I did it." Her voice rose higher and higher, until at last she was screaming, and she was back again with Raoul and the rain and the blood, and she knew she was mad.