3: Black Blades (17 page)

“Have no fear,” John assured him. “I have no intentions of dating the neck-less.”

“No, you’re going to end up dating teen-priest.” Laurie smiled and threw back her tea like it was a shot of whiskey. John imagined that she rarely had an occasion to tease anyone anymore.

“So, how old is Ravishan now?” Laurie asked. “Sixteen, seventeen?”

“Nineteen,” John supplied flatly.

“Nineteen,” Laurie repeated. She looked meaningfully at Bill. Lewd jokes were normally his specialty, but this time he passed.

Bill said, “I know this is off topic, but when we get back home, what are we going to tell everyone? I mean, we’ve been gone two years now.”

“I don’t know.” John hadn’t dared to think that far ahead.

“Alien abduction,” Laurie whispered. “We could make millions on talk shows.”

Bill smiled. “Hey, yeah, we could sell the rights to HBO or some place and have one of those cheesy docudramas made about us. I’m kinda seeing myself, played by a buff male model, running in slow motion. Then a silver-suited ninja-alien leaps out. We fight. More ninja-aliens materialize all around me. I go into this super-powered spinning kick and knock off all of their heads. As their decapitated bodies slump to the ground, I growl, ‘Probe my ass, will ya?!’”

John just stared at Bill for a few, stunned seconds. Then he said, “You really have a rich fantasy life, don’t you?”

“You have no idea.”

“Do you think I could be played by a Black woman?” Laurie asked.

It was the kind of question he would have expected from the Laurie he had known two years ago: simple and at the same time utterly inexplicable.

“I think the writers would give me more sassy lines if I were Black,” Laurie explained.

“Like, ‘Probe my ass, will ya?’” John asked, deadpan.

“Hey, my line is plenty sassy,” Bill protested.

“It would definitely get you a date with David Lewis.” John allowed a note of snarkiness into his voice.

“Laugh all you want,” Bill continued. “Just wait until it’s splashed all over McDonald’s collectable toys and cups. Children, women, and men all around the world will be asking for the ‘Probe My Ass, Will Ya’ special.”

 
“I can just see the relish with which employees will ask, ‘Can I supersize that for you?’” John replied.

Laurie laughed out loud and then clapped her hands over her mouth. John smiled. It was good to hear her really laugh, even for a few seconds.

Bill went on, building larger and more absurd fantasies on the theme of their disappearance and return home. None of the stories touched on the ugliness of their real lives. Laurie’s repression, Bill’s illness, and John’s isolation were all outside the realm of their new fantastic adventures.

Instead, they were played by beautiful movie stars, made millions, and received Nobel peace prizes. They took over several tropical islands, were inducted into a secret ninja clan, learned to fly and to communicate with dolphins. Laurie became a goddess with millions of followers. Bill usurped leadership of the ninja clan, and John had a brief but beautiful relationship with a brave super-intelligent dolphin.

When six bells rang out across the city, it all came to an end. Reality washed back in over them. The sky was going dark, and John couldn’t stay any longer. He drank the last of his tea, glad he hadn’t left earlier and disappointed that he had to leave now.

When he stood, Laurie hugged him fiercely.

“Be careful,” Bill said quickly.

John nodded. “You too. Take care of each other.”

He hated saying goodbye, and he hated leaving. It always felt like it could be forever.

Rough stone walls pressed close and rose up over John’s head. He could only see a thin strip of night sky directly above him. Everything else was compressed into a jumble of dark shadows that briefly burned away before John’s lamp, then closed in behind him.

Within the tight confines of the winding alley, his senses narrowed to the feel of old thatching beneath his feet and the smells of urine and soured human sweat that emanated from the humid alcoves. When his lamp revealed the half-naked forms of couples, John averted his gaze and hurried past.

Bati’kohl had given him directions to Candle Alley but refused to go there himself. It wasn’t the kind of place a young boy from a good house went.

A lone girl looked up at him as his lamplight fell across her. Her black hair hung in strings over her emaciated arms and small, bare breasts. With a listless wave, she beckoned him to enter the dank alcove where she lay. John could see dark stains on the blanket beneath her. The girl’s head dropped back to the ground. She seemed hardly awake as she mumbled, “Come on in.”

She spread her legs.

John walked on quickly.

Other men wandered through the narrow lane. Some carried lamps. Most had only cheap tallow candles. There seemed to be an unspoken order to their pacing. None of them walked close enough that the lights they carried illuminated another man’s features. When they passed going opposite directions, each averted his eyes and said nothing.

Only once, as John passed by, did another man reach out and brush his hand across John’s hip in clear invitation. John made no response, and an instant later, the other man was swallowed by the darkness as he disappeared into one of the alcoves.

John didn’t like to think of Ravishan even being in a place like this, let alone cruising here. He thought that it might even come as a relief to discover that he’d gone to the wrong location entirely.

He reached the wall that sealed the narrow lane off. No one waited for him. John lifted his lamp to scan the partially collapsed wall. Stones had fallen, or been pulled from their mortar, creating a gap that a slim man could squeeze through. John stepped closer to the crumbling space.

“Up here.” Ravishan’s voice sounded in the darkness. “You should put out the lamp.”

John blew out the flame and waited for his sight to adjust.

It was always remarkable to him how much he could see in the dark here. With the lamp lit, his eyes never adjusted and so the shadows remained impenetrable. But as his pupils widened, he realized that he could make out the wall quite well.

Higher up, the wall was thick and wide, and the broken spaces where the stones had fallen away formed rough steps leading to the very top. Spindly saplings had taken root on several of the steps and they created even darker shadows than the night offered. Small pale flowers drooped from several branches.

Ravishan lounged against the slender trunk of one of the saplings near the top. His dark hair looked wet and John guessed that he had just washed it.

John started climbing. The air was cooler beneath the young trees. The flowers gave off a faint honey-like scent. It almost masked the dank, humid odors that emanated from the alley below.

“I thought you might not come,” Ravishan said.

“I told you I would.”

“I know.” Ravishan smiled briefly at John, then glanced anxiously away. John wondered what was making him so nervous. Obviously not something that was easy to talk about, otherwise he would have come out with it already.

John frowned as Ravishan pulled several weeds out from between the stones of the wall.

“Their roots break the mortar apart.” Ravishan gazed intently at the small plant in his hand. Then he threw it aside. “I suppose the trees do worse.”

John could have told him that it was the smaller plants that made the first inroads through which the trees’ roots would spread, but he knew it wasn’t important. They weren’t here to talk about mortar erosion.
   

“There was something you wanted to tell me,” John said.

“There was.” Ravishan leaned back, letting the young tree take his full weight. He stared upward. John followed his line of sight up between the spindly branches of the tree to the dim stars.

“But now that you’re here...” Ravishan shook his head just a little. “I’m not sure.”

John frowned but didn’t say anything. He wondered if Ravishan was trying to tell him goodbye. The awkwardness of the exchange reminded him of the uneasy farewell he’d exchanged with his brother when he’d come to visit John against their father’s wishes. It had been the last time they’d ever spoken to each other.

Had Ravishan finally decided to escape from Rathal’pesha? John dropped his gaze down to his hands. He didn’t want Ravishan to leave.

“When you think of someone in your mind,” Ravishan said softly, “they are exactly as you think they are. You think they’re kind, and in your mind, they are kind. But then you encounter them in the flesh, and you realize that perhaps they could be different.” Ravishan looked at John for a quiet moment before going on. “Right now, you and I exist in each other’s minds. Perhaps you have an idea of me, and I have an idea of you, but we haven’t tested those ideas. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so.” John nodded. He just wasn’t sure where Ravishan was going with the conversation. He wondered if Ravishan was simply trying to avoid saying anything.

“Right now, I think you like me.” Ravishan quickly looked back up at the stars. “And I don’t want you to change your mind. So I don’t want to tell you something that will make you think I’m not the person you like.”

“So, you’ve changed your mind and you don’t want to tell me?” John asked.

“No.” Ravishan sighed. “I want to tell you. And at the same time, I don’t want you to know.”

“Well, that’s a quandary,” John said. “It’s going to have to be one or the other.”

“I know,” Ravishan said.

“I suppose it all depends on how much you trust me,” John said.

Ravishan gazed up at him from beneath heavy lashes. “I trust you.”

“Then you should tell me.”

Ravishan straightened. John could see the pulse hammering along the curve of Ravishan’s throat. His hands shook and his dark eyes went wide. Suddenly, he looked away from John down to his feet.

“I can’t say it when you’re watching me.” Ravishan flushed. John could clearly see the dark color spreading across his cheeks.

John realized that Laurie had been right and he was a complete idiot. And if this truly was David Lewis all over again, John knew exactly what would happen next. Ravishan would ask him to close his eyes and then kiss him.

“Ravishan.” John’s voice felt suddenly rough in his throat. His skin felt hot. “You know that this isn’t safe for either of us.”

“I know,” Ravishan whispered.

John could smell faint hints of sweat and incense on Ravishan’s skin. A deep, primal part of him longed to draw in more of Ravishan’s scent, to taste him.

“Close your eyes,” John told him.

Ravishan hesitated for a moment, then obeyed, his head tilted back just slightly, his lips barely parted.

As he leaned close, John whispered, “Just this once.” He felt the heat of Ravishan’s breath. Then, very gently, John kissed him.

Ravishan’s lips parted beneath his and John automatically deepened the kiss. Ravishan’s mouth tasted sweet and felt burning hot. Hungry desire throbbed through John’s body. He hadn’t expected Ravishan to give himself so well.

John’s hands instinctively slid down the curve of Ravishan’s back and around the stiff leather edge of his belt until his fingers touched the cool metal of Ravishan’s belt buckle.

Ravishan trembled against him and arched into John’s hands, his skin radiating heat even through his heavy clothes. The scent of him, the taste of him, the feel of his strong body—it was everything John had been deprived of for years. The intensity of his own arousal alarmed him.

They were courting death doing this.

John pulled away. If he didn’t stop now, he wouldn’t stop at all. He knew that much about himself.

Ravishan started after him, but John placed a restraining hand against his chest.

“We can’t.” John’s voice sounded hoarse even to himself.

“But you said this once.” Ravishan’s hands slid along John’s arm, stroking the tender skin of his wrist and elbow. Shivers of pleasure whispered through the muscles of his arm and spread through his chest.

“I meant just one kiss.” John could hardly catch his breath. His entire body burned and he ached to pull Ravishan against him again.

“Couldn’t we be… together just once—”

“It’s never just once.” John knew better than to hear out any argument, since he already wanted to give in. He stepped out of Ravishan’s reach. “Neither of us can afford to start this. Not here. Not now.”

“But you liked it.” Ravishan pursued him, pressing close enough for John to feel his breath tickle his ear.

“Of course I liked it. That’s the problem.” John dropped his voice to a soft whisper. “I like it. I like you. If we got started, I wouldn’t want to stop. And that could get us both killed.”

“I would be willing to die, if I could be with you,” Ravishan whispered.

John knew the words were meant to be arousing, to show John how deeply Ravishan longed to be with him, but they only revealed the innocent arrogance of his youth. He wasn’t considering actual death.