Exquisite Corpse (14 page)

That had taken a little more than thirty minutes. Though he preferred to make it an art, he could get it down to a science when he had to. Back in the house, he scoured all the surfaces of the bathroom, then went through the other rooms lighting sticks of incense and every sort of candle: elegant golden tapers, fruit-scented votives, trendy voodoo fetishes of skulls and penises in black wax, Fast Luck Money Candles from the corner grocery that also sold Lotto tickets and John the Conqueror roots, religious candles with pretty young saints and lurid bleeding hearts painted on the glass holders.

Finally he wiped the floors down, changed the sheets, took a fast shower, put on some soft music, and sat down to wait for Tran. When the doorbell rang twenty minutes later, Glenn Miller was swinging on the radio and Jay was drifting in and out of uneasy consciousness. He sometimes went three or four days without real sleep, but just now he was starting to feel a bit punchy.

He buzzed Tran into the courtyard and met him at the front door, vaguely surprised to see dusk outside: where had the day gone? The kid was dressed entirely in black, tight leggings, hightop sneakers, a low-cut silk shirt that left most of his smooth chest exposed. His shiny mop of hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but long strands of it hung around his face. And the smile on that face was pure relief, as if there were no one in the world he'd rather see than creepy old French Quarter pervert Jay Byrne.
Definitely
this had been worth the whirlwind cleanup.

Tran stood at the door making no effort to enter. Jay watched him, curious to see what he would do. But he didn't do anything, just kept grinning like a fool, staring straight
into Jay's eyes as if hypnotized. Normally, no one could stare Jay down; it was a game he played in the bars sometimes. But Tran held the gaze for so long that Jay finally glanced back over his shoulder, into the house. “Would you like to come in?”

“Oh! Yeah, sorry,” said Tran, brushing past him into the foyer. “I did acid and X last night and I just drank three cups of coffee. I'm a little out of it.”

You always seem a little out of it,
Jay thought of saying. But that was no way to speak to a guest. Anyway, he had to admit that the kid's brand of spaciness was attractive. Along with the Asian androgyny of his face, it gave him an air of innocence, made him seem younger than he probably was.

They went into the parlor. The room was full of incense smoke and candleglow, dizzyingly fragrant. Jay glanced about for evidence of last night's revelry. There was Fido's coffee cup on a little side table, probably with the residue of four Halcions and three acid tabs still silting the bottom. But in the midst of all the lurid rose-gold opulence, Tran wouldn't notice a stray cup.

“Wow! What a great room!”

“Do you like it?”

“Yeah. It's so
romantic.”
Tran turned to him. Those Oriental eyes transfixed Jay with their coffee-brightness. This kid was so beautiful… but local, Jay reminded himself; take pictures, but don't touch him, because if you do, you might not be able to stop.

“But you know what? This music sucks.”

Jay had forgotten all about the radio. Now it was blaring an instrumental version of “Seasons in the Sun” arranged for marimba and vibraphone. How embarrassing.

He waved a dismissive hand. “I don't know what that is. Change it if you like.”

Tran went to the standing cabinet and twirled the dial. He found something he liked right away, a lone male voice over
slow, grinding synthesizer. “Cool. This must be the LSU station from Baton Rouge. You like Nine Inch Nails?”

“Oh yes.” Jay hadn't a clue who Nine Inch Nails were. He listened to music a lot, but had no discernment, no individual taste. He supposed he had been born without it. He could enjoy “Seasons in the Sun” or some other tinkling abomination; he could enjoy the bone-stirring vibrations of a Bach fugue; he could enjoy the song that was on the radio now. But he made no real distinction between these musics. He liked them all in the same uncomplaining way, and none made him feel much of anything. When he socialized with kids Tran's age, it was a constant chore figuring out which music was supposed to be cool and which was hopelessly lame.

Tran sat on one end of a purple love seat, obviously leaving enough room for Jay to join him. Jay considered it for a moment, then sat opposite instead. If this was going to lead anywhere, it would be photographs only.

“So,” he said, casting about. “How was the rave?”

“The … ?” Tran's voice trailed off. He looked stunned, as if he had no idea how he had spent the last twenty-four hours. Then he began to laugh. “The rave. Right. If you knew how bad I wish I'd never heard about that stupid rave … but it would have happened some other time, sooner or later. It had to happen.”

“What?” Jay asked, a little annoyed, wishing the kid would start making sense. Spaciness was attractive to a point, but manic hysteria was less so.

“Oh … my filial disgrace … my rising corpses … the poison in my blood. Take your pick.” Tran laughed again. The sound was eerie, childish, detached. “I got kicked out of my parents' house this morning. My dad found out I'm gay and thinks I have AIDS.”

“Do you?”

“Not last time I checked.”

“So what's the problem?”

“The problem is … nobody loves me now.” He scowled at the pathos of his own words, tucked a glossy lock of hair behind the multipierced curve of his ear. “I mean, I have nowhere to go. I thought …”

“You thought what?”

“Don't you sometimes …” Tran looked helplessly at Jay, who refused to help him out. He was rather enjoying the naked hope in Tran's eyes. “I had the impression you took in visitors.”

“Well, I suppose I do. Sometimes. But usually they're out-of-town visitors, and they don't stay long.” Jay considered his next words carefully. He was still determined to leave Tran alone. But if he let Tran stay overnight, he was sure to get some good photographs. Just possibly they would jack off together, but Jay would keep his hands to himself no matter what.

“Do you want to visit me?” he asked.

“Yes. Very much.” Tran smiled that heartbreaking smile again. Then, in one fluid movement, he slid off the love seat and landed on Jay's lap. “I've wanted to visit you for a long time,” he said, and covered Jay's dry lips with his own.

Jay was caught utterly off guard. By the time he realized what was going on, his hands had locked behind Tran's back and their tongues had melted together like warm chocolate. His sore cock twitched and chafed against the inside of his zipper. Tran's fingers brushed it, paused, then moved more purposefully. Jay's moan was part arousal, part pain, part thwarted resolve. He slid his right hand up under Tran's shirt and along the silken ridge of his spine, dipped his left hand beneath the waistband of Tran's leggings, and fingered the downy cleft of his ass.

Tran broke the kiss to suck in air. His eyes glittered with hectic emotion. His lips were wet, and curved in a faint smile. The pink tip of his tongue flickered out, tasting their mingled saliva.

The song on the radio ended and the DJ's voice filled the
room, low, hoarse, and hostile. “Now that one … that one's for my lost love, wherever he is. Are you out there, are you listening, do you still hate the sound of my voice? I guess I'll never know. Here's another one for you, my little heartworm.”

In the instant before Tran's body went stiff in his arms, Jay didn't know whether he wanted to split this boy open slowly or just throw him on the floor and dive in. But suddenly Tran was off Jay's lap and hurtling across the room, yelling an unintelligible curse, snapping off a sultry female singer in mid-phrase.

“YOU FUCKER!!!” Tran shrieked at the ceiling. “WHY NOW? WHY HERE? HOW DID YOU FIND ME?” He raked mad claws through his hair, unraveling his ponytail, pulling strands into his stricken face. “My life …” Now he appeared to be hyperventilating. “… is …” He crashed to his knees on the Chinese rug, sending a subliminal shiver through all the glass and crystal in the room. “… SO … FUCKED … UP!”

He sprawled on the rug, sobbing. Jay had no idea what to do. He had seen plenty of boys cry before, but only at his own behest. He watched, dumbfounded. Eventually Tran's shoulders stopped convulsing; the deep raw sobs quit wrenching their way out of his gut; he rolled onto his side and lay curled in a semifetal position, facing away from Jay. Against the rug's red-and-gold pattern, his hair had the black luster of obsidian.

If Jay sat on the floor beside him, Tran would allow him to run gentle fingers through that heavy mass of hair, to lick the tears from his face, to undress him and have him right there on the floor, rug burns and all. Jay knew this as surely as he knew human anatomy. But he couldn't make himself do it, not after a display like that. Tran had revealed himself to be unpredictable, and unpredictable people were dangerous.

So he sat in his chair, still feeling Tran's phantom weight on his thighs, and he let his mind wander. It wandered naturally to the things he had done last night, and by the time Tran spoke, Jay had nearly forgotten he was there.

“I'm sorry,” said Tran softly. Then, rolling over on his back and fixing his eyes on the ceiling: “No, fuck it. I'm not sorry at all. I'm sick of apologizing to everyone for stuff I have no choice about. I came here hoping you'd let me cry on your shoulder, maybe take my mind off my troubles with a good orgasm.” He tilted his head to look at Jay. Jay watched him, but did not speak or move, and after a moment Tran continued. “But I knew I was gonna lose it sooner or later. See, ever since spring of this year, nothing in my life has made any sense at all. The guy whose voice you just heard on the radio, he's the reason why. He was my boyfriend for a year and a half. My
first
boyfriend. My first lover. Then he …” Tears threatened again, but Tran swallowed them; Jay could hear them going down the smooth passage of his throat. “He got sick. And he tried to kill me.”

This stirred Jay out of his torpor. “He tried to
kill
you?”

“He tried to inject me with his blood.” Tran hitched in a deep breath, then blew it out. “We used to shoot up heroin together. No big deal, just a couple times. We'd stopped by the time our HIV tests came back. His was positive, and mine … wasn't. We were always real careful. But I woke up one day and he'd gotten his works out … and drawn a syringe of blood from his arm … and he was about to jab it into me.

“I just looked at him, and I said, ‘Luke, what are you doing?' and he said, ‘I want you to love me forever,' and then he started to cry. I was afraid to reach out to him because he still had the needle in his hand. So I just sat there and watched him cry. After a while he let me take it away from him. I didn't know what to do with it, so I put it in an empty Coke bottle, the kind with the screw-on top, and I sealed up the neck with black electrical tape. I've still got it.”

“Why?” Jay asked, though he was sure he knew.

“Because it was his. It was almost the last thing he gave me. I couldn't just throw it out. And because it's toxic waste.”

“You never know when you'll need a weapon.”

Tran acknowledged this with a small smile. “Luke always kept a razor in his boot. After he got sick, he said if anyone fucked with him, he'd slash his wrist and throw blood in their eyes.”

“Would he have done it?”

“Absolutely.”

Jay didn't know how to follow that up, so he said nothing. After a moment Tran said, “I guess you're wondering why I ever got involved with him.”

“No, not really.”

Tran didn't seein to hear. “I used to tell myself he wasn't always like that, that he changed after he got sick. But it isn't true. Luke was always crazy. There was always this undercurrent of violence in him. He's a brilliant writer, a brilliant
talker.
He always knows how to make things sound good. But even before he tested positive, every day of his
life,
he was pissed off at the world. He used to say he wished he could wake up one day and not be angry—just for one day. But he couldn't.

“Now he has this pirate radio show. That happened after we broke up, so I don't know where they do it or who the other people are. But he's the one everybody knows about. He calls himself Lush Rimbaud. I hear people around the Quarter talking about him, and I'm scared to say anything in case they realize who it is. Sometimes he advocates killing people, killing straights. Breeders, he calls them. Politicians, evangelists and stuff—but regular people too, anybody who pisses him off. The FCC would go after him in a second. I don't want him to get busted. I don't want him to die in prison.”

“You still care?”

Tran thought about it, then nodded. “Yeah. I don't ever want to see Luke again, but I care what happens to him. He's the smartest person I've ever met, and the only one I've ever been in love with. I'd like him to have a good life … but all I can wish him now is a decent death.”
A decent death.
The phrase struck Jay as odd. He supposed
all the deaths he delivered were flagrantly indecent, yet that was why he enjoyed them. These were unusual thoughts for him. He spent most of his time planning how to get boys, engaging them in slow torture until they died, then playing with their components and reliving the details. But he seldom dwelled on his motivations. It was simply something he needed to do, had needed to do most of his life, had been doing for nearly ten years now. Sometimes the craving increased, and he had to have two or three in as many weeks. Sometimes it calmed, and for months he would take boys' pictures and let them leave unharmed with money in their pockets. But sooner or later the need returned, and for a long time all his guests became permanent residents.

Tran stood up and stretched. Between the hem of his shirt and the band of his leggings, Jay saw a smooth hollow of golden, hairless skin. He thought of pressing his lips to that hollow, teasing it with his tongue, then sinking his teeth in and ripping until he tasted blood, rich steaming meat, the jellied essence of life. The urge flared in his belly, sucked at his innards, made his testicles crawl. He did not move, barely dared to breathe.