Exquisite Corpse (22 page)

“Louis and Eulalie married a fortnight after Jonathan was hanged for murder, and they started making little Devores, and one day a Devore married a new-money Byrne from Texas. And that's where Jay came from.”

Tran shook his head. For the second time in ten minutes, Soren had poleaxed him. “How do you know all that?”

Soren shrugged. “People talk a lot in old New Orleans families. But look, I hope you're not mixed up with that creep.”

Tran felt suddenly protective. Jay was odd company, all right, but he hadn't been a creep. If anything, he had been rather kind. “So he comes from a weird family, and he wanted to take your picture once. Why does that make you hate him?”

“Oh, Tran, I don't
hate
him. I
hate
Pat Buchanan, Bob Dole, my grandfather … not poor old Jay Byrne. He's nothing but a harmless Kodak queen, I suppose. He just seems … I don't know …
slimy.
There's nothing really wrong with him on the outside, but I can't imagine ever wanting to touch him.”

“Well, I can.” To hell with it; he wouldn't be ashamed. “As a matter of fact, I spent last night with him.”

It was fun to watch Soren's mouth fall open and his eyes grow rounder. “You didn't,” Soren breathed. “You
did?
What did he … I mean … what was it
like?”

Tran had intended to confide the whole strange experience: Jay's last-second refusal to fuck him, the bizarre sterility of the bathroom, maybe even the bag of human hair. But now he didn't want to tell any of it. Soren obviously loved to gossip, and Tran had no desire to give him ammunition against Jay. So he just let a little smile drift across his face. “Oh … you know.”

“Did he take pictures of you?”

“We never got around to that.”

“Oh, my.” Soren was actually clutching the sides of his head, as if trying to force the knowledge into his brain. “You really
like
him, don't you?”

“Believe it or not.”

“Jesus. Luke …”

“What about Luke?”

“Nothing. He'd freak if he knew, that's all.”

That nagging suspicion again. “How come you know what Luke would think about everything? I never realized you two were such good friends.”

“Well… we've gotten to know each other better since you broke up, it's true.”

There was no way Luke and Soren could be a couple, not that Tran would care. Luke only liked white boys if they were slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and fine-featured—in short, as Oriental-looking as possible. Soren was slender and fine-featured, but as Aryan as they came. And he was a child of clubland and cyberspace, neither of which Luke found remotely interesting.

Tran remembered that his longest conversation with Soren prior to today had been about computers and telephones. Specifically, about hacking and phone phreaking. All at once it dawned on him. “You're part of the radio station, aren't you?”

Soren's eyes were disarmingly clear. “What radio station?”

Tran barely heard him. “Sure you are. It's the only way you two could stand each other. You saw Luke just last night, didn't you? Or do you call him
Lush?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Soren, do you think I'd turn you in? I know what you're doing is illegal. Do you think I'd put you all in jail just to hurt Luke?”

Soren stared at Tran, then seemed to come to a decision. “I don't know you that well, Tran. We haven't spoken twenty times before today. I wasn't going to gamble what we have left of our lives on trusting you.”

“Do you trust me now?”

“I guess I have to. You're queer and you might be positive. You're pretty much our target audience. But I worry about Luke, and you have a lot of reasons to hate him.”

“I don't hate him. I did for a while, but not now.”

“He still loves you.”

“That's sick.”

“He's sick.”

They sat for a few minutes in silence. The little restaurant was cool and empty, the shadows of a late autumn afternoon beginning to lengthen in the corners. The waitress dropped off their check, which came to just over $10, and smiled at Tran. She was close to his age, the sort of girl his parents would have liked. Tran barely noticed her. He was wondering how Luke could still claim to love him after cursing him and hurting him and wanting him to die.

“Look,” said Soren as they drove back across the bridge, “do you need a place to stay? I don't really like having company, but if you're sleeping on the street …”

“Don't worry, I have money. I'll find something. Thanks anyway.”

Soren glanced over at Tran, then shrugged. They were at the midpoint of the Crescent City Connection, where the view included a crystalline cityscape and a vast housing project, a velvet expanse of swampland and a weal of factories. Far below the span, the Mississippi curved away in a long arc on either side. “Are you afraid I'd tell Luke where you were?”

“Well…” Tran shifted in his seat. “He's gotten crazier, hasn't he?”

“Oh, definitely. Do you listen to the show a lot?”

“I used to,” Tran admitted. “It started up in, what, spring of this year?”

“May.”

“That wasn't so long after we broke up. I still had this bitter obsession with Luke. When I turned on the radio one night and heard his voice, I thought I'd finally gone crazy. By the time I figured out it was real, I couldn't turn it off.”

“I run his voice through an encoder.”

“Doesn't matter. I loved the guy for two years, and I loved to hear him talk. I know his inflections, his phrases, even the way he clears his throat. Haven't you ever been in love?”

“No.”

Tran turned in his seat. “What?”

“No. I've had a lot of flings. I've had a couple of relationships. But I can't honestly say I've ever been in love. Now there's a good chance I never will be. No matter how ugly things got between you and Luke, I can't help envying what you had.”

They came off the bridge at the Camp Street exit and drove through downtown, back toward the French Quarter. There was a huge abandoned building among others near the elevated roadway, an empty warehouse with hundreds of broken windows. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through this building, illuminating the shards that remained in the frames, the dust that sifted down from the high ceilings. Tran stared at it and wished he could live there. No one would ever know where to find him. He would spread a blanket over the broken glass, wash himself with dust, roast bats and locusts over a tiny fire late at night.

Even then, no doubt, someone would envy him something.

J
ay stood at the butcher block slicing andouille sausage for jambalaya. He was using the same knife he had employed on Fido, its heft and whisper-sharpness reassuring. Everything else in his world was in tumult. He couldn't imagine why he loved it so.

Meeting Andrew had made the universe yawn wide for him somehow. It was like discovering that your innermost fires and terrors, the things you believed no one else could fathom, were in fact the basis of a recognized philosophy. Some part of you felt intimately invaded, threatened; some other part fell to its knees and sobbed in gratitude that it was no longer alone.

They had spent that first day in bed, but little of their contact was sexual. Andrew claimed that his HIV status made his bodily fluids dangerous. Jay didn't care. He remembered the taste of Tran's come burning its way down his throat, the tightness of Tran's ass around the head of his condom-swathed cock. It wasn't as if he had never taken the risk. But sex with Andrew seemed almost beside the point, something they could contemplate later, after the torrent of words had slowed.

They talked obsessively, their conversations spilling over each other. They bathed in shared knowledge. Neither of them had ever been able to discuss his passions. Andrew had had his diaries, which Jay wished he could read. Jay had had nothing. Now they could not stop comparing, exulting, marveling.

“But why do you eat their flesh?” Andrew had asked. “What do you get out of that?”

“You've never tasted it?”

“Only blood. And I like the look of that more than the taste.”

“Blood …” Jay shrugged. “Blood is fuel. It's all right, but it's not what they're
made
of.”

“Do you want them to become a part of you? Is that it?”

“Partly,” Jay admitted. “It took me a long time to feel they were staying. I'd eat their meat and it would become my meat and I'd be alone again. After a while, though, I started to feel them.”

Andrew nodded. His dark eyes were reflective, but he looked as if he understood. At last he said, “Is there any other reason?”

“Because they taste wonderful,” Jay told him.

In the languorous days that followed, they came back to this subject again and again. Andrew spent most of his hours wandering around the house, entranced by all the comforts Jay took for granted. Jay would come upon him in the library, paging through oversized folios of art and photography, reading bits of novels like a starved man; or in the parlor, with an assortment of CDs on infinite shuffle; or in the bedroom, lounging indolent on silken sheets and soft pillows. He was a man of sublime taste and culture who had been deprived in every conceivable way, and his renewal made Jay feel strangely alive.

In the evenings they dined out. Jay found himself rediscovering the city's great restaurants, tasting rich concoctions he hadn't dreamed of in years. It was embarrassing to sup at Broussard's or Nola with some ragged guttersnipe he planned to kill later, who would invariably slouch in his borrowed jacket poking at his food:
What's this stuff?
Andrew knew what he was eating, and savored every mouthful. But occasionally
he would catch Jay's eye over a plate of pompano en papillote, a dollop of daube glacé, or a succulent morsel of cedar-plank drum, smile his dark smile, and ask again about the taste of boys' flesh.

The rice had been cooking down with onions, garlic, tomatoes, and celery, and the jambalaya was almost done. Jay added the sausage, stirred in a bowl of shelled shrimp, dosed the pot with Crystal sauce, and left it to simmer while he loaded the dishwasher. When the shrimp had had time to cook through, he forked up a mouthful of the steaming rice. It tasted nearly perfect: peppery, savory, redolent of seafood and smoked pork. But he thought it could use a little more body. A little more
meat.

He opened the refrigerator and took out a plate covered in Saran wrap. The plastic looked as if someone had partially unwrapped it, then hastily put it back. Had Andrew lingered over this plate, wondering but unable to take the first bite? Jay began shredding the meat with his fingers. He hesitated, breathed the fatty aroma rising from the plate, then put a piece in his mouth. Beneath the gamy-sweet taste lay a hint of foulness. It was still fresh, but not as fresh as Andrew ought to have.

He served the jambalaya as it was. Andrew tucked into it with his usual impeccable table manners and voracious appetite. Jay ate sparingly, absorbed in Andrew's descriptions of certain back rooms and starless alleyways in Soho. When he paused to sip his cold Dixie, Jay said, “Why don't you just go ahead and try some?”

Andrew raised his eyebrows. “Some … ?”

“You know you're curious. I saw you licking your lips that first day in the slave quarters. You swallowed molecules of a human body then. Why not try enough to taste it?”

“Why not, indeed?” Andrew poured the rest of his beer into his glass, centered the bottle back in its wet ring of condensation. “I've thought of it every day since we met. I thought of it before, too. Back in London, as I cut up the bodies for disposal, I'd occasionally muse on that final taboo. I'd say to myself,
Andrew Compton, you've sucked their cold mouths and cocks; you've licked their blood from your hands by the bucketful; you've boiled the flesh off their skulls, then used the same pot to make curry. Why not just fry up a few tender bits and see what it's like—perhaps with a nice egg?”

“What stopped you?”

“I suppose I was afraid. Keeping them beside me in bed for a few nights was one thing, but I was unnerved by the thought of waking alone in the dark and still feeling them with me, in my very cells. Does it ever frighten you?”

Jay smiled. “Before I met you, Andrew, it was my only comfort.”

After Jay's exquisite dinner, we strolled through the residential backstreets of the French Quarter, avoiding places of human congregation, lingering in stillness and shadow. The dark streets were pleasantly sinister after the cozy golden glow of Jay's dining room. A chill breeze whispered through verdant gardens; a lone saxophone wailed somewhere far away. For the first time since I'd left England, I remembered that it was November.

We stopped for a nostalgic nightcap at the Hand of Glory. For some reason the place was packed with a young Gothic crowd tonight, resplendent in their monochrome regalia, the myriad textures of teased hair, torn lace, fishnet, and crushed velvet more fascinating to the eye than colour. I remembered a Goth boy I'd brought home once. He had bared his white throat to me willingly, as if meeting a lover whose touch he'd awaited for years.

When I told Jay about this, he frowned in puzzlement. “Didn't you want to draw out his pain? Wouldn't it have been interesting to see if he still welcomed it?”

“Well, I suppose he might have done. But what if I'd spoiled his experience of death? He seemed to have been looking forward to it all his life.”

“They're always afraid at first. The ones who have never experienced terrible pain start out calmer, because they have no concept of how bad it can be. When they discover how much their bodies are capable of hurting, they're astounded. When they realize it isn't going to end quickly, they crumble under the weight of their own fear. The ones who have known pain are terrified from the start. But either way …” Jay groped for the words to express something that had obviously long intrigued him. “After you've been going for a while, after they've begged and screamed and vomited and realized none of it is going to make any difference, they pass into a kind of ecstasy. Their flesh becomes like clay. Their insides cleave to your lips. It becomes a collaboration.”