Exquisite Corpse (23 page)

“But surely they're just trying to get it over with faster?”

“I don't know.” Jay's eyes were dreamy. “I think once the body realizes it's definitely, irrevocably going to die at your hands, it begins to work with you. You might be choking a boy, or cutting or burning him, or your fingers might be knuckle-deep in his guts, but at a certain point his body not only stops resisting—it falls into your rhythm.”

He reached for my hand across the table; it was the sort of bar where you could do that. His fingers were damp where they had held his beer bottle, slightly bony, very strong.

“So you've engaged in this soul-deep collaboration,” he went on. “The boy has surrendered everything to you: his fear, his agony, his life. What would you do then?”

I settled into the pleasure of memory. “I'd wash the body, rinse off the fluids of death: the blood, urine, saliva. I'd leave him in a cold bath until the wounds coagulated. Then I'd powder him, and the talc would enhance the pallor until he looked almost blue. We'd lie in bed together. I'd fall asleep holding him, stroking him.”

“And the next day?”

“I disliked the stiffness that developed as rigor mortis set in. Sometimes I'd wait until it passed and keep them another
day or two. More often they'd begin to smell and stain my bed, and I'd have to dispose of them.”

“One-night, two-night stands,” Jay said dismissively. “You can prolong the parting, and you can stave off decay. But in the end it all catches up with you. Why not savour them every way you can? While you were wiping and powdering, I'd be enjoying the first of several sumptuous meals.”

“Tell me again how you prepare them.”

“In general, or blow by blow?”

“Blow by blow, with all the trimmings, of course.”

Jay returned my smile, faintly mocking: my obsessive ambivalence on this subject amused him. Then he began to talk, and his eyes narrowed and darkened with pleasure as he described his culinary prowess.

“I cut them into manageable pieces and flay the meat off the bones. This was really messy at first, but I improved over time. Now my cuts of meat look better than the ones at Schwegmann's. I wrap them in plastic. I save some of the organs—the liver if I haven't torn it up too badly, and the heart, which is quite tough but has a bitter, intense flavor. I tried to make soup stock out of some bones once, but it tasted awful. Human fat is just too rancid to eat. Usually I tenderize the meat and roast or fry it with very little seasoning. Each part of the body has a distinct flavor, and each body tastes subtly different.”

“Of course. Human lives are much more varied than those of swine or cattle.”

Jay smiled. “Exactly. You have an instinct for this.”

“Hello, Jay.”

We looked up, startled out of our reverie. A honey-skinned, glossy-haired form had materialized out of the pale matte-dyed crowd. Naturally thinner than most of his compatriots in black, he too wore silver ornaments in his ears and dark rings of makeup round his eyes—Oriental eyes like elongated chips of obsidian, jaded beyond their years. The rest of his face was very, very young.

I could see the possibilities of the situation flickering through Jay's mind. He had a good deadpan gaze, but not good enough to fool me. Whoever this little chappie was, he obviously knew and fancied Jay. This put Jay in the awkward position of wondering
(a)
if he introduced me to his friend, would I be jealous;
(b)
would his friend also be jealous and say something to make me more so;
(c)
would he endanger my anonymity by introducing us?

I almost enjoyed watching Jay squirm, but only because I gleaned new knowledge from every facet of his character, and until now I had not seen him genuinely uncomfortable. But I could not leave him to suffer for long.

“Good evening,” I said in my suavest voice, nudging Jay's leg under the table. “I'm Jay's cousin Arthur. I'm in New Orleans on holiday.”

“Uh, hi. My name's Tran.”

As the boy shook my outstretched hand, a startled look passed over his face, for my fingers had very briefly slid up and encircled his wrist.

“Are you from London?” he asked, recovering.

“Got it in one.”

“Do you live near Whitechapel?”

“No, actually. Kensington.” (This was a lie; I'd never lived in a posh area. People paid too much attention to their neighbours in posh areas. Of course, in the end even my neighbours in Brixton were driven to complain.) “Why do you ask?”

“Oh, you know …” He shrugged, a movement made charming by the slightness of his shoulders. “I've read about Jack the Ripper.”

“Really? Did you know he arranged his murder sites in the shape of a cross?” Tran shook his head, so I went on. “If you mark the sites on a map of London, you'll see that all save the last one form quite a regular cross shape. The odds of that happening at random are extraordinary.”

“What about the last one?” Jay interjected.

“That was the one where he just freaked out,” said Tran.
“He shredded the girl and tore out all her organs. He would've had to be covered in blood, but nobody saw him leave the building.”

“It was the only one he did indoors,” I pointed out. Jay glared at me. “Sorry. You tend to absorb these things living in London.”

“I think it's interesting.” Tran slid into the booth beside Jay, who looked more pained than ever. “I like to read about killers. I like to think about how their minds work.”

I smiled across the table at him. “Any theories yet?”

Jay banged his beer glass down on the scarred tabletop.

“Look, I'd love to sit here and talk about perverts all night, but we need to get going. I think I left the coffeepot on after dinner.”

You did not,
I thought. If Jay wanted to drag me away from such a beautiful, acquiescent boy, I knew he must have his reasons. But getting up and leaving was the last thing I wanted to do. I'd gotten a good look into this boy already, and he was fairly begging for our attentions.

“Oh, I won't keep you. I'm just here looking for some customers. Midnight Sun's playing later, and you know, this crowd …” Tran touched his forefinger to his tongue. “You need anything, Jay?”

“No.”

“Well … see you later. Too bad you can't stay for the band.”

“Are they very good?” I asked.

“I love them. I'm just going to get drunk and dance and stumble back to the Hummingbird at dawn.”

“Bit of a long, lonely walk, isn't it?”

Tran shrugged. “It's cheap. They don't ask for ID—I registered under the name Frank Booth. And who knows? Maybe it won't be so lonely. Maybe I'll meet a mysterious stranger tonight.” He gave Jay a last longing look.

“Be careful,” I told him. “You never know who's out there, do you, Jay?”

Jay could only shake his head.

“I'll try. It was nice meeting you, Arthur. See you around the Quarter?”

“I hope so,” I told him.

We crossed Jackson Square on our way to the grocery before we went home. A pearly gibbous moon rode high in the curdled purple sky. The cathedral's spire soared upward, lacy as a New Orleans sepulchre, stabbing at veins of cloud. On the cobblestones below, the ragtag nighttime denizens of the square drank, sang, ranted, or simply slept.

“We must have him,” I said with utter confidence, “and we
shall
have him.”

Jay shook his head violently. “I already told you there's no way we can. Tran's a local kid.”

“It is of no consequence. I want him. I want to
eat
him, Jay.”

“Andrew …”

“He is the ideal victim.”

“He is not. He's the worst possible victim.”

“From a practical standpoint, perhaps. But in the practical details you lose sight of Destiny.
That boy is meant for us, Jay, and we will have him.”

“Absolutely not.”

We traversed the urine-scented alley that ran along one side of the cathedral and emerged near the A&P on Royal Street. I held the door for Jay as we went in. He took a plastic basket from a stack of them and moved through the narrow aisles, selecting mustard, capers, a sort of hot sauce he hadn't tried before. I followed silently, smiling to myself, biding my time. Jay was buying no real food, only condiments. I knew I would be able to make him see things my way.

The checkout girl held up a jar full of a chunky, viscous reddish substance. “What is this stuff?”

“Chutney,” Jay told her.

“What you do with it?”

His mouth quirked in a half-smile. “You serve it with meat.”

How completely I loved him in that moment! The conscienceless depths of his eyes, the lank straggle of his blond hair on his pale neck, the carnage of secrets contained within the noble dome of his skull. I knew I was smarter than Jay; though he did not lack intelligence, his sphere of awareness was the narrowest I'd ever encountered. He was so keenly focused on his world of tortures and delicacies that he had trouble concentrating on anything outside that world. It made him seem a bit ephemeral, like a spirit stuck in the earthly plane, obsessively repeating one action over and over, trying to get it right. In my previous life I had always been able to support myself, keep body and soul together, if sometimes just barely. I could not imagine Jay working for a living. Yes, I was better versed in the ways of the daytime world. But in that moment I knew Jay was the supreme animal of the night.

Outside the A&P, Jay stopped to buy a newspaper from a crippled vendor. The corner of St. Peter and Royal Streets seethed with varieties of French Quarter nightlife. A black a cappella group performed across the street, dark voices scatting in unison. A man in a filthy, tattered army jacket and a drool-slick gray beard berated the empty air in front of his face. A policeman pulled up on a little motor scooter, looking bored.

Jay and I headed down Royal Street. We had gone less than a block when a thin dirty-nailed hand slid out of a patch of darkness at the mouth of an alley. “Spare some change, fellas?”

We turned to look at the boy sitting hunched against the iron gate that separated the alley from the street. Ratty clumps of long ginger hair hung down over a face that might have once been strong-boned, but now looked hollowed, starved. His eyes were his most arresting feature, ice-blue irises rimmed with a thin circle of black. Though the night was damp and cool, the boy wore no jacket, and I saw that his inner forearms were scarred with a mixture of razor slashes and needle tracks, some half healed, some fresh enough to ooze.

“Sure, I think I have some change.” Jay reached into his
pocket, came out with a crisp fiver. The boy's pupils dilated at the sight of it, but he did not reach for the money until Jay held it out to him. One grubby hand came up and scraped his hair away from his face as he tucked the bill into his shoe. He did not smile, but gave us a long, grave stare that communicated his thanks. Jay and I exchanged a look and came to a decision.

“How would you like to make some more money?” Jay asked.

“What'd you have in mind?”

“We live just down the street. If you'd care to join us for the rest of the evening, you could have a shower, something to eat …”

“How about the money?” He spoke quickly, rather glassily, and I sensed that this was the junk talking. I knew a thing or two about young street junkies; they would do almost anything for cash, but they always wanted to know how much they were going to get.

“Well …” Jay pretended to think about it. “I could give you a hundred for the evening.”

I saw a flicker of elation in the boy's eyes, but he only said, “Fair enough. I'd like to see a friend first, though.”

Jay's brow creased in annoyance. “We don't want to wait around while you cop. Look, I've got some morphine at our place from a back injury I had a few months ago. Will that do?”

“Morphine?” The boy sat up straighter. “What kind of morphine?”

Jay shrugged. “Half-grain tablets. I never used many of them. I think I may have ten or twelve left.”

“Yeah, that'll tide me over.” He scrambled to his feet, hoisting a dirty backpack on one shoulder. He was taller than I'd expected, but painfully thin, and I wondered whether there could be much meat on those stark bones.

“What's your name?” I asked.

“They call me Birdy.”

“Who does?”

“The sad fucks who have any reason to talk to me.”

Not your standard tarty come-on; but I could tell that Jay appreciated the irony of the reply. I did, too.

Back at the house, Jay punched in a series of numbers on the keypad of his security system, then unlocked the gate. Motion sensors automatically bathed the courtyard in soft light. Birdy stepped in hesitantly, as if he knew he was going to his death but didn't care overmuch. His ginger hair hung halfway down his back, tangled and frayed. I thought how beautiful he might have been in some parallel universe. Then I reverted to my contemplation of his beauty in this one.

Thirty minutes later, I lay on one side of the bed staring at Birdy's unconscious face. Jay really did have morphine for an old back injury, which he said he'd gotten moving the big refrigerator into the slave quarters. We had watched the boy cook it up and shoot it into his vein with his own needle, our breath quickening in unison as the blood blossomed into the clear solution. As soon as those icy eyes fluttered shut, Jay stretched out Birdy's arms and handcuffed his skinny wrists to the bedposts. The boy muttered a faint, incoherent protest. I unzipped his trousers and yanked them to his knees.

Soon we had him naked, his legs secured by ankle straps lined with sheepskin, which struck me as obscurely comical. I kissed his nipples, his ribs, his concave stomach. When I began to suck his cock, it grew instantly hard and stayed that way, a quality I had always liked in my young junkies. He tasted sweaty and sharp, not clean but intensely
human.