Venetian Masks (14 page)

“I survived so far,” Cleve said. He hopped out of the hole on his own and, after glancing at Kyle’s body and shaking his head, waved at Jeff and walked away.

Jeff wanted to follow him. But his canal wasn’t finished yet, which meant his house was in jeopardy. “Gotta keep working,” he said.

“Careful!” Cleve shouted from far away. “You never know what you might dig up.”

Which was true enough, Jeff decided, but he didn’t stop. He did pause, though, just long enough to see his parents and his cousin Ashley and his boss and a bunch of his former friends, all standing on his back porch and watching him. His mother waved and smiled. Jeff ducked his head and plunged the shovel into the ground again.

Where the edge of the blade entered the dirt, blood began to flow, as if he’d wounded some great beast. “Oh no!” he said as he looked around in panic. He had to refill the hole—and fast!—but his dirt pile had disappeared. The soil crumbled away so that a round red pool formed at his feet. And then, exactly like something from a horror movie, two bodies came bobbing to the surface.

“Now look what you did,” said someone on the porch.

Jeff woke up screaming.

This time, though, something was grabbing at him, holding him in place. He fought wildly, trying to wrest himself free.

“Jeff! Jeff! Christ, calm down!”

After a few more seconds, his brain finally processed the words and recognized the voice, and he remembered where he was and stopped fighting.

“C-Cleve. Sorry.” He was panting hard.

Cleve was half on top of him and seemed reluctant to let go of Jeff’s wrists. A small trickle of blood was running from his nose onto his lips. He licked it away.

“I hurt you!” said Jeff. “Fuck, Cleve, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I know.” He chuckled softly and sat up, straddling Jeff’s hips. He poked gingerly at his nose. “I’ll survive.”

An awful sound escaped Jeff’s throat, a sort of distressed mewl, and he shuddered beneath Cleve’s weight. “Don’t—I’m sorry. I forgot to take my pills.”

Cleve frowned at him for a few long moments before dismounting to the floor. “Hang on,” he said and padded out of the room.

Jeff would have been afraid that Cleve was fleeing—who could blame him?—but his clothing was still in a messy pile on the bedroom floor. Jeff glanced at the bedside clock. It was barely past three. He heard water running briefly and a slight clatter coming from the kitchen. Then Cleve reentered the room with a glass of water in one hand and a can of beer in the other. The blood was gone, Jeff noted with relief.

“Here,” Cleve said, handing him the glass. Jeff sat up and took a grateful swallow.

The mattress dipped as Cleve sat next to him. “You don’t have any ice, but I guess this’ll do.” Cleve gave a small grin and held the can against his nose.

“God, Cleve, I’m really—”

“Sorry. I know. It’s okay, really.” He put a cold hand on Jeff’s shoulder and squeezed. “Hell of a dream. You have ’em often?”

“Yeah. I’m supposed to take these sleeping pills. They sort of… mellow things out a little. Kept me from beating the crap out of Kyle in my sleep, anyway.”

“God, babe. That sucks.” He set the beer can on the nightstand and scooted down on the bed, tugging Jeff down with him. Jeff almost spilled the rest of the water but managed to set it aside. And then, because Cleve seemed to actually be encouraging him to do so, Jeff nestled himself against Cleve’s body, cradling his head between Cleve’s chin and shoulder. Cleve smelled like sex and clean sweat and steak, which was a surprisingly nice combination, and his hands smoothed Jeff’s hair and upper arm. Jeff tried to remember the last time someone had comforted him like this, and couldn’t.

“What fucked you up so bad?” Cleve asked him quietly. “Not ass hat?”

“No. This… this predates him.”

“Was it some guy named… sounded something like Michael, but—”

“Mikerew,” Jeff interrupted. “Did I shout it out? I probably said Mikerew.”

“My crew?”

“Mike-rew,” Jeff sounded out slowly. “It’s a combination of Michael and Andrew. My brothers.”

Cleve was silent for a while. “Thought you were an only child,” he finally said.

Jeff didn’t bother to point out the many lies and half-truths that Cleve had given him over the past days. Instead, he swallowed and, because the room was dark and he didn’t have to look in Cleve’s eyes, began a tale he’d told only once before.

“I was fifteen. I had my learner’s permit and I thought I was really hot shit. And Mikerew—that’s what I used to call them, ’cause they were twins and the name drove them nuts—they were eighteen and freshmen at Berkeley. They had this piece of crap old Mustang that they bought so they could drive home to Sac on weekends. They spent a lot of time fixing it up, but it was still a piece of crap.”

Cleve was still tenderly stroking him, running fingers through his hair. There was nothing sexual in his touches. Jeff wondered if anyone ever consoled Cleve like that. He continued his story.

“So it was this beautiful day in October, a Sunday. Mom had an open house—she’s a Realtor—and Dad hadn’t retired yet. He’d just flown out for some meeting in Denver. My brothers were home for the weekend, and I kept whining at them to let me drive their car. But they wouldn’t let me ’cause it wasn’t legal. I was supposed to have someone at least twenty-five with me when I drove.” He remembered how stupid that rule had seemed to him at fifteen, how unfair. He’d passed driver’s ed with flying colors, after all. He knew how to drive.

“You talk ’em into it?” Cleve asked.

“After hours of begging, bitching, and groveling. I don’t remember why it was so important to me right then. I mean, I could’ve waited until Mom got home. But I didn’t want to wait.”

“You were fifteen.”

“Yeah. Andrew drove us out of the city, out into farmland—I guess so there’d be less chance of a cop seeing us or me running into someone else. When we were out in the middle of nowhere, we switched seats. Mike was in the back. We had the radio on really loud and we were laughing and it was great. I felt like… like I owned the world. I was driving down this road that ran along a levee. Big cloud of dust flying out behind us, but I wasn’t really going that fast. I was a couple miles under the speed limit. Cops even verified that later, from the skid marks I guess.”

Cleve’s voice was as soft as his touches. “What happened?”

“Tire blew.” Jeff distinctly remembered the sound of it, the way the steering wheel leapt in his hands and the car took on a life of its own. He remembered the rush of fear that flooded his mind and body. He didn’t remember what he did next. Did he try to fight the skid? Or did he panic completely and let go of the wheel? Didn’t matter much in the end, he supposed. The car flew up and over the dirt embankment. “We ended up in the canal.” He remembered that too—cold water pouring in through the open window, stealing his breath away. Even now, all these years later, the memories made his lungs labor and his throat burn, and it was only Cleve’s continued petting that kept him from breaking down.

“I got out okay.” He didn’t remember that part at all, although he must have somehow fought free of the seat belt, squeezed through the window, grabbed onto the slippery concrete canal bank, and hauled himself out. “They found Andrew the next day, a couple miles downstream. Drowned. Mike never even made it out of the car. He got too banged up on impact and was probably unconscious the whole time. And I was fine.”

“Except for fifteen years’ worth of horrible fucking nightmares.”

“Yeah.” Jeff sighed against Cleve’s shoulder. “Except for that. You know, I kept expecting my parents to blame me, to hate me. But they never did. They never even yelled at me over it, not once.”

Cleve didn’t say,
It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident
, which was what Jeff’s parents said, what the rest of the family said, what the shrink said. What Kyle said. Instead, Cleve held him a little more tightly and kissed the top of his head. “Sucks like a motherfucker, baby.” And somehow that comment was exactly right.

Jeff even managed a weak chuckle in return. “Yeah. It really does.”

“Fifteen’s a fucked-up age anyway.” Cleve sounded far away. “That’s how old I was the first time I fell for another boy. I’d been kinda fooling around since I was thirteen—even tried girls a couple of times—but then this new kid moved in next door. Tall, blond, seventeen. Trouble. My stepdad caught us making out and he beat the shit out of me.”

Jeff caught one of Cleve’s arms and traced his finger along the deep scar. “Was that when you got this?”

“Nah. That time I was eleven and I… fuck, I don’t remember how I pissed him off that time.”

Cleve hadn’t given Jeff unwanted pity a few minutes earlier, and Jeff didn’t give it back. He kept stroking Cleve’s arm, though, just as Cleve continued to caress Jeff’s.

“When Mom came home from work, the bastard told her what he saw me doing. ‘Not gonna have no faggot living in my house,’ he said. ‘You a faggot, boy?’ I told him yeah. Mom watched while he grabbed me and fucking threw me out the door. She never said a word.”

“Did you ever try to… reconcile with them? With her at least?”

Cleve just laughed bitterly in response.

After a few minutes, Cleve tipped Jeff’s chin up and kissed him. This kiss was surprisingly sweet and tender, and Jeff was startled by the roughness in Cleve’s voice when he spoke. “Wish I’d had your kind of normal a long time ago, Just Jeff. I wish….” He didn’t finish his thought. Instead he gently pushed Jeff away and got out of bed. “Want your pills now?”

Jeff didn’t want to end up hitting him again. “Yeah. Please. They’re in the bathroom. I take two.”

Cleve fetched him the meds and waited as Jeff washed them down with the water that remained in the glass. Then Cleve climbed back into bed, squeezed up against him, and pulled up the covers. As the warm waves of sleep washed over him, Jeff thought he heard Cleve say something, but the words were too muffled by water to understand.

W
HEN
Jeff woke up again, he was alone. The other side of the bed was empty, its pillow cold. Bright morning light stole into the room, illuminating a floor free of any clothing but his own. More than that, the entire apartment had that strangely hollow feeling that a place has when nobody else is there. Jeff had become intimately familiar with that sensation.

He got out of bed and pulled on his discarded boxers, grimacing slightly at the itch of dried lube and semen around his groin. When he entered the kitchen, the scene was pretty much as he expected: his wallet lay on the table, open, emptied of cash and credit card.

Chapter 9

F
OR
a long time, Jeff sat at the kitchen table in his underwear, forehead propped in his palms. He was so busy thinking about what was missing—all his cash, his MasterCard, and Cleve—that it took him a while to notice what
wasn’t
missing. His debit card and driver’s license were still there. When he got up to check his dresser drawer, he found his passport and spare credit card. All of his other belongings were present and accounted for as well: his iPhone, his Kindle—still on the living room floor after the previous night’s wrestling match—and the Longines watch his parents had bought him for his thirtieth birthday. His laptop was still on the kitchen table.

The loss of material goods wasn’t much of a disaster. He was out less than four hundred euros—and really, he’d owed one hundred of that to Cleve anyway, since Jeff hadn’t paid him the night before.

And it was only when Jeff returned to the kitchen that he saw something extra on the table: the bag containing the gift Cleve had bought him, which Jeff had forgotten about, and a folded paper with “Just Jeff” scrawled across it. Closer inspection revealed that the paper was actually the instructions for operating the water heater. Cleve must have removed the sheet from the binder.

Jeff stared at the little tableau for several minutes, holding the folded paper loosely in his hands. He finally opened it. The reverse side of the instructions had been blank but now contained a message in messy handwriting.

Jeff,

I’d tell you I’m sorry but you wouldn’t believe me. I’d tell you this too: What we had these last couple days, I’ve never had that before. You won’t believe that either. Truths, Just Jeff. I wanted you, not the money. And you’ll find someone who deserves you.

The thing in the bag is to remember me by, and Venice, someday when you don’t hate me anymore.

Buon viaggio,

C

The bag contained a ceramic mask. It was a full-face mask, plain white, with the lips set neutrally. Jeff was hardly an expert on masks, but he’d seen plenty of the damned things over the past week, and he was pretty sure this wasn’t a cheap one. Black ribbons dangled from each side.