Wrath James White and Maurice Broaddus (5 page)

“But no serious relationship?” Samson smiled seductively, flirting almost instinctively. He traced a finger around the lip of his champagne glass and then bit his bottom lip. Jacque’s breath hitched.

“No, nothing serious.”

“Ever?”

“I’m not one of those gay republicans who get married, adopt kids, and open joint bank accounts. For me, anonymous sex is part of the allure of the lifestyle.”

“Yeah, that’s a pretty good line. How long have you been telling yourself that? Do you believe it yet?”

Jacque laughed. “No. I still haven’t really convinced myself.”

“I didn’t think so. Everybody wants to be loved, even the worst of us.”

“And that’s why I hated you the first time I laid eyes on you. You are far too intuitive for your own good. Models are supposed to be pretty little empty-headed things. You think too much.”

“Yet still, in the end, I’m just another pretty little empty-headed thing like all the rest, no matter how much thinking I do.”

They finished off two more bottles of Cristal before stumbling out of the restaurant and falling into a waiting limousine. Jacque pawed all over Samson before the door to the limo was even closed. Samson endured the photographer’s attentions and even returned his kisses.

“You know, I didn’t think you were gay. I mean, I figured you’d probably slept with a designer here and there to get into a show like everyone else, you know, gay-for-pay maybe, but I didn’t think you were really into guys.” Jacque stroked the erection in Samson’s expensive jeans.

“I’m not gay. I’m not attracted to guys in the least. Just ask Amon.”

Jacque paused.

“So then you want something from me in exchange… but what? I mean, you’ve already got the underwear contract. Despite all of my yelling and threatening I couldn’t really take that away from you. So, what?”

“I want your soul.”

“My soul,” Jacque smirked, “I did tell you that I wasn’t into commitment, right?”

Samson knew the proposition sounded ridiculous on the face of it, but to those who didn’t believe in things like souls, it struck them as little more than telling Santa what they wanted for Christmas. “And I told you that I wasn’t into guys but you’ve still got your hand on my dick.”

“So I do.” Jacque said with a giggle.

“So, if you want more, you’re going to have to sign a contract.”

“Honey, I don’t sign anything unless my lawyer looks it over first.”

“That’s fine. I’ll leave the contract with you. You can get back to me when you’ve made up your mind.”

Samson rapped on the partition that separated them from the driver. The partition lowered and the driver peered back at them through the rearview mirror, his reflective sunglasses doing little to mask his disgust.

“Yes, sir?”

“Drop me off at club Requiem.”

“Can I come with you?” Jacque asked. He was so intoxicated that he appeared as though he were about to faint.

“No. Go home. Sleep it off. We’ll talk in the morning when you’ve decided.”

11

Nkosi’s room allowed a measure of privacy, an oasis of dignity against the encroachment of an intractable trespasser. Like all of the rooms, a large bay window faced the rising sun. Painted a neutral taupe, not falsely cheery nor hope-crushingly dreary, the room was an austere testimony to Nkosi’s life. Samuel sat next to her bed and watched her for nearly an hour as she slept before she knew he was in the room. She waved meekly for him to draw near. Her breathing had grown shallow, her voice no louder than a whisper, lost in a swirl of semi-consciousness.

“Don’t you want your mirror?”

“The way I look? My eyes so big and hollow, like I’m already dead and I’m staring back from the other side.”

A Bible lay open on the stand that used to hold her meal trays. It mocked him. The deceitful strength that so long buoyed her had fled in the night. She couldn’t walk, her thin frame no longer capable of supporting her. She convulsed as if gripped by a terrible chill. Her weak voice, once so vibrant, unnerved Samuel.

“I hadn’t heard from your family. One of the nurses had to call me.”

“I just wanted to hide from everyone. No one should have to look at me.”

A paralyzing fear gripped him. He avoided meeting her eyes because every time he did, he became afraid. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her to be strong, that she was having a bad day; hope stuck in his throat. She didn’t have much longer—the disease consumed her so quickly, yet she stared at him as if he was supposed to have the answers.

“I don’t know,” he said finally.

“I didn’t ask. Anything I want to know, I’ll find out soon enough. Oh, the way I must look. You can see my skull and bones. You look like you’re losing more weight, too.”

Samuel dropped his head. The Nkosi he knew faded in and out, already repeating her thoughts through the jumbled haze of her mind. The last thing he wanted was to talk about his own struggle with the virus. He eyed her long dull curls that puddled into her pillow.

“You think God abandoned us, don’t you?” Nkosi asked.

“Don’t you?”

“Hold my hand.”

Samuel wrapped his hand with hers. Her muscles tensed, and he knew she meant to pull him closer, so he leaned in.

“You have been God for me. You’ve wiped my tears and held my hand. Your presence...I feel Him through you. Don’t you see?”

“If I’m God, I’m doing a pretty lousy job of things.”

She coughed violently, all that remained of her barreling laugh, spittles of blood spraying her sheets. Not that he had anything to fear from them. “You’re doing better than you think.”

“I wish I had your faith.” He held her tighter.

“Mine? You’re funny. It’s been yours keeping me going all this time. But I’m so tired.” She folded into him like an exhausted dove. Still so beautiful, so loving, so trusting, his heart yearned toward her. She charged the very air around her, the air he breathed.

“So that’s it?”

“That’s it. I stare out the window and I want to see one more day. Keep looking out for your brother. He’d be lost without you.”

The words fell like loose dirt on a coffin. She closed her eyes, still smiling a bit. Her breath became shallower, settling into sleep.

12

Requiem, a hole in the wall night club, used to be a church. The refurbished sanctuary was now the main dance floor broken by rows of columns. Clusters of tables and chairs separated it from the lounge and bar area, the words “Entertainment one better than sterno enemas” painted on a nearby column. A dimly lit balcony ringed the main floor as huddles of shadows watched from above. Roadies scurried about the stage that had once supported a pulpit and choir loft, preparing for the band, Madonna’s Abortion, to play.

An overweight girl with a feather boa draped around her shoulders and her hair pulled up sat in a corner of the club. A crescent moon caught in a shower of stars advertised tarot readings. Her business cards read “The Witch Cottage.” The prospect intrigued Samson; he’d never gotten a tarot reading before. He sat down across from her, attempting to hide the condescending smirk etched on his face.

“How much?”

“Fifteen dollars. You can ask me as many questions as you like. Here, shuffle these cards.” She handed him a stack of well-worn, oversized cards. Samson shuffled them awkwardly then handed the deck back to her. She dealt them in front of him.

“How long will I be married?” he baited her. He wasn’t going to let this turn into one of those eerie moments. He suspected how this worked: the more he expressed on his face or in his voice, the more information she’d have for the con.

“You will end up alone,” she said as if she didn’t hear his question. Studying the cards with a brooding intensity, Samson wanted to lean over to see what she was reading. “If you did the right thing, which you won’t, things might work out. You’re being punished by the Divine. What you’ve put out is coming back to you.”

“Yeah? Well, fuck you too.” He threw a twenty dollar bill in the fortune teller’s face as he rose from the table.

Techno strains from the band drew him back to the main floor; the music was little more than violent whining, like rending metal to a beat. Maroon light bathed the stage and the fog machine worked overtime. Between the multiple strobes and psychedelic haze of smoke, the dancing figures were little more than shadowy faces crying in the night. Sticking to the periphery, he walked to the bar, discrete from the dance area in its own pocket universe. Candles created flickering pools of amber light from the lounge. Incense burned in scattered piles. Samson ordered a drink, but everything tasted gray.

No, tonight was about the hunt.

He turned his attention to the gyrating flesh. Reading people, women especially, was what he did. One woman strayed from the pack of her friends as if afraid to catch a case of popularity. She chewed on the tip of her right thumb, her hair pulled back in a low maintenance ponytail. Leather straps encased her small breasts. Boots came up to the knees of her lanky legs, a matching mini skirt barely covering her behind. Her face was androgynous, not pretty, though fascinating all the same, conspicuous by her paucity of makeup.

She lacked the smell of prey: too little of the neediness, the lack of self-esteem, the eagerness to please that Samson knew he could twist and pervert until she was happily signing her soul away for the self-validation of casual sex with one of the world’s most desirable men.

That was when he spied his true intended. She struck a pose of too-cool-to-dance, catching herself if her head bobbed to the music. Her tall frame possessed an awkward grace, her swaying suggested sexiness in its own way. She wore a blood red gown that flowed and swirled with her movements. Long ivory gloves, the sleeves slit up the middle, revealed lengthwise scars down her wrists. Her long black hair—too black, obviously dyed—draped down her alluring neck. Her skin chalked to a drained, grayish hue, bordered on whiteface. She met his lingering gaze.

She had probably spent two hours getting herself ready for the club, afraid to be seen without every hair intact, every visible patch of skin creamed and powdered to a ghostly white pallor. Afraid that others would see the missing parts of her if they weren’t covered in make-up, afraid that she was little more than a pretty thing others wanted to fuck. An Egyptian hieroglyph encircled her large eyes, giving them a vaguely Asian appearance. Radiating a special brand of vivaciousness, she would do. She sauntered over to him.

“Why do you keep staring at me?” she said with a deep, gravelly voice. A sexy rasp. Completely affected. Another layer of her mask.

“Because you’re beautiful and I want to make love to you.”

Her eyebrows rose sharply and a smile broke quickly onto her face, shattering her cool aloof exterior. “Damn! You don’t waste time with small talk do you?”

“Not when I find what I’m looking for, when I find someone worthy of what I have to offer.”

“And what is it you’re offering?”

“Freedom. I’m offering absolute freedom through total subservience.”

“Oh, you’re a dom then? I would have never guessed you were into all of that. You don’t dress the part,” she said as she stepped back to get a better view, taking in Samson’s Bruno Mali shoes, Hugo Boss jeans and Versace silk shirt.

“Why else would anyone come to a club like this?”

“Most people come because they have no idea what they want or what they are.”

Samson leaned over and breathed his next words directly into her ear. “Oh, I know exactly what I want and exactly what I am.” His deep, resonant voice vibrated against her earlobe as his lips brushed against her jaw line.

“And what’s that?”

“I’m looking for Life,” he said.

“Well, there’s no life here. Usually, only the lost come here. I think you’re looking for what we all are—love.”

“Love?” Samson laughed out loud, the bemused expression on his face bordering on pity. “My father always told me that there was no such thing as love. It was just a four letter word you used to get pussy. People toss it around too casually for it to mean anything. I don’t believe in love. Fuck love. My way is much better.”

She nodded, though her face appeared pained. “Yeah. Fuck love. It’s overrated. I haven’t really loved anything since my mother died when I was two years old. I never even got to know her. Only a smell I always imagined my mother would smell like, a mix of tea rose oil and a soft scent, like baby powder. I don’t even know if that’s how she really smelled. It’s just all I can remember.” She chuckled without mirth. “Two loveless souls finding each other, that’s quite the coincidence.”