Payback (4 page)

I tried to twist my head into the soothing fingertips on my skin, into that tender, caring touch, but when I did, I realized the touch was no longer there. The fingertips were gone. Or maybe they had never been there at all. A thunderous ache settled over me.

The beeping went on and on. Held captive in the darkness behind my eyelids, and held captive, too, by that horrendous ache raking through me, I tried to imagine what the beeping sound could be. I thought I knew. I was almost sure I did.

But before I could grasp the answer, the ache swept even the question away, leaving nothing behind but pain. It thrummed through my body like a continuous surge of electricity, total and absolute, devouring my every thought.

And it was then my friend the darkness claimed me again.

T
HE
HUM
of voices burrowed in, nudging me awake. I felt the dance of my own eyelashes fluttering against my cheek. A cool strip of material, like plastic tubing, lay snug around my neck. When I tried to swallow, the pain was intense, as if my throat were on fire. My hand ached from where it lay pressed to my side. My forearm was being constricted by heavy stone or concrete. I could feel the hardness of it as it lay unyielding against my hip.

A cast. My hand and arm were in a cast. That
must
be what I felt.

But why was my arm in a cast? Was there a car accident? What had happened?

I struggled to open my eyes, but with the first glare of light, I squeezed them shut again. My thoughts were vague, slipping from one to another inside my head like autumn leaves skittering across a lawn, stirred by the wind, never lighting in one place. Never resting. Never making sense.

I tried to calm myself. I wondered absently where the pain had gone, and the moment I did, the pain returned. Everywhere. It screamed through me like a locomotive bursting from a tunnel. Roaring. Angry. Relentless.

I heard a voice cry out. Was that me? Did I make that sound?

Again gentle fingers stroked my cheek.

“Give him something,” a voice pleaded, and I wondered if it was me speaking.

“The IV drip will do the trick,” another voice intoned.

And once again, the blessed darkness swept me away.

S
PENCE
,
NAKED
and beautiful, bucked beneath me. His lean fingers pulled at my hair, pleading with me to take him all the way. I smiled when his juices erupted from his cock, but then I realized something was terribly wrong. Instead of spilling his sweet come into me, he sprayed my throat with fire. Liquid fire. I tried to jerk away but he held me in place as the flames of his orgasm tore into me over and over again. Burning. Burning.

I tried to scream but no sound came out.

My eyes flew open, and the first thing I saw was a red flashing light staring down at me. It stood by… my bed. I was in bed. But it wasn’t my bed. It was a bed I had never seen before. This bed had white plastic rails and white sheets, and my legs were tucked under some sort of table down by the foot of it.

Daylight stabbed into my eyes, but I enjoyed the pain. It seemed forever since I had seen the light of day. I teared up against the glare but still enjoyed the sight of thin blinds splayed across a window to my left. It was daylight outside. The sun was shining brightly.

When that old familiar beeping came back to torment my thoughts, I cast my eyes around to learn what it was. It was then I realized the red flashing light and the beeping noise were working in conjunction with each other. And they seemed to be in sync with my own heartbeat. But how was that possible?

I felt pressure on my fingertip, and with concentration, I managed to lift my hand to my eyes. There was a blood-pressure clamp on my index finger. That was what I felt. That was how my heartbeat could be connected to the machine standing by the bed.

When I tried to lift my other hand, I met with resistance. Then I remembered. That was the arm with the cast, and apparently, I was too weak to lift it.

A groan escaped my lips as I twisted my head to look around the room I was in. There was no one else present. No other bed, no other human. No one. Just cabinets, machines, panels.

Where was Spence?

An anguished wail bellowed from me when a storm of memories, one after the other, came screaming in. A metal bar chipping concrete. A dog whimpering in the dark. Mocking laughter and a curse in Spanish. A rat scurrying past my face in the shadows. The reek of piss.

Where was Spence?

I wailed again—an anguished sound that shocked me. It tore at my raw throat like a ragged blade. Only then did I realize I had a trach tube inserted. It felt alien and wrong clamped into me. I tried to grasp it, to pull it out, but I was too weak.

The echo of running footsteps filled the hallway outside my room. My door burst open. The squeak of a trolley. Gentle, insistent hands worked at the tubes that tied me down. Shushing sounds tried to soothe me as the hands did their work.

A drugged dullness slowly settled through me. The room faded. It was the IV drip again. I was beginning to recognize it. I was beginning to welcome it.

My eyelids slowly closed, blocking out the room, the ruckus I had caused. I slept.

I
OPENED
my eyes and the overhead lights flicked on a moment
later. I squinted into the glare. I turned my head to the window. The blinds were open, but there was no daylight shining outside. It was
night.

The rustle of fabric caught my ear, and the squeaking of a chair leg being dragged closer to my bed. A hand slid over mine—the hand not entombed in a cast. I almost smiled at the pleasant sensation of flesh against my own. I couldn’t seem to remember having felt it for so long.

A familiar voice spoke my name. “Tyler? Tyler? Can you hear me?”

I bit back a sob. It was so grand to hear a familiar voice, even if I couldn’t place it. I twisted my head toward the sound, and when I did I realized my throat was free. The trach tube had been removed. Thank God. I swallowed once, twice, just to assure myself I could.

Then I tried to find my voice. It was there somewhere. I knew it was.

A gentle hand clutched my uninjured fingers, awkwardly avoiding the blood-pressure clamp still attached to me. Other fingers wove through mine. I smelled perfume. A familiar scent. Then I remembered. White Linen. Spence bought it for his mother every Christmas. My eyes focused on a face hovering there beside me, and sure enough, it was her. Mrs. Chang. Her hair was bluer than I remembered it. Did women really still put bluing in their hair? And did they still wear it swept back at the sides in crisp finger waves? Or was Mrs. Chang really the last American holdout on bluing and finger waves, as Spence always joked?

Mrs. Chang’s eyes were kind as they gazed down at me through bifocals, but there was sadness in her eyes I didn’t remember from the times I had seen her before. For a woman who I remembered always laughed at every little thing, the sadness was new. I wondered what had caused it.

The first word I uttered felt like a shard of glass dragged across my throat, but after that, the pain lessened.

“Hi,” I said, my whisper little more than a breath of sound. I cleared my throat and tried again as her fingers took a firmer grip on mine. “Mrs. Chang,” I said. “It’s good to see you.” I tried to smile but couldn’t seem to accomplish it.

The old woman laid the papery skin of her palm against my cheek. “Welcome back,” she answered, which I thought was an odd thing to say. Had I been gone?

Another flurry of muted sound erupted from the other side of my bed. I turned my head, which for some reason caused me to groan, and there, standing by the far wall, was Spence’s father. He was unsmiling, as always, but I was used to that. He had never liked me. Spence and I used to joke about it all the time. He didn’t like me, and he didn’t like the fact that his son was gay. He was a frail little man who still carried a hint of accent from the homeland he had left as a child. But raised in the States, he was American through and through. Right down to his prejudices.

When I rested my eyes on him, he looked slightly startled and quickly turned away to stare through the window into the darkness.

“Tyler,” Mrs. Chang said again, pulling my attention back to her. I turned my head to face her, this time without a groan. “Tyler, do you remember what happened? Is there anything you can tell the police?”

“Police?” What would the police have to do with anything? Then shadows began to creep into my mind. Shadows of memory. Franklin on a leash, a woman saying, “Good night, boys,” an orange sunset fading into night, a tiny finger of fire illuminating the darkness. A scream.
My
scream.

My heart gave a lurch of fear. “Where’s Spence? Why isn’t he here? Why am I alone?”

I watched in wonder as two tears slid down Mrs. Chang’s cheek. “Oh, honey….”

I heard a sob by the window. Mr. Chang. Mr. Chang was crying.

That sound, more than any other, doused me with sudden terror. I grasped Mrs. Chang’s fingers so tightly she gave a little gasp and gently massaged my hand to ease my grip.

“Where’s Spence?” I tried to control the panic in my voice, but I could hear it just the same. “Why isn’t he here? Was it the car? Was there a wreck?”

Mrs. Chang’s tears were flowing freely now, but she had some strength in her. She didn’t let them take control. She merely slid in closer and rested her cheek against mine.

“Oh, honey, I—I thought you must have known. Spence… Spence is gone.”

And once the words were spoken, her strength collapsed. She wept against me until I felt her tears on my cheek.

I pushed her away with my uninjured hand. I could feel myself tensing in anger. What the hell was she talking about?

Then my eyes opened wide, and I remembered. Doggie Park. The public bathroom.

The iron bar.

“Yesterday,” I said, trying to organize my thoughts, trying to remember. “We were walking the dog. Three men—they were waiting for us in the restroom. I—I fell. No, wait. I didn’t fall. I was pushed. Franklin whimpered. He was afraid. They kicked him.” I still couldn’t picture Spence being there, but he must have been. Then I recalled the feel of cooling blood against my fingertips. The scurry of tiny feet on concrete. The rat. The fucking rat.

I gripped Mrs. Chang’s hand again, but before I could speak, Spence’s dad stood beside me on the other side of the bed looking down. His face had softened. His eyes were wet with tears.

“Spence is gone,” Mr. Chang said. “Those three men,” he said, “they killed my son. They killed your… husband.” And he repeated the first three words he had said to me in months. “Spence is gone, Tyler. He’s never coming back.”

I found myself smiling. What kind of joke was this? What the hell was he talking about?

“It was only yesterday,” I tried to reason. “All that couldn’t have happened in one day. Tell me where Spence is. And where’s Franklin? Did we get the dog home all right?”

Mrs. Chang tipped my face toward her so I would look at her when she spoke. She had dried her eyes with a Kleenex. It was still wadded up in her hand. I could feel it against my chin.

“Honey, it wasn’t yesterday. It was three weeks ago.
Over
three weeks ago now. You’ve been unconscious. We weren’t sure if you would ever wake up at all, but you finally have. I know this is hard for you to understand, but you have to believe us. Spence is gone, baby. Spence is dead. He’s buried in Holy Cross Cemetery. He’s sleeping there now. He’s left us.”

The last words were too much for her. Again the tears began to flow, but she didn’t shirk away from them. She merely stared at me as those gigantic tears slid down her old withered cheeks.

Only one thought registered on my mind. “It was yesterday. It was only yesterday.”

“No,” Mrs. Chang whispered. “No, baby. It was almost a month ago.”

And it was then that I believed her. My eyes went from her to Spence’s dad. They were both weeping now, and when I felt hot tears on my cheeks, I realized I was weeping too.

“He—he’s really gone?”

Mr. Chang’s voice was cold and angry when he said, “They killed him. They beat him to death like an animal. They almost killed you too. But you survived. We don’t know where the dog is. They either took him or he ran away. But you’re here. I guess we can be grateful for that much.”

He said that last as if perhaps it was my fault I had lived and his own son had not. But I was used to his hatred. It didn’t bother me anymore. I focused on Spence’s mother instead. She had always been kind. She had always understood about Spence and me.

She understood our love.

“He’s really gone?” I asked again, my heart a thudding ache inside me. That ache made the other aches I had experienced feel like child’s play. It was like comparing a nuclear bomb to a fistful of firecrackers. I grasped my chest to try to ease the pain. Suddenly I understood how Mr. Chang felt. I began to hate myself for surviving too. It would have been better if Spence had lived. Not me. What good was I to anybody but Spence? Spence had family. Spence had other people who loved him. Spence was
needed
.

Mrs. Chang nodded her old head, jarring another spate of tears from her eyes. “Yes, honey. He’s really gone.”

“But the funeral,” I whispered. “How can he be buried at Holy Cross without a funeral? I never got to say good-bye. I never got to see him one last time.”

“We know,” she said, her voice shattered with grief. “But we had to let him go, Tyler. We couldn’t wait. We had to, because—because we never knew if you were going to wake up at all. Oh God, I’m so sorry, honey, but we had to bury him without you. We had to let him go.”

And with that, she dropped her head to the bed and wept with such force I thought her old heart would break. Mr. Chang, rather than reaching out to comfort the woman he had shared his life with, simply turned away from her, from me, and once again stared through the window at the darkened city outside.