Spider Season (29 page)

It was then that I thought of Jason Holt and his fascination with arachnids. At first, it seemed a stretch to connect the two—Holt and Fred’s injury. Holt was a troubled man, I told myself, but he’d never intentionally conceal a dangerous spider in a place where it might seriously harm someone. He’d never take his twisted feelings for me to that extreme.

Then I thought about all the harassment and intimidation that had been directed at me through the summer, how it had escalated and become more sinister. And there was that strange phone call, the precursor to everything that followed:
I’ve killed before, just like you. So, you see, we have more in common than you might realize.

When I looked at it that way, it didn’t seem like such a stretch after all.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Within twenty-four hours, Fred had developed a rash over much of his body, and he began to suffer seizures soon after that. The cause was determined to be loxoscelism, the systemic syndrome Dr. Kaplan had warned us about.

Maurice and I sat vigil in the hospital waiting room, although I found it increasingly difficult to be there. Everything about the place reminded me of Jacques’ futile hospital stays in the last year of his life—the medicinal smells; the dutiful nurses padding efficiently about in their soft-soled shoes; the look of despair on the faces of gaunt patients who occasionally appeared in the corridors like wandering ghosts, dragging their IV hookups behind them like giant pull toys; the sight of an empty bed in a silent room after a corpse had been removed; the sound of quiet weeping in distant corners of the waiting area, as friends and family members reacted to bad news, or sensed that it was coming. I understood that hospitals could be sanctuaries of hope and healing, where compassion was common and lives were often saved. But I couldn’t shake their connection in my mind with Jacques’ long decline and suffering. To me, they were nightmarish places, haunted by death.

“He’s going to be fine,” I told Maurice, holding his hand the way he’d so often held mine in rough times.

He smiled bravely, the kind of cover one chooses when the only other option is despair.

*   *   *

Toward the end of the second day, after Maurice and I had eaten yet another bland cafeteria meal, I urged him to come home with me and get a good night’s rest. We’d purchased toothbrushes and toothpaste in the hospital pharmacy, but that was as close as we’d gotten to personal hygiene. I needed badly to get out of there for my own selfish reasons, though I kept them to myself. Maurice said he was staying put.

“You’ll be no good to Fred if you end up sick yourself,” I said. “We can come back first thing in the morning.”

He still wouldn’t budge, so I suggested we go home for showers, shaves, and fresh clothes, and return that night.

“You go, Benjamin. I know it isn’t easy for you, being around a hospital like this.”

“I wish I was as strong as you, Maurice.”

He patted my knee. “You’ve been wonderful support. Go on, now. You need a break. I’ll see you in the morning.”

So I went, with feelings of guilt and the understanding that he call me on my cell the moment there was a change, or if he needed me for any reason.

I got home around ten, gave the cats fresh dry food and water, cleaned their litter box, and climbed the stairs to my apartment. I showered and checked my voice mail messages—mostly calls from reporters, but no concrete leads that might put me in touch with Lance, and nothing from Lance himself, which was just as well. There were also several messages from Ismael, asking where I was and why I hadn’t been in touch. And one from Jan Long in New York, responding to my e-mail about the likely fallout from Cathryn Conroy’s
Eye
profile when it was published.

Jan’s message was typically stalwart and succinct: “Don’t give up all hope, Benjamin. There might be a way out of this. Let me work on it.”

As I was erasing the messages, the phone rang. I took the call and heard the smug voice of Jason Holt.

“Checked your mail lately, Benjamin?”

He hung up without waiting for a reply. I went to look out the window. He must be out there, I thought, watching me, to be able to time his call like this, when I’ve just come home. But what game was he playing this time?

Checked your mail lately, Benjamin?

It occurred to me that he might not even know Fred had been bitten by the brown recluse. Holt might have assumed the spider was still in the mailbox, hunkered down and hiding, having yet to bite anyone. Maybe Holt was impatient, I thought, wanting me to find the spider and respond in some way. Or maybe there was a new piece of hate mail down there, waiting to be retrieved. Maybe that was it and Holt had nothing to do with the spider at all.

I pulled the shade, climbed into bed, and closed my eyes, determined to not let him manipulate my every move. An hour passed and then another, but I was still wide awake, thinking about his call. I got up, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, grabbed a flashlight, and padded barefoot down the stairs to the mailbox.

I hadn’t worn gloves, but I didn’t intend to reach in, only to look. Still, I opened the mailbox cautiously. When I aimed the beam inside, all I could see were a few bills laying flat on the metal floor. No spider in sight. I left the mail for the next day, closed the door tight, and stepped to the middle of the street, glancing both ways, on the off chance that Holt might still be around.

Norma Place was still and quiet, not even a dog barking. Somewhere high above me, in the night sky, a plane droned. I didn’t hear much else. I stood there for a minute or two, in case Holt was lurking in the shadows and might be tempted to step out and make himself visible. I was turning back to the house when headlights appeared at the end of the street, coming in my direction. Holt?

I stood where I was, unwilling to give any ground. Let him come, I thought. Let him try to run me down, if that’s his plan. Let him finally cross the line and get caught red-handed in a criminal act, something I can pin on him. It was foolhardy, but I felt like I had nothing to lose at this point. Let’s just get this over with, I thought.

I stayed where I was, blinded by the approaching headlights. If it was Holt behind the wheel, I figured, he could swerve around me and keep going, run me down, or stop and climb from the car to confront me, man-to-man. Not likely, that last possibility, given how scheming and cowardly he was. Still, I thought: Come and get me. I’m ready for whatever you bring. At that moment, I appreciated more than ever the testosterone I’d been replacing in my system, the muscle it had helped me rebuild, the primal male drive it had induced that I could feel torquing inside me.

Bring it on, Holt. Let’s get this settled.

The car slowed as it drew closer. I felt my rage building to a fine edge. The driver pulled to the curb and shut off his headlights.

That’s when I recognized the car and then the driver, as he stepped out.

It wasn’t Jason Holt at all. It was Ismael.

TWENTY-NINE

As he approached, Ismael looked as open-faced as ever, almost wide-eyed with innocence. He’d always seemed too good to be true. If I hadn’t seen Cathryn Conroy entering his apartment that day, I never would have suspected otherwise.

“Benjamin, what are you doing out here?”

He was wearing a striped crew-neck shirt and lightweight jeans and colorful, low-cut canvas shoes that accentuated the youthful look. He could have fit right in with the Boys Town crowd, I thought, all those fine-looking men in their casual fashions, trading on their attractive faces and bodies, hopping from club to club looking for the same. I wondered for a moment if that was where Ismael would end up, down on the boulevard with all the others, desperately seeking someone, until he got too old to compete and moved to Palm Springs to sit poolside with a drink in his hand, while he traded gossip with other Boys Town exiles and withered in the sun like a lizard. It wasn’t a fair assessment of gay men in either city, but I wasn’t in a benevolent mood just then.

“Waiting for someone,” I said.

He glanced at his watch and cocked his head curiously. “It’s half past twelve.”

“So?”

“Who were you waiting for at this hour?”

“You’ll do.”

He grinned, looking both pleased and perplexed. Maybe it was the flatness in my voice, the hardness, that had him confused.

“I’ve been calling,” he said. “When I didn’t hear back, I got worried. I decided to drive over.”

“Aren’t you sweet?”

I told him perfunctorily about Fred—about the spider, the bite, the vigil at the hospital, the break I was taking before returning in the morning. I didn’t mention Jason Holt and his fixation with spiders; too complicated. Ismael appeared genuinely distressed at the news, but he could have been faking. He volunteered to stay the night and accompany me to the hospital at daybreak, but I figured that for some kind of ruse as well. I no longer knew what to believe about him, what was behind his sensitive manner, what he wanted with me, what his deal with Conroy was.

He stepped close and took me in his arms. It felt good, feeling him close against me, holding me, while the warm winds buffeted our bodies. But it was different now. It felt good in a dark, crazy way, with my rage mixed in with my lust and my confusion about who he really was and what his real intentions were. It was the first time he’d touched me when my shirt was off. He didn’t seem inhibited in the slightest.

I placed one of his hands on my chest, pressing his fingers into the thick mat of dark blond hair. He didn’t resist and his eyes looked expectant, like he was finally ready to follow my lead.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I said.

*   *   *

When we were in the darkened apartment, he asked to use the bathroom. While he was in there, I found a condom and lube in my nightstand and tossed them onto the bed. I hated him at that moment, but not enough to infect him with the virus. I could hear him pissing on the other side of the door, a long, full stream. Then it was quiet. I envisioned him shaking off, zipping up, glancing momentarily at his beautiful face in the mirror for no particular reason, or maybe to calculate what his next move would be. Whatever it was, I planned to stay a step ahead.

As he came out, he turned out the light behind him.

“Leave it on,” I said. “I want to be able to see you.”

He gave me a curious look. I was tempted to tell him his act was getting old. He reached back and flicked the switch. It left the outer room in diffused light, the kind that allows you to see the finer details of a naked man but also leaves a little mystery, a sense of the hidden, the unexplored.

As he came around the end of the bed, I touched his face. He hadn’t shaved for a day or two and the grate of his dark beard sharpened my sense of him, of his maleness, of the reason I wanted him so badly. I wasn’t wearing briefs under the sweatpants and my erection strained against the loose cotton. I took Ismael’s hand and placed it below my belly where I was hard.

“Trust is important to you, isn’t it, Ismael?”

He nodded earnestly, his brown eyes inquisitive and maybe a little scared.

“Very much,” he said. “We discussed it the other day, in my room at the hotel.”

“Yes, I remember.”

I ran my hand through his thick, black hair, then pulled his face to mine and kissed him forcefully on the mouth. Just as he responded, I pulled away.

“Without trust,” I said, “a relationship never feels right, does it?”

“I’m not that experienced, but—”

“It’s either there, or it isn’t, wouldn’t you say? It’s something you can feel in your gut. Not something to be discussed. Because words lie, don’t they, Ismael? Words can detour around the truth as easily as they can express it.”

“Benjamin, what’s going on? What’s the matter?”

I reached down to the hem of his T-shirt, pulled it up and over his head, and tossed it aside, into the shadows of the room. I clawed at his chest, through the dark hair until I found his hardening nipples. I bent to seize one in my teeth until he cried out.

“Without trust,” I said, “it never feels healthy and complete, does it? Never feels real. There’s always an unspoken tension, an invisible component that keeps the private moments between two people artificial and just a bit off-kilter. Because they don’t really know each other, not truly and profoundly, and they know they don’t. But they don’t want to talk about it, either, to get at it, to root out the causes of the uncomfortable moments and awkward silences. Because that would be too intimate, too frightening. They each have their shameful secrets, their endless deceptions, their unspoken feelings. That’s how most couples live out their lives, isn’t it, Ismael? Not so much trusting and loving as pretending.”

“Why are you talking like this? What’s gotten into you, Benjamin?”

I ignored him and went on. “So they settle into their rhythms and routines, into their imitation of life. They make the best of it, content to have a stranger beside them, because the alternative—loneliness—is unbearable. How many marriages have you known like that, unions between breeders blessed by church and state? How many relationships based more on appearance than reality, designed to fool as many people as possible?”

“Benjamin, I know your parents didn’t have a model marriage, but—”

I cut him off, softening my voice. “Maybe none of us can ever truly know another person. Maybe that’s the final truth—that we’re all connected yet ultimately alone, destined to live among strangers, going through the motions, getting through this illusory life.”

He started to speak again, but I put a finger on his lips.

“Do you feel you know me, Ismael? Do you trust me? Are you ready to prove it?”

I found his belt buckle, unfastened it, unhitched and unzipped his pants, and let them drop around his ankles. I ran my hands along the sides of his solid torso.

“Should I trust you, Ismael?”

“Yes, of course.”

I kneeled to pull off his shoes, then his jeans, which I tossed aside. I ran my hands up his hairy legs, up the lean, strong calves, the firm thighs. Then I explored with my tongue. Then with my teeth, biting his flesh, tasting him, feasting on his beauty. He grabbed my head on both sides, forcing me to look up at him.