The Definitive Albert J. Sterne (11 page)

“Maybe.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.” Defiance.

Garrett looked skeptical.

“All right, seventeen, and that’s the truth.”

“That’s too bad,” Garrett said. “Kids aren’t my thing.”

“I’m eighteen, I swear. Not my fault if I look young for my age.”

“I’m sure it’s good for business.”

The guy - too cute to be called a man, though he was of age  - The guy laughed, and asked with a pretence of wariness, “Just what sort of business are we talking about here?”

“You know what we’re talking about,” Garrett said easily, appreciating the smart humor. He walked forward, ruffled the guy’s thick mop of hair, gathered him up with a strong arm around his shoulders. “Why don’t you come home with me?”

“Yeah? Okay.”

“You can help me unpack.”

It was the guy’s turn to look skeptical.

“What’s your name?” Garrett asked.

“Rusty. Russell, if you really don’t like me.”

“John. I just moved here today, Rusty. Everything’s in boxes.”

“Everything?”

“So we have to find the sheets and blankets somewhere. What, you’re going to charge me extra for a little honest labor?”

“Depends  …” The guy eyed him: Garrett’s bulk, his strength. “Depends how hard you work me afterwards.”

Garrett laughed, loud and happy. The few other people wandering the street or hanging around the intersections cast him world-weary glances, or ignored him. They didn’t care, he didn’t care for them. That was just as it should be.

He did work Rusty hard. But the guy seemed to expect it, found pleasure where he could and submitted cheerfully enough when Garrett wanted other things. Rough and tumble sex was fine; if he couldn’t do what he dearly wanted to do with this boy, then he would take it only a little further than permissible.

Garrett pulled the young man to him again, hands hard. Maybe he would bruise but Garrett didn’t slap him or hit him. He kissed and bit at the guy’s shoulders, but didn’t draw blood. Rusty, the guy’s name was Rusty. Rolling onto his back, Garrett hauled the guy with him, sat him up, impaled the boy. Too tired to protest, Rusty let him do it, helped Garrett fuck him, even though it hurt both of them without lubrication. Garrett grabbed the guy firmly around his ribs, lifted him, set the rhythm.

“Jerk yourself off,” Garrett ordered. And the guy did, though he’d had more than enough already. The face scrunched up as he concentrated on getting this over with, as he found a thread of pleasure despite the painful penetration, the sore abused genitals. Finding that thread, Rusty chased it, determined - spurted semen across Garrett’s belly with a pathetic cry.

Letting out a breathless laugh, Garrett dug deeper into the boy’s flesh with his fingers and his penis, orgasm tearing through him. It was good.

A small whimper as he lay the boy down beside him. Rusty. He seemed worried, fretting, curling up like a child. Garrett said, “Sleep now. Stay the night. It’s over.”

“Take me back home.”

“No, stay. It’s over, I won’t hurt you again. I’ll pay you.”

“Yes,” the guy said. And, after a time, he settled and fell into sleep.

Garrett lay awake. Maybe he’d been too rough. After all, he didn’t need the violence, not all the time; he could function without it, have sex like any other man. More than that. One of the boys back in Colorado had pleaded, “Make love to me,’ and Garrett had been so very careful with him. Even those sensations had been an excess of a sort - though betrayal of the starry-eyed virgin had been sweeter still.

What was the naïve one’s name? Andrew. Drew had had no idea of how much trouble there was in the world. This young scamp Rusty had seen more, but still didn’t seem to really fear Garrett. He had regained his cheerfulness by morning.

“So, you’re new to town. D’you want some company, help with the unpacking, someone to show you around?”

“And how much do you charge for these services?”

“Nothing you can’t afford.”

It was tempting. A better offer than Drew’s. Garrett liked living alone, but he’d sometimes shared his home with a stray for a week or so, in return for sex. Sometimes those strays moved on. Or, if it was time again, they might find the truth of what Garrett was, and then be given to the earth. But Rusty would be safe. Garrett was proud of his restraint: he didn’t kill needlessly. “A few days,” he agreed.

Rusty grinned, went back to his makeshift breakfast of toast and fruit.

Garrett laughed, heartily delighted. Even street-smart Rusty didn’t realize how close he was to hell.

“So what are you doing here?” the young man asked. “Did you come for work or something?”

“You know that big hole in the ground, on the main street up from the court house? I’m putting a building in it.”

“Yeah?” He sounded mildly impressed.

“A beautiful tall glass monstrosity that everyone will hate.” Garrett added, with satisfaction, “I’m the project manager.”

Garrett had never reached college and though he figured himself smarter than a lot of those who did, he still envied them, bitter at what he could never be. He’d had to drop out of school early to support his mother, use his brains and ingenuity in ways that most college boys seemed incapable of. He was proud that he’d made his own way, gotten so far from so many miles behind. Money to burn, these days, and prestige. He knew all the right people, wherever he was, held the right jobs, bought the right influence, donated to the right charities and political campaigns. A rags-to-riches story in which he had both directed and starred.

For so long he had carefully tried to do the right thing, always the right and proper and smart thing, because he wanted to succeed in the world and he was hungry for success. He had married the right girl, when he was twenty and his mother had died, married the boss’s only grandchild, though she was awful, useless, more of a non-entity than his mother. The wedding had earned him what he needed at the time but if the choice were his to make again, he would find another way.

Sex with her had shamed and then bored him. He had been the virgin, not she, despite the white lace and the blushes she wore and the conspiratorial jokes all the men made that he’d smiled at. He had hated being cheated and fooled like that, loathed being at a disadvantage. But it didn’t matter anymore, she didn’t matter. He’d left her behind years ago, and only regretted that he’d had to leave the job behind, too.

At twenty-three he’d discovered young men, discovered the power of rough and tumble with something that struggled, something that wouldn’t break or even complain much. That had been enough for a long while - doing things he could pay a guy to forget, things a whore expected in any case, things that became rape even if they started out as seduction. A couple of times he’d had to dump them at a hospital: drive them as far away as possible, and leave them for someone else to care for. There were so many dull frigid years to make up for, though he had to be careful. He had a business to run, a growing reputation to protect. There were some situations, after all, that you couldn’t buy or charm your way out of; some foibles that would not be overlooked.

Though back then people had been willing to accept him despite knowing, hearing somehow, or figuring out that he was queer. There had been more comfort about the issue in the seventies than the eighties now offered. It had been forgivable, ignorable.

One night he’d taken the sex too far; been so caught up in the young man’s humiliation that sheer sensation had carried him beyond where he’d dreamed possible. It had sickened him afterwards - not the injuries he’d caused, but the surrender of control and the intolerable situation it had put him in. It had infuriated him.

He’d stood over the guy, impatient with his repetitive pleas, trying to assess the damage. Yes, this time it was fatal. “No hospitals,” he’d said.

But the guy hadn’t shut up. “Help me, get me some help, please  …”

And then reckless sensation seized hold of him again, the nauseous panic swamped by delight, as he’d realized this was what it had all been about, right from the beginning. He sat in a chair, a short distance away, and watched. Sometimes he’d crept closer to kiss the guy, run a hand over the shuddering flesh, feel the fever heat come and go. Once he’d masturbated sitting back in the shadows, laughing at the crazy excess.

It took the guy three glorious, scary, divine hours to die.

Garrett was left with a body to deal with. The dreary denouement, the anticlimax of aftermath. Trying to think it all carefully through, despite the panic returning to jolt him.

No one had known he’d picked this guy up, that was all right. Perhaps someone would have missed the young man by now but it was a Sunday, so Garrett himself wouldn’t be looked for until the next day.

He’d driven up into the mountains, with the body wrapped in a blanket in the trunk. Having already done without sleep for thirty-six hours, another six wouldn’t matter. The body was already naked but Garrett also took the two rings from his hands and the chain from his neck, slipped them into his hip pocket. Kissed him, kissed the unresponsive mouth, held him for a long while, sitting on the cold ground with the weight of the young man in his arms. It was hard to let this one go. But he had eventually dumped the body in the river, watched the rapids take him.

Home again, he’d packed the guy’s few possessions carefully into a box, sealed it up, and stashed it in the back of a cupboard, anonymous amongst all his junk. Perhaps it would have been smarter to have dumped the jewelry and wallet as well but Garrett couldn’t bear to leave them behind. It had been enough to sacrifice the guy’s clothes to the incinerator’s fire.

And then, for no reason he could now fathom, he’d walked to the kitchen, picked up the sharp vegetable knife, and slit open the veins from the inside of his left elbow to his wrist and on into his palm, cut again across the meat of his forearm. Quickly dizzy as the blood pounded out of him, as the darkness approached. Was this how the young man had felt? Garrett cried out loud, roared out defiance and grim joy and completion, let his heartbeat fill the world.

A sorry coincidence had been his undoing, his savior. One of the few neighbors had been passing this isolated house of his, heard the painful noise, came in through the door that had stupidly been left unlocked, tied a kitchen towel tight around the biceps, called an ambulance. Lucky that she hadn’t passed by the previous night, when it hadn’t been Garrett screaming.

Garrett could have lost the arm, almost lost his life, almost followed the young man into the darkness. But he survived, pleaded lonely despair, promised to get help. Moved interstate with the scar of a cross on his arm, a cross bound with stitches. The stitches reminded him of thorns.

It had been five weeks and three days before the papers announced they’d found the body washed up against a bridge.

Rusty touched the raised lines of skin on Garrett’s forearm, traced the defiant cross, walked his fingers along the puckered dots left by the irregular stitches. The scar was white now, refusing to tan, but that was better than the unhealthy grey that had lingered just beneath the surface for months. “Bad times, huh?” Rusty asked, all light sympathy. Then, with the enthusiasm expected from a child, “I  bet there was lots of blood.”

I could show you, Garrett thought. What an interesting idea, to mark a boy in the same way. Maybe when it was time, in a little less than two years, when the monstrous building rose into the sky. Or maybe right now. No one would miss this tramp. There was a cellar to the house, small and dark and sound-proof. He could strap Rusty to the shelving on the wall: one lash at his right wrist, and one at his left elbow, perhaps one around his ankles to prevent him from kicking out; that’s all he’d need. And then he could hold Rusty’s hand as he carved an identical cross deep into the boy’s flesh. Watch as the blood pulsed out, spattered them both; watch as Rusty resisted the fearful darkness drawing near. He imagined the young man crying and begging, the big childish eyes afraid, his breathing harsh and ragged; then Rusty’s head wilting as he went under, the heavy mop of hair listing forward. Yes, I  could show you, my friend.

“Don’t you always just die if you lose more than a pint of blood?” Rusty was asking. “You only have eight or nine pints or something, and you go into shock, and just die.”

Let’s find out, shall we?

But that wouldn’t be sensible. Garrett rationed himself, only so many deaths, only so many attempts at that ultimate satisfaction. And it would not be wise to link himself so obviously to the victims.

“It takes more than a pint,” Garrett said. This cool control was fine. In fact, control was the whole point, it all had to mean something, life was too precious to take with anything less than finesse. Screams should be conducted like music. Garrett was creating poetry, just like a football team executing a classic play, like the beauty of smoothly slotting each piece of a glass tower into place. Perfection.