And in the midst of the blaze, images from the adventures of the day: a sky, a wall, Bethlynn; Drew clothed, Drew naked; the cat, the flowers, the bridge, all unreeling like a fragment of film tossed into the fire in his head, the throbbing white fire that lay at the end of everything.
God help me, he tried to say, no longer afraid of being found in this state by Drew, only wanting him there to extinguish the blaze
He raised his head, and squinted through the light towards the door. There was no sign of Drew. He started to crawl towards the landing, knocking over two of the three remaining candles as he did so. The conflagration in his head continued unchecked, the memories still flickering in its midst before they were consumed, like moth's wings, fluttering and fluttering -the waters of the Bay, whipped by the wind; the flowers on Bethlynn Reichle's windowsill; Drew's face, sweating in ecstasy And then, suddenly, the blaze was gone, extinguished in a heartbeat. He was kneeling three or four yards from the door, the darkness grey, the light grey, the food in which he knelt drained of colour, his hands and legs and dick and belly all drained, all grey. It was strangely pleasurable after the assault and the sickness, to be thrown into this cool cell, detached from sensuality. His mind, he assumed, had simply decided enough was enough, and pulled the plug on all but the barest minimum of stimulation. He was no longer overpowered by the stench of rot and curdle; even the glutinous textures of the food around him had been tamed.
The nausea had also receded, but he didn't want to risk any motion until he was certain it had passed completely, so he stayed where he'd found himself when the episode had passed, kneeling by the light of a single candle-flame. Drew would come up the stairs very soon, he thought. He'd look at Will and take pity: come to him, soothe him, cradle him. All he had to do was be patient. He knew how to be patient. He could sit in the same position for hours. It wasn't hard.
Just breathe evenly, and empty the mind of useless thoughts. Sweat them away; then wait. And look! His waiting was already over. There was a shadow on the wall. Drew was climbing the stairs right now. Thirty seconds and he'd be on the landing, and the moment after he'd be coming to help Will back to sanity. There he was, with a glass of water in his hand, his trousers barely hanging on his hips, his body piebald with the marks Will had left on him. The flesh around his nipples flushed. The teeth marks on his neck and shoulders neat as a tailor's stitch. His face mottled. He raised his head, oh so slowly (in this grey world nothing had urgency), and a puzzled look came over his face as he stared towards the bedroom door. It seemed he couldn't make out Will's face in the murk; or if he could, failed to make sense of what he saw. He smelled the vomit, however, that much was plain. A look of disgust disfigured his face, the ugliness of his expression troubling to Will. He didn't want to see that look on his saviour's face. He wanted compassion, tenderness. Drew had hesitated now, and was staring through the open door. His disgust had turned into fearfulness. His breath had quickened, and when he spoke - 'Will?' he said - the word was barely audible. Damn you, Will thought; don't stay out there. Come on in. There's nothing to be afraid of, for God's sake. Come on in.
But Drew didn't move. Frustrated now, Will put his hand down into the muck in front of him, and raised himself up. He tried to say Drew's name, but for some reason his throat loosed a vile din, more like a bark than a name.
Drew dropped the glass of water. It smashed at his feet.
'Jesus!' he yelled, and started to back away towards the stairs. What nonsense was this? Will thought. He needed help and the man was moving away?
He lurched towards the bedroom door, trying to call out a second time, but his throat again betrayed him. All he could do was to stagger out onto the landing, into the light, where Drew could see him. His legs were no more reliable than his larynx however. He stumbled at the door, and would have fallen amongst the broken glass had he not caught hold of the jamb. He swung around, realizing in this ungainly moment that for some reason his witless dick was hard again, slapping against his stomach as he lurched out onto the landing. And now, by the light thrown up the stairwell from the hallway below, Drew saw his pursuer.
'Jesus Christ,' he said, the fear on his face becoming disbelief. 'Will?' he breathed.
This time, Will managed a word. 'Yes,' he said.
Drew shook his head. 'What are you playing at?' he said. 'You're freaking me out.'
Will's bare feet trod the glass, but he didn't care. He had to stop Drew abandoning him. He caught hold of the banister and started to haul himself along the landing to the top of the stairs. His body felt utterly alien to him, as though his muscles were in the business of re-orienting themselves. He wanted to drop back down on his knees to ease their motion; wanted to move sleekly in pursuit of the animal in front of him. He'd been patient, hadn't he? He'd waited in the grey until the quarry showed itself. Now it was time to give chase
'Stop this, Will,' Drew was saying. 'For God's sake! I mean it!' Fear had made him shrill. He sounded comical, and Will laughed. Short and sharp. A yelp of a laugh.
The din was too much for Drew. What little courage he'd had broke, and he stumbled backwards down the stairs, shouting at Will as he went - something incoherent - and snatching up his jacket at the bottom of the flight. He was bare-chested and barefoot, but he didn't care. He wanted to be out of the house, whatever the discomfort. Will was at the top of the stairs now, and began his descent. The slivers of his glass in his soles were agonizing however, and after two steps - knowing he was in no condition to catch up with his quarry - he sank down onto one of the stairs and watched Drew while he struggled to unlock the door. Only when it was open, and Drew had sight of the street, did he look back and yell
'Fuck you, Will Rabjohns!'
Then he was gone, out into the night and away.
Will sat on the stairs for several minutes enjoying the cold gusts through the open door. His gooseflesh did nothing to dissuade his erection. It ticked on between his legs, reminding him that for many the pleasures of the night were only just beginning. And if for others, why not for him?
CHAPTER XIV
i
There was a club on Folsom called The Penitent. At the height of its notoriety in the mid-seventies, it had been called The Serpent's Tooth, and had been to San Francisco what the Mineshaft had been to New York: a club where nothing was verboten if it got you hard. On the wild nights, moving down the streets of the Castro, the serious leather crowd had counted off their pleasuredomes on the knuckles of one wellgreased fist, and the Tooth had always been one of the five. Chuck and Jean-Pierre, the owners of the club, had long since gone, dying within three weeks of one another in the early years of the plague, and for a time the site had remained untaken, as though in deference to the men who'd played there and passed away. But in 1987 the Sons of Priapus, a group of onanists who'd restored masturbation to the status of a respectable handicraft, had occupied the building for their Monday night circlejerks. The ghosts of the building had smiled on them, it seemed, because word of the atmosphere there soon swelled the number of the Sons. They organized a second weekly gathering, on Thursdays, and then when that become overcrowded, a third. Almost overnight the building had become a paean to the democracy of the palm. An element of the fetishistic gradually crept into the Thursday and Friday assemblies (Monday remained vanilla) and before long the leaders of the Sons had turned into businessmen, leased the building, and were running the most successful sex-club in San Francisco. Chuck and Jean-Pierre would have been proud. The Penitent had been born.