Turning away from the drop, he could have sworn one of the elves had moved closer. Moved and stopped the moment he turned, once again counterfeiting the inanimate. The elf was weaponless, crouching, its swarthy, snarling face visible between upraised hands, poised to deliver a push.
“Wily little bastard,” he said. “You want some of me?”
The elf appeared to quiver with eagerness, the light trembling on its surfaces, glinting from its eyes.
“Fuck you!”
Michael flipped his cigarette at the elf, showering it with sparks. As he crossed the lawn he tried not to glance behind him, but he looked back twice.
——
Once inside 120, he stripped off his shirt, switched off the lights, and lay down, listening to the shower hissing, the shuddery hum of the air conditioner. Glare from the breezeway penetrated the drapes, spreading a sickly murk throughout the room. The blond production-line furniture and the mirror bolted above the writing desk wavered like fixtures in a mirage. He felt that he was floating off the bed. Nerves jumped in his cheek. Phosphenes drifted and flared in the dimness. Something was lumped up under his ass, and he remembered Charlie’s money. He sat up, pulled the wad from his hip pocket and counted it. Seven thousand dollars and change. The bills were cool and slick, like strange skins.
He wondered if he should give Charlie a call. It would be painful, but Charlie might feel better afterward. He would be guilty, morose. The first thing he’d say would be not to worry about the money or the car, and he hoped Michael could forgive him. He hadn’t meant it, the kiss. For four years he’d been straight with Michael, and he had fucked up once. It would never happen again. And then, he, Michael, would say . . . maybe nothing. Maybe he’d just hang on the phone, knowing that if he opened his mouth he would indict himself, because it had been his fuckup, too. Or maybe he’d get angry with Charlie for making him feel guilty and call him a spunk muncher, a pole smoker, an aging drag queen with a ring in his dick. But Charlie wouldn’t let him off so easily. If you’re determined to run, he’d say, all right, but don’t pretend it was casual, don’t pretend you’re not feeling anything. They’d trade back and forth like that for a while, and finally Michael would say he had to go, and Charlie would say, okay, but once you’ve had time to think things over, please, please, get in touch, and so what was the point in calling when he knew everything that would be said . . . And, hell, Charlie would know he was going through this process and wouldn’t expect a call, so what was the goddamn point?
“I am going to hell,” he said, anticipating a demonic chuckle in response.
The girl came out of the bathroom, toweling her hair, still wearing tank top and panties. He thought it was extremely demure of her to be clothed at this juncture—such restraint and modesty well might be considered a touch of class in their circle.
“It’s so cold in here!” she said.
“I like it cold.”
“Well.” She toweled briskly. “I guess it’s just my hair’s still wet.”
He let out a sigh and saw a shadow pour from his mouth; a sensation of calm stole over him, like the calm after the passing of a fever.
The girl pulled off the tank top; beneath a tan line, her pale breasts were luminous in the half-light, the nipples pink and childlike. She burrowed beneath the covers, drawing them up to her chin.
“You coming in?” she asked.
He skinned out of his jeans and shorts. The sheets were cold and once he had drawn them up, he could no longer feel anything below his waist. The girl’s thigh nudged his and he felt that—a patch of skin warming to life. Strands of damp hair tickled his shoulder.
“Hey,” she said softly. “You pretty whacked out, huh?”
“That’s me . . . whacked out.”
“You had a tiring day.” Her hand spidered across his abdomen. “All that driving and hardly ever stopping. You must be wore right down.”
He touched one of her breasts, let its weight nestle in his palm. It was a fine thing to hold, but he felt not even a glint of arousal. “I don’t think it’s going to work,” he said.
“All that coke’s numbing you out,” she whispered, her mouth brushing his ear, her fingers caressing, molding his limp cock. “You lie back now and let me take care of you.”
He became immersed in her fresh, soapy smell, in her breathy voice and the mastering cleverness of her hand.
“I wish it was just the two of us,” she said.
“Is somebody else here?”
“I mean, you know. Like even when you’re alone, how you can feel other people pressing in on you. People in the vicinity.”
“Uh-huh.”
She took to singing distractedly again, an aimless, wordless, off-key tune of the sort a child might sing while concentrating on a toy. She gripped him more tightly and increased her rhythm. “You ain’t still mad, are you?”
“Not so much.”
She gave a husky laugh, and it seemed there was a note of triumph in it. “You’re a funny fella. I don’t know why you strike me funny, but you sure do. Maybe it’s ’cause you like pretending you ain’t serious about nothing when you serious about ’most everything.”
“Seriously funny,” he said. “That’s me.”
“That don’t mean a blessed thing,” she said, making it sound seductive. “You can talk like that all you want, ’cause I’m onto you.”
The planes of her cheeks, her lidded eyes and half smile . . . They were so close to him, they no longer appeared to be elements of a face, but features on a map that he couldn’t read.
“Yeah? How’s that?”
“I been watching you all day. I can tell when you’re easy, when you’re worried. When you’re lying.” She peeled back the covers, checking to see what her hand had wrought. “Look at that! ’Pears it’s gonna work after all.”
She scooted lower in the bed, teased him with her lips, then slipped half his length into her mouth; he brushed the hair back from her face so he could watch her cheeks hollow. After a minute she wriggled back up beside him. Her tongue darted out, flirting with his, and her hand moved slowly, insistently.
“You keep that up, I’m going to come,” he said.
“Be all right with me,” she said. “I think that’d be kinda nice.”
He laughed, happy with her.
“Know what else I know about you?” she asked after a pause.
“What?”
“You know all about me . . . Least, more than you think you know. But you’re so busy being funny, you ain’t noticed.”
He felt a delicate shift in attitude that he hadn’t felt for a long time, that perhaps he had only told himself he could feel. The silky lengths of her wet hair gave her face a cunning sweetness like that of a nymph, a dryad, and he had the idea that her expression—rapt, yet with a trace of uncertainty—was a mirror image of his own.
“We’re the same people,” she said. “You might be older than me, and you think you’re smarter. But we been the same places, we had the same trouble. We understand each other.”
Though he had reached this conclusion on his own, he wanted to deny it now but could not—he recognized her from some foul adit of experience, a dead end, a still-life alley with full moon and heaped garbage bags glistening like fat black boulders, and while she gave a blow job to some middle-aged douche he would wait in the zebra-striped island of light and shadow beneath a fire escape, her agent, her mystic protector, counting the cash, watching her shade kneel and merge with the flaps of a raincoat, and afterward she would hurry over to him, wiping off her lips, and ask, “We got enough?” Enough for the joys of modern chemistry, enough to transform an abandoned house into the Beverly Hilton, cockroaches into glittering brown jewels, life into a death trip with pretty colors, hunger into a cool side effect, love into a blue movie with a warped soundtrack and junk food.