Night. Gloom, shade, darkness. Darkness is not black - not at night, not downtown. Black black night can only exist apart from the city, on the outskirts, in the wastelands, on deserted construction sites. Maybe, on as highway after midnight when at times the whole of five minutes pass by without a car roaring by. Over a desert highway the sky can be black, sparkle black through the holes in the pale, ragged clouds, and stars prick through the blackness like a scattering of tiny gleaming tailor pins.
In the city, the night is different. It's dark blue, deep violet. And blazing lights cut through this night, not shine, not shimmer, but cut through the night with their beams... even the neon light above the bar's door that should be glowing, hits square in the eyes.
The bar is "Donnie's". I think I've been here before. Or maybe, I've been to "Tommy's", "Lenny's", "Bonnie's". How people love their own names...
Not me. The one I love's not mine.
I open the bar door and step inside.
There's no air inside. There is tobacco smoke, there is beer smell, there is waitresses' perfume and the barmen's cologne, there are fumes from the glass-cleaning liquid, but there's no air. I haven't seen many bars where there is. The Human Being keeps evolving, and soon won't need any oxygen whatsoever. Tobacco at home, gasoline outside. I love the smell of gasoline. Burning gasoline, gasoline eaten by the motor.
I make it to the bar counter across the hall...
... and there I see him.
I close my eyes. I open them again. No, there's no mistaking. I couldn't have mistaken. Even though he cut his copper-red mane at shoulderlength, even though he is wearing a jacket instead of the old leather vest - but the night is cold... can't remember a California night ever get that cold... - even though he glanced at me and pretended he didn't see me, didn't recognize me, didn't notice me, - there's no mistaking, because it's him.
Sitting at the counter, sipping on his beer oh so slowly, - and that means he doesn't have money to buy the next one. I smile, and I don't mind it that something tugs on my heart, tightens my throat, tastes bitter in my mouth, because it's so like him.
I take a seat beside him, right behind his back, put a hand on his shoulder and call him quietly, "Lance".
He turns around. Dark eyes and a crooked smile, and I hide a sigh, a sigh of relief, because it really is him. I found him.
"I know you, mister?"
I give a little laugh. I remember these games. He's fond of games. Fond of having a little fun, some messing around. Of course he did recognize me. Couldn't but recognize. But I'll play along, even though playing is the last thing I want to be doing right now. I'm so tired. I don't remember if I had any sleep this night - I don't think I did, because I came back to L.A. this morning, and that means I spent the night on a freeway... I'm tired. But if he wants to play, I'll play with him.
Because I love him.
"Maybe you don't," I answer. "But I'll buy your beer anyway."
He looks at me, stares at me, suspicious, and I get a little scared. He plays too well - can it be that... But no. Of course no. He smiles at me, and I melt, because his eyes are oh so warm.
"You're a weird guy," he tells me. "But I be damned if I turn that down."
I order beer, and he moves closer.
"Cheers."
I silently salute him with my mug. I don't have much trust in my voice.
He throws his head back and pours the beer down his throat - just how many times have I seen him do it? How many times have I watched a thin, foamy amber streamlet trickle out of the corner of his mouth, down his chin, on to his neck? How many times have I ground my teeth together, knowing the timing's no good, the place was no good...
He puts his mug down on the counter, laughs, wipes his lips clean with the back of his hand. I slowly finish my beer. I don't have anywhere to hurry anymore.
He looks at me, and now I see them, the sparkles of laughter in his eyes. Mischievous, impish sparkles.
"Oh well, let's get to know each other then, benefactor," he stretches out his hand and though I don't see right, I do see the small scar between his thumb and forefinger. It's a bite. Loki, my Harley, bit him, when he once got into the saddle without me and grabbed the handlebars. Loki was jealous. Maybe, a little too jealous. It was because of him that Lance...
A fit of blinding headache, white light before my eyes, nausea, and I don't see anything for a few seconds, but I hear him introduce himself:
"Kyle."
The pain leaves, and I want to laugh again. Kyle. Damn, he's inventive.
He didn't notice I had a fit. Or he pretended he didn't. I shake his hand.
"Decker."
He gives a little laugh.
"You mean it? You really are that unfortunate with names?"
"More unfortunate than you know." I smirk, because he does know. "So Decker will do just fine."
Kyle. I hide another smirk behind my mug. He hasn't used a single name twice so far.
Back then, when I first met him, he called himself Albert. I'd never seen anyone who looked less like an Albert than him. And he didn't even try to pretend it was his real name. What do you care, his eyes told me, you're not going to write my biography, you're going to fuck me. All in all, he wasn't that wrong.
And so he was Albert, and the bar was small, and the music was bad, and then we went to a motel, and the room was clean, and the sheets were white.
And he was hot and hectic, almost consumptive, and so slick with sweat he kept slipping from my grip.
And I didn't know a thing yet.
Then, much later, he explained it to me, that he never ever told anyone his real name, because it was silly. Silly, fairy-tale-ish. Strange. He finally did tell me, though. But made me promise I'd only call him Lance.
And I liked his real name. I liked to say it, I liked the way it rolled on my tongue like a grape before you bit into it.
Quite a beautiful name, in fact: Lancelot...
By the time I finish my fifth beer, the game becomes too drawn-out. And I don't understand anymore, why we're still here. There are bars in the downtown L.A. where no-one cares what you do and who you do it with, there are night clubs so full of people no-one even sees you in the crowd, but "Donnie's" isn't downtown L.A. - it's in downtown L.A. slums, one block from the Strip, and in an altogether different world. The guys sitting here are truckers and bouncers, the guys who beat their money out of guys like Donnie himself during their work week. Hollywood fuckin' cowboys after their third whisky. Their latest kids piss in their lap at home, and their wives slap them in the face with wet towels and don't let them in if they can smell the liquor even through the door, and that means that here, in the bar, they're going to be supertough macho men, they won't take shit from anyone, least of all two little faggots who definitely don't have either pissing kids or bitchy wives.
We're just losing time here.
He looks up a me and looks down again immediately, drilling the counter's polished surface with his stare. Come on, baby. I don't want to offend you, I'm just so tired I'm almost falling, and I missed you... if you only know how much I missed you...
"It's stuffy in here," he says, never looking up. "Let's get out to have a breath or two, shall we?"
Of course we shall. Out to the porch. And on the porch, there's night, and it has gotten darker, but it won't ever get black all the same. He asks me for a cigarette. I'm a Marlboro man myself, but I fish an almost full pack of Pall Mall out of my back pocket. I remember what you like, baby. I kept it for you.
He tries to lit the cigarette, and the wind throws his now-short hair in his face, and he curses under his breath, pushing the red bangs out of his eyes, tucking them behind his ear and clicking the lighter again. I like his new hair-do. Like the strands framing his face, like the way his hair brushes on his neck an inch above the shoulders. But I'm still sorry he cut it. He had such a luxiriant mane.
Down to his waist.
No shorter.
I remember him curse, just like now, through the clenched teeth, as he was trying to brush his wet hair after a shower. Brushes, any kind of them, always got tangled in it, ended up hanging in it, and had to be slowly disentangled. Disentangled by me - he never had the patience, he would flip out and tear them out, at times together with whole tufts of hair. Then I would take the brush from him, and he would sigh and sit down on the floor. I always had the patience. I would untangle that mane strand by strand, sitting on the edge of the bed, and he would sit there on the floor and chant Sweet songs. Would always be Sweet. I didn't know why. It wasn't even his favorite band... Yes, hee would sit on the floor and his head would be right between my knees.
At times he would turn around...
He puffs on his cigarette and shivers.
"Not that hot, is it?"
"So maybe we should find a warmer place to stay, what do you think?"
His head snaps to the right, to me, as if the wind had just given him a slap in the face. His eyes glimmer - reflecting the neon, reflecting the street lamp across the road, reflecting the light of his cigarette.
"I'm not a whore," he says quietly. Dangerous tone. If I say something wrong now, he'll go right off the hook, like a scared, fluttering fish, go off the hook and away. My little player. I'm willing to kill myself for rushing it. So what that I'm starved for him. I've been waiting for so long, I sure can wait a little longer.
"I never said you were. If you were a whore, I'd never have the money to pay you."
He gives a joyless smile.
"And I thought you were a rich guy. Buying me beer like that."
"See," I tell him, and my voice is careless, and the carelessness in it is painstakingly calculated, "if you were a whore, you'd sure cost more than this whole joint. You're gorgeous... Kyle."
He raises and eyebrow. Raises a corner of his mouth.
"Oh wow. That's one hell of a compliment... Don't think I've heard any quite like that before."
I stay silent.
He sighs and butts out his cigarette on the handrail.
"So where are you gonna take me to? And by what?"
I smile. I did win in the end.
"You did ride a Harley before, didn't you, Kyle?"
He never was a drag when we rode. He had rode with someone before me, and that someone had trained him well. He would hold on to my waist, firmly, but not too much, only tightening the grip a bit at especially dangerous turns. He would never distract me. No even at a low speed, not even on the safest roads. When we rode, his hands wouldn't move an inch from their place. Only when I steered the bike somewhere at the roadside... because there's always vibration going off from the bike, you know if you ride... and it goes up...
But never, not once - during a ride. Maybe, he knew how dangerous it was. Maybe he had been in trouble because of that before. And maybe he was just afraid of Loki, because on the road, I belonged to Loki and no-one but him...
"You lookit."
"What's the big surprise?"
"And I thought all bikers were such big dudes with a beard and a beer paunch."
He strokes the handlebars. I don't stop him. He can see it himself - it's not Loki. I stole this bike a couple of weeks ago - it's just a machine. It can't harm him.
I killed Loki, you know. Pumped him full of gasoline, gave him a run and threw him off a cliff. But he didn't want to die, and then I shot him, maybe once, and maybe twice, but no more than six times, because there's always a standard chamber in all of my guns. When I got him in the gaz tank, he exploded and finally died. I don't remember why I killed him. It had to be something really bad, because I get a headache each time I try to remember it...
Only I don't really try to remember it any more.
Something bothers me. Something feels off. Only when we stop at red lights at a crossroad, I realize that it's his hands - they aren't on my waist where I'm used to having them. He's holding on to my belt. I don't tell him anything when we move on, but it makes me feel sad. What's this body language? He keeps his distance? Or... did somebody teach him to ride this way while I wasn't around?
I repress the stirrings of jealousy. I haven't been around for an ungodly long time. He had the right.
He starts to get worried as we cross the city line.
"I thought we were going to a motel."
"We are."
"What motel? Out here? You mean some shitty roadside bungalow row?"
"What do you have against bungalows?"
He tenses behind my back, I feel the strain, even through the jacket.
"Ah," he says. "Some bad memories."
Shame and repention. Go together like hand and glove. And can get to you everywhere, just like Jehova's witnesses... I'm ashamed. This all happened because I hadn't found him earlier. Because I hadn't been where I should've been. Right by him. Now he hates roadside bungalows... what else? Night walks? Strange cars? What else did I fail to protect him from?
"It's a motel. You'll see. It's not far from here."
And when he sees, he stops breathing for a moment, and then he lets the air out with a whistle.
"You joker!"
"It's no joke."
"Oh yeah?" he looks the motel over again. The boarded-up windows, the stripped walls with large holes in them and the door, hanging open on one hinge. The broken porch and the half-erased graffiti on the walls. "Home sweet home, huh? You know, I don't really believe it will be much warmer in there than outside. But if you like adventures so much..." There's laughter in his eyes again. "Who cares about an assful of splinters, after all, right?"
"Wait," I tell him. "You ain't seen nothing yet."
He hasn't been here before. It's just a deserted ruin for him. A corpse of a house. People like him don't like deserted houses. Don't like pets gone stray, don't like old people. Don't like cemetaries. Don't like fall. They're too alive for fall, old age and deserted houses. They don't like it when someone reminds them of those things. Reminds them that they exist, that they can happen to them, too...
At times they don't even believe it.
He had always been afraid of getting old. If he began to talk about it, I knew something had gone wrong, something had upset him. It was the most definite symptom. He would sit on the bed, or in an armchair, or on the floor, but the pose would always be the same: he dragged his knees to his ches, put his arms around them and lowered his head, laying his cheek on them. And, staring right through me, he would begin to tell me that in ten years, well, maybe twenty, I wasn't going to need him anymore. In fact, no-one was, because he was so skinny, and skinny faces wrinkle faster, and besides, red hair looked awful when greying. And then, he kept telling me, and his voice was determined, almost defiant, and then, he'd get even bitchier than he was now. Besides, he'd finally become a useless wino. At times he'd list all that in a different order. At times he'd add something or miss out something: he didn't always mention getting bitchy, but he did at time say that drinking as much as he was, he was sure to become impotent with age. No two ways about that.
All in all, he improvised.
Disregarding him in such moments was a no-no. He did shut up... but he shut up for long. Very long. At times he wouldn't say a word in a whole day or more, and that got me upset. And so I would sit down beside him and put my arm around his shoulders. Would in a secretive whisper inform him, that getting to see just how red hair went grey was my lifelong dream. And that I was older than him and drank much more, and that meant that by the time we both got impotent, we'd have found us a more interesting hobby than that stupid "in-out-in-out". Maybe we'd get pro at poker. Or, maybe, we'd get us a couple of Madagaskar cocroaches and make money hand over fist at roach races. At times I'd say that when his skinny face would go all wrinkled and small, his eyes would look even bigger than now and he'd look like a lemur, and I loooooved lemurs. At times I suggested cock fights instead of roach races.
I improvised, too.
At first he would push me away, cursing desperately. Then he stopped pushing, and the cursing got less desperate. Then he'd go quiet, raise his head from his knees and put it on my shoulder. And then... then...
"Wow, man!"
I smile. He paces around the room, stopping before the chest drawer with the lamp standing on it, before the armchair, before the wide bed, before the glass bedside table. Before the magazine pages framed and hanged on the walls. He stares, stares, stares. I stare, too. At him.
"Now, that's a room!" there's boyish delight in his eyes and it makes me feel warm, warm and and fuzzy, the way it feels when you bury your face in new, never-worn furs. "It's like a secret shelter! Like a house in a tree, you know? It's cool! You brought all the stuff here yourself?"
I shake my head no. The bed was here when I found this place. I'd have never been able to drag a giant like this up to the second floor. And when I tried to move the chest drawer, I failed miserably, too. But I did find the armchair and the glass table in the cellar. There I found a pile of old magazines, too. Most of them had no covers, and so I almost didn't feel a vandal when I was ripping out pages. A pity. At times this feeling really gets you off.
He touches the flowers in the vase standing on the glass table and frowns.
"Artificial..."
"I don't spend much time here," I explain. "Real flowers wilt. Silk roses are still better than dead ones... aren't they?"
He nods and looks over the walls, abcent-minded, once again.
"Oh, and I'm afraid there's a lot of dust here," I warn him belatedly. "I've been away for a couple of days."
For a week, actually. But he doesn't need to know. As well he doesn't need to know that I brought the silk roses from a cemetary. If even I don't remember who I went to visit at that cemetary... he definitely doesn't need to know that.
He pays no attention to dust. He eyes one of the framed pages on the wall. It's a photocopy. The painting is called "Silence". I don't know the painter's name, even though I do believe we'd have a lot to talk about with that guy if we ever met. I knew his name, but I forgot, and I can't look it up in the magazine. His name was on the page next to the picture, and I ripped that page out, too. And threw it out with the garbage. The kid who wrote the article on the painter and the painting didn't understand shit. He must have been a Bachelor Of Arts at the least, or something worse, but he didn't understand shit. He must have learned a lot of useless facts about that painter by heart - what school of painting he belonged to, what galleries exhibited his works, who was influenced by him, what psychological revelations the unusual color scheme caused for the viewer... pseudo-scientific nonsense. Terms - "wide stroke", "color saturation", "intendedly distorted perspective" or, God forbid, "uneasy social subtext" - modern day spells and charms. Half of the people using them don't know what they mean, and those who know don't really think them important... but they do sound really mesmerizing, especially if youre a Bachelor Of Arts and are writing your very first article for a Real Respectful Art Magazine.
If the bachelor in question understood a thing, he'd never ever write that "Silence" is "a piece that reflects the depressive period in the painter's life". That it is fulfilled "in a gloomy, opressive color scheme". And that "on the level of symbols the painting speaks of devastation, stagnation and decay". Makes you "feel entrapped".
In the painting, there is a marsch. An old, even ancient one - overgrown in duckweed and mire, surrounded by huge thick-trunk trees... or maybe it's the trees that are surrounded by the marsh, because closer to the roots, their massive trunks dissolve into darkness. The marsh is green. The whole painting is green. Green duckweed, green mire, brownish-green reed. Between the duckweed, the mire and the reed - glimpses of black-green water. Under the trees - blue-green shade. And through the foliage, there come stray sun beams. Yellow-green.
Who except that smartass B.A. could call the green "a gloomy, opressing color scheme"? Green is quiet. Pacifying. I know the painter saw the same thing as me in that marsh.
Peace.
Not "Bog", not "Swamp", but "Silence".
This is my favorite painting.
He eyes it for a long time. Then he eyes me. Then he says quietly:
"So that's the way you are."
I try not to laugh, try really hard. The kid. Still such a kid, such a serious baby. Took a look at a picture and fancied he looked right into my soul. That's just like him.
I'm not this way. If I were this way, why would I need this picture on my wall?
I only want to be this way.
Maybe I can do it now.
He turns away from the wall, looks me in the eye and falls - back first, hands outstretched, with a sigh, falls onto the bed. The bed screeches, the dust whirls and hangs in the air, and I take off my jacket.
I didn't wait in vain.
And his lips are as soft as I remember them, and his fingers scratch the skin on my shoulder blades just like they used too, and my fingers get tangled in his hair, shorter now, but still as thick, and the two of us get tangled in the sheets, and blankets, and clothes, and whatnot, and then I whisper:
"Blessed are they who seek, for in the end, they do find."
He laughs, bites me on the shoulder.
"This isn't in the Bible, though."
"Oh yeah? Says who?"
"Says Matthew the Apostle," he responds and laughs again.
"Matthew was a troubled guy with a lot of issues and a small dick," I mutter. "Not much of an authority."
He bursts out laughing, and his hand, his nimble, swift hand crawls down my stocmach.
"So that's his motivation. Oh-oh. Wow. Decker, man, then you'll never write a Gospel."
"That never was my aspiration."
He pulls his hand away.
"Got a rubber?"
I sigh. Games are great, but there's a limit to any game. Acting too well can get one scared.
"Stop fooling around... Kyle," and just how much effort it takes me to call him that idiotic name. "If you're such a fan of safe sex, how come you don't have a condom on you?"
"Who cares for safety?" he snorts. "It's just that some rubbers have lube. You are... no Matthew, you know. Happen to have any vaseline?"
That's too much. Because I know he hates lube. He even told me why. He's got an abnormal pain threshold. I still can't remember if that's called "low threshold" or "high threshold" - when you almost don't feel the pain, when you need something really special to make you feel at all.
"No, I don't have any," I snap. "And on purpose, too. Bear it. Savor the feel."
The way he looks at me... it does scare me. For a second there, I almost believe that right now he will push me off and leave, and I'll let him go... But that's only for a second. Then he gives up and falls back onto the pillows.
"Easier on me, tough guy."
I nod. I never wanted to hurt him. Even when he asked me to hurt him. Of course he remembers that. He couldn't have forgotten.
But he clenches his teeth as I push into him. Shuts his eyes. And his nails dig into my shouders.
He's not playing now, is he?..
Tight.
"You woved celibacy while I wasn't there or what?"
He doesn't answer. His breathing is rapid and harsh, inhale-exhale, inhale-exhale. Then, gradually, he relaxes, and I let it all go. To hell with the weirdness. I drown in him. I get lost in him. Mine. Finally, once again, forever mine...
"What do you mean - while you weren't there?"
It's like being woken at six in the morning with a cherry bomb exploding right at your ear.
"Cut that crap, Lance."
"Who?"
He pushes me. Pushes, as if he really wanted to push me off him. Force me out of him.
"Lance, baby, what's up with you?"
"You crazy?!" he squirms under me, and there's panic in his eyes. "What the fuck?!"
Okay, I got it. It's yet another game. Damn, am I tired of games... Luckily, in this one, I only have to do what I'd have done anyway.
"Alright, Lance, shut the fuck up."
"No fucking way!"
I don't let him go. And I don't stop.
And then he screams.
Weird... why his scream... his very first scream, a single scream... why does it make my head ache so much?
So much pain that it makes me sick.
"Shut up," I whisper, and, realizing he doesn't hear me, shout at him, "Shut your fucking mouth!"
But he doesn't.
And all of a sudden...
... for some reason...
... his voice doesn't sound that familiar anymore.
"Lance?"
He screams.
Screams, screams, screams.
And his face...
But is it really his face?
And while I'm thinking about it, my body's thinking of something completely different, and I never stop moving, I can't stop, and he screams.
"Lance..."
But he isn't Lance.
He is not Lance, because there is no Lance.
Lance is dead.
I know it.
I just forgot.
How could I forget?
Lance is dead, Lance with his warm brown eyes and his red mane, his games and his hysteric fits, his invariable leather vest and a pack of Pall Mall in his pocket, my Lance is long dead, hopelessly dead, and this is Kyle, and Kyle screams, and I scream, too, but I still can't stop. His screams drill into my ears, drill like a rusty wimble, and I hold him by the throat and try to make him turn away, turn his face into the pillow, to muffle, shut off, strangle the scream. To kill the scream because it's hurting me so badly.
Lance screamed, too. He screamed like a madman, because he saw everything, knew everything and had already understood that he wouldn't ever worry about the way his hair went grey, wouldn't ever lay bets at roach races. Wouldn't ever get old.
And I hadn't understood that yet. I was still trying to reason with the handlebars, to get Loki out from under the truck's wheels.
Loki wasn't co-operating.
The handlebars wouldn't give, the brakes squealed in vain, the wheels hissed and slobbered, turning on the axes without moving on, but I still couldn't understand.
Lance understood everything.
"Romie!" he screamed, on top of his lungs. "Jesus! Romie!.. No, Romie, no, Romie, no, Romie, no, Romie, nonononononono..."
I wanted to snap back at him - I hated to be called by name, I forbade him to call me that in public... and in this millisecond, the awfully tiny unit of time, I understood it, too - I knew I didn't have the time to get us out.
But I didn't scream, I stupidly, stubbornly bore down on the handlebars, putting all my strength into it and didn't make a sound, and so when Lance pressed himself into my back with a sob, I heard him breath out, "Oh my God, Ro..."
Then there was thunder, there was rumble, there was gnashing and screeching, there was a strik and an explosion - maybe the explosion only happened under my eyelids or maybe not, but I went deaf, I was thrown off, cast away like a forgotten ragdoll, and I didn't see anything but white, dazzling white and bright red.
And when I began to see again, I was still deaf, and I had no idea that the truckdriver had scrambled out of his car and was now sitting on the ground, leaning on the wheel and mindlessly repeating "Hail Mary" time after time, I had no idea that the cars passing us by honked their horns and some of them even stopped. But I saw Lance's sneaker. It lay ten steps away from me, and I couldn't get it - why would he take it off, and why just one? I also thought that he had wanted to call me my full name then, when he hadn't had the time to finish his line. I even grew a little angry.
You wouldn't like it either if your name was Romeo...
Then I shifted my stare to the left. And a little further to the left. And yet a little further...
I didn't scream then, either.
But when I realized that neither me nor Loki had as much as a scratch on us - then I screamed... and oh God, how I screamed...
Crrrrack.
The scream breaks off, and I suddenly feel all strength leave me, leave me empty, cold and weak, and my arms give way, so I fall right on top of him, and he is warm, and I hear it in his chest:
whock-whock... whock... whock...
whock...
whock.
I force myself to rise on my elbows.
And flinch away, slip out of him, back down and fall off the bed.
Because now he's dead, too. Crucified on the bed, his head crushed into the pillow, and there, on the pillow, right under his cheek, there's a small black spot. Only it is really red, it will be rusty-brown tomorrow... and Kyle is dead.
I guess I broke his neck.
I circle the bed, sit down on his side of it and turn his head so that I could see his face - the head rolls freely, and I have to stop it mid-turn and hold it in my palms.
Of course he is no Lance. And his eyes are blue. And his hair is fair. Why did he look so much like him?
Why do they always look so much like him?
And he is dead.
And I will never find Lance.
Because Lance is dead, too.
"No!"
The fair-haired head rolls back helplessly on the pillow.
"No!"
The blue eyes look at me. There's no fear in them, no reproach. They are cold. So cold...
Almost as cold as me.
"NOOOOOOOOO!"
The glass table - to pieces, the vase with the silk roses - to shivers, the frames on the walls - to splinters, the magazine pages - to shreds, to miserable paper shreds...
"No..."
Black night, black as coal, out-of-town night peeks into the only unboarded window and breathes into it with icy, merciless, cruel cold.
My arms are covered in cuts up to the elbow.
Only scratched in some places, cut deep enough to see bone in the other. My blood was smeared all over the room. But that's no big deal.
I put on my leather gloves. They rub against my hands, against raw skin. I don't care. Maybe I don't have a pain threshold like Lance's, but I do have endurance.
The room is clean. I tidied it up this morning. Broomed out shides and splinters, wiped my blood off where I could. There are traces of it here and there, but I don' worry about them. I know that even I won't see these pink spots in a week, unless I go looking for them. I know it for sure.
From experience.
I changed the sheets. I looked at the boy lying on them for a long time. Blonde hair and blue eyes, and even with his face covered he didn't look like Lance at all. He was young, hardly over twenty, and I felt sorry for him. But he had pretended he was Lance. What fucking right did he have to pretend he was Lance?
I love Lance.
You don't mess around with a love like mine.
I remembered something about Lance this night, something very important... or not that important if I forgot it again so soon.
He escaped from me again. I made a mistake again, got deceived again, was taken in. Destiny veils my eyes, tries to fool me.
Let it try.
I wrapped that kid in the sheets and found another bed for him. In a place where no-one will break his peace. I left him the flowers. Because silk roses are still better than dead ones. I'll find me some more. See, I'm not afraid of cemetaries. Not afraid of deserted houses. I love fall. And I don't ever think about getting old.
I'm not getting older. I won't start to get older until I find the one I want to grow old with.
And while it hasn't happened, I have no reason to be afraid of cemetaries.
I'm Death.
For a few moments I look at myself in the cracked mirror above the chest drawer. For a few moments, I have a face and I have a name. My name is Romeo, and I have dark eyes, high cheekbones, thin lips, a straight nose and shaggy black hair tied in a ponytail.
Then I turn away from the mirror and put on my shades.
I leave.
No-one can stop me, because no-one knows me. No-one can blame me, because I don't feel any guilt. No-one can recognize me, because I don't have a face. No-one can call me in the streets because no-one knows my name.
Only one man knows it.
When I find him, I'm going to let him call me whatever he wants.
Night. Gloom, shade, darkness. Darkness is not black - not at night, not downtown. Black black night can only exist apart from the city, on the outskirts, in the wastelands, on deserted construction sites. In the city, the night is different. It's dark blue, deep violet. And blazing lights cut through this night, not shine, not shimmer, but cut through the night with their beams...
The bar is "Stacy's". I think I've been here before. Or maybe, I've been to "Tracy's", "Lacy's", "Macy's". How people love their own names...
And only the one I love isn't mine.
I open the bar door and step inside.
I make it to the bar counter across the hall...
... and there I see him.
There's no mistaking. Even though he dyed his copper-red bangs jet-black, I can't but recognize that leather west, and the way he sits, his head half-turned, and sips on his beer oh so slowly, - and that means he doesn't have money to buy the next one, - that's him. And I smile, and I don't mind it that something tugs on my heart and tightens my throat, - I'm walking towards him.
I found him. And he will be mine once again.
If not this time, then the following.
I have a lot of time.
Blessed are they who seek...