Glass Houses(21)

The churning in his bowels had finally calmed down. He didn’t think it would be for long. He got up with the briefcase in his hand and headed for his office door. He unlocked it and stepped out into the corridor. He could hear Alexander’s voice in the reception area being polite to someone on the phone. Suddenly he resented everything about Alexander. He didn’t just despise it; he’d always despised Alexander. That was easy. What else could you do but despise a man who came to work in lavender shirts? What he felt now was something else. Gay marriages, civil union  s, gay pride parades, what had happened to the country? How could sensible, ordinary Americans, the ones who made up the Bedrock of the Nation, how could those people possibly fall for this utter crap that people like Alexander were their own kind of normal. He was the one who was normal. He was the one following in a great and civilized tradition and being persecuted for it only because the Bedrock of the Nation had rocks instead of brains inside its head.

I’m being completely incoherent, Dennis thought. He took a deep breath. He couldn’t do this anymore, without some kind of outlet. He was going to have to go home and recharge this phone, or go out to some of the places he knew to see if there was anything going on. It was broad daylight. Probably not. When you had something society made you hide, you had to do it in the darkness. You couldn’t even join one of those groups that was dedicated to making the world better or “educating” the public. Dennis was willing to bet that every single man on the membership list of the North American Man/Boy Love Association had an FBI tail.

By the time he got out into the reception area he was much calmer, if more than a little damp. There were sweat stains all over his shirt, on the front as well as on the back. If Alexander noticed, he didn’t indicate it.

“I’m going out,” Dennis said. “I need a breath of fresh air.”

“What time should I say you’ll be in, if somebody calls?”

“Tell them I’m out for the day. You can be out for the day. Pack up and go home. We’re not going to get anything done here today. I’m sick as a dog, and I’m just not up to it.”

“I’ve got some work to clear up,” Alexander said.

Dennis wanted to tell him to forget it, but he didn’t dare. He’d seen those true-crime programs: American Justice, City Confidential, Forensic Files. He could hear the narration in his head. “Alexander Mark thought it was very odd that Dennis Ledeski would be so insistent that he had to leave the office in the middle of the day; and as it turned out, the police thought it was odd, too.” Dennis just bet they would. He bet they’d find everything about him odd. He’d bet they were the same themselves, too, just better at hiding it or denying it.

“Whatever,” Dennis said. “Are you still watching the story?”

“Not really. There won’t be much of anything for a few days, and then the best coverage will be in the paper. You really don’t look well.”

“I’m not. I’m going home. I’m going to take some stuff and go to sleep.”

Alexander said nothing. Dennis didn’t know what he wanted him to say. He held tightly to his briefcase, even though he couldn’t remember what was in it, and headed for the front door and the vestibule and the street. He was beginning to hyperventilate again. He had to get outside before Alexander saw him. He had to get somewhere and do something.

There really were times when he wanted to strangle somebody, when he could feel himself pulling at the soft flesh of a neck. They said there was a kick in that if you did it right. You strangled and strangled and got your partner just up against the edge of death and then you released it and him, too. There would be semen everywhere. There would be revelation.

Out on the street, he started to walk. He didn’t want a taxi. He didn’t want a bus. He didn’t want anything that could make somebody remember him.

He was not going home.





3


Tyrell Moss was having one of those days. He really wasn’t one of those black guys who could join up with the Republicans. He had a lot of respect for Colin Powell, and Condileeza Rice, and even Thomas Sowell. He understood why the pastors of some of the churches around here had switched allegiances. He had no idea what those idiot white-boy organizers from the University of Pennsylvania thought they were doing posing around like revolutionaries and calling gangsta rap—gangsta rap!—the “authentic revolutionary voice of the struggle.” Even so, it was the Democratic Party that had delivered on Civil Rights, and it was the Democratic Party he had been able to count on for all these years to come through with things like after-school programs for kids who had no place to go that was anything like home and special initiatives to teach kids who couldn’t read why they could. He also believed in the justice of affirmative action—firmly believed in it—and there was nobody he could count on in the Republican Party for that.