The Next(16)

     



 

I could reach for that designer duplexed martini-clinking Manhattan star …

And yet … Marzoli had awakened something … something powerful. A fresh  calling that was slowly tipping the scales toward something entirely  different, unexpected, and weighty. The most surprising realization of  all was that I was not as opposed to the labels associated with this  leaning as I would have thought I'd be, even though I knew so little  about it. What would the road that begins with a stubbled jaw brushing  against another stubbled jaw lead to? What were the micro and macro  details of that road? Of a morning begun that way? Of a night that ended  that way? Would it be better? Worse? Worth it?

Would it fit me?

Two weeks. Just two weeks and Johanna would be asking for my thumbs up  or thumbs down on all I'd never had and so much I'd always wanted. But  then, like Sally's rope, was what I'd always wanted been the equivalent  of the incremental crafting of something colorful and intricately  detailed, but ultimately rather deadening?

It never occurred to me that the Next would include such a paramount fork in the road.

My heart beat faster at the thought.

I closed the curtain as the Beached Whale dozed.

Marzoli was right. It was not a nice name at all.

Goodnight, lady.

Oh, fuck it. My feet never could be laced into goody two-shoes.

Goodnight, Beached Whale.

Perhaps I should go back to sleep too.





Chapter Eleven

The right side of Dad's face melted as the flames increased …

I woke up with a soundless scream in the black of my curtained cave. I couldn't breathe. I needed air.

Since when did I start needing air?

What the fuck was going on with me? For decades, I couldn't remember a  goddamn rat dropping about my past, and now I couldn't shut my eyes  without the worst of those fuckers creeping back.

I opened the curtain and then opened the window. The metal hinges squealed from disuse. The air was icy and wet.

Not a single twitch of activity happened across the courtyard. Just  shades of shadows and a frozen distilled peace at three in the morning  as the sensible people of New York snoozed. Why, then, was I feeling so  uneasy?

The curtains remained closed in the Perfects' bedroom.

As if nothing had ever happened.

A thought began to creep under my skin as horrifying as the fecal paths  of a scabies infection. It undermined my understanding of everything. It  carved out the very volume of my eyeballs. It disintegrated the  reliability of taking for granted my past as my own factual experience.  It eroded the potential for any positivity in the future.

Did I imagine everything?

Did I have one factual piece of evidence that anything had actually  taken place hours earlier? I stuck my head out the window and looked up.  My ears immediately stung from the cold of the air. Light was coming  out of Ruben's window. I pulled my head back in and glanced at the  computer screen. It was 3 a.m. Ruben had to be hard at work obsessing on  something to be up this late.

Nathan's pale skin was shaking violently as I pulled his window shut.

Stop. I had nothing to substantiate this creepiness. No four-eyed  tentacled monster lurked under any bed or closet. Ruben was upstairs,  busily taking his million-dollar trust fund for granted, and all was  quiet on the Perfect front.

And yet …

And yet Nathan had been killed. Marzoli affirmed this.

But … what if … .

The late night graininess was dousing my brain with doubts.

Had Marzoli been imagined too?

I searched for his card on my desk … where was it? It had to be here! It  had to be! Was I going crazy? Was he real? Did I say what I said? Did he  say what he said? Did I feel what I felt? Did I see what I saw?

I heard the boy growl to me, "You did not see that."

I could barely grip the branch any more as the blond boy stood  underneath, grasping his Swiss army knife. My palms were sweating and  slipping. My forearms burned.

Run, Paul!

"You did not see that! Repeat that!"

I was in too much desperation to utter anything, let alone what he was  commanding. My forearm felt as if it was tearing in two. I could no  longer hold onto the branch. I scraped past spiked broken branch bases  as I plummeted toward the gleaming knife.

"Leave him alone!" I heard Jessie shout, but was he near or in the distance?

I couldn't tell which sensation came first or hurt more, the blade  slicing into my rib, or my back slamming onto the ground. I couldn't  breathe. I couldn't see anything except red cut with black streaks for a  full ten seconds. When I opened my eyes, the blond boy was on top of  me, screaming.

"You didn't see anything! Repeat that! Repeat it!"

I felt the cool blade pressed against the hardness of my Adam's apple. I thought about Paul.         

     



 

Please, Paul, keep running.

"Repeat it!"

"I … I … did … not … see … "

"See what!"

"Anything … "

I could feel the blond boy's hardness through his jeans on my thigh. He started pressing it against me.

"Repeat it!"

I could not open my eyes, tears stinging, "I … did … not … "

He began pumping against my thigh, pressing the blade deeper against my throat.

" … see … any … thing … "

Suddenly his mass lifted off of me. Jessie had pounced on top of him,  shouting furiously, rolling him away from the tree. I saw fists  pounding. Hair yanked. Words of anger whacked each other like  two-by-fours. The knife raised into the sunlight. And suddenly the  action ceased.

Through my salty wet tears, I saw the blond boy stand slowly.

Jessie lay still on the ground in the tall dry grass.

Beyond Jessie's body, I saw Paul's blurry wide-eyed face, crouched in the green brush near the stream.

Don't look, Paul. Don't see what's about to happen. Close your eyes...

The curtains of the Perfects' bedroom opened.

I shook my head to refocus.

Mr. Layworth stood in tight boxers, rippled with hairy, toned  perfection. Mrs. Layworth flung open a window and lit up a cigarette,  wearing only a white bra and white panties.

Odd. Why would she feel the need to stuff herself into panties and a bra  after what they just did rather than thrown on a nightie, or a slip or a  bathrobe or a quilt? Unless she never took them off to begin with, but  then … that was confusing …

The light in the bathroom window was on. Steam hovered above the tiles,  fogging up the mirror. It was three in the morning. They were both  tightlipped and stern, hardly making eye contact with each other.  Perhaps the Perfects' sex was not so perfect. Perhaps switching holes  with that much rapidity took a bit of a toll on the ship's mast.

Mr. and Mrs. Layworth stared absentmindedly out into the courtyard,  saying nothing. They appeared not merely tired but exhausted.

I saw the corner of Marzoli's card sticking out from under the computer keyboard.

It was not all my imagination after-fucking-all.

The night crystallized into clarity as my brain regained authority. I  heard a Vader-deep breath release from the bottom of my lungs, and I  realized I had actually been holding it, doubting my capacity to grasp  reality. That, in itself, was a kind of crazy.

Involuntarily, I pressed Marzoli's card to my lips.

Schwing.

I looked down at the sudden tenting in my sweatpants.

For real? Just from his business card?

Mr. Perfect crossed to the kitchen, holding a pair of pliers. No, they  were smaller than pliers. They were wire cutters. I recognized the  orange grips from the last time Mrs. Layworth attempted to wire a  painting of a rainy Parisian café to hang it on the kitchen wall.  Although I seemed to be increasingly open to all sorts of sexual  variations, for the life of me I could not imagine what role a pair of  wire cutters would play into any behind-the-curtains misbehavior.

As my mind began to explore any and all avenues of possibility to  explain their function, Mr. Perfect performed a very simple act that  caught my full attention, banishing every last grain of  three-in-the-morning haziness.

He washed the wire cutters in the kitchen sink, scraped off what looked  like dark, dried grease with a paper towel, and placed the tool in a  kitchen drawer. Not just placed it. He opened the drawer entirely,  buried it in the very back, and closed it. Then walked the paper towel  back through the bedroom to the bathroom …

 … and flushed it down the toilet!

I've no doubt that would have passed completely unnoticed by any casual  observer amidst the whirlwind of courtyard activities on any given  afternoon, but to a spy of my caliber at three in the morning, this  activity riveted my attention at every level. It was so oddly out of  sync with normal behavior.

What the hell would anyone do with wire cutters at three in the morning  with his wife? There were no other tools. No hammer. No nail. Come to  think of it, I hadn't seen any wire. Why place it in the back of the  drawer? It implied concealment. But why conceal something as innocuous  as a wire cutter? More importantly why flush the paper towel?

An anal retentive personality might be motivated to wipe a tool clean of  oil and grease, but why not throw the paper towel into the garbage?  Someone suffering from an obsessive-compulsive disorder might feel  compelled to dispose of any grime from his house in order to restore  some psychological peace. But this was not the case with Mr. Layworth.  This was the same man who, earlier in the evening, slathered lube onto  his butthole, onto Ruben's dick, and then impaled himself on that  stranger's freshly-slicked rod, letting white foam froth between his  cheeks. This was a man who had no hesitation face-sucking a complete  stranger without even a breath mint. It was not consistent that this  same man would, hours later, feel compelled to dispose of a paper towel  he used to clean a tool down a toilet.