A novel by David Buffet
Copyright 2007. All rights reserved.
Constructive criticism is welcome. Please use the feedback form at the end of the current chapter.
“No, You missed the point entirely,” Todd muttered. “The past isn’t just the past. We’re all now, in the present, just this…this conglomeration of our past failures.”
The bartender smiled perfunctorily, nodded in the sage way of the disinterested, and wiped the mahogany where Todd’s gin had stood moments before. Todd sighed. He didn’t usually go on like this, but the gin was loosening him up, and the fact that he had no one better to talk to only strengthened his resolve on his recent decision.
“I mean, no. No, not just past failures, of course. But everything—everything past. The good and the bad; it all swirls together into this…this cage that traps us. No one escape it. We’re all prisoners of who we were. And all we can do is…is…” he waved a swizzle stick over his glass searching for the word, “accept this existence of Sis… Sisyph… Sisyphean… Sisyphitic drudgery…”
The bartender cocked an eyebrow. “Syphilitic what, now?”
Todd grunted and took another gulp. “Never mind, it makes no difference.”
***
“Lighten up,” Bo said to the men congregated around him. His smile, always easy and inviting, adopted a faint hint of authority without losing any of its charm. “It wouldn’t be fair to these other gentlemen, now, would it?” He threw the shot back, smacking the glass upside down on the waiter’s tray in one fluid motion when he was done.
The gentleman to whom he had been speaking shrugged self-consciously and added, by way of apology, “Another?”
“Keep ’em coming,” Bo told the waiter in a smooth Gray Goose exhalation.
He was surrounded by admirers. This was not unjustified; Bo had much to be admired. Normally, by this hour of night, he would have already selected the gentleman on which he would be focusing his special brand of magic. The others, recognizing that they were not the evening’s grand-prize winner, would eventually drift away and leave Bo to his work. But this night was different.
The gentlemen recognized a difference without specific understanding and were simply content to remain around him, delighting in the shared grace of Bo’s public smile, thrilling to the suggestion of a private wink, jealously absorbing the sight of him in their efforts to enhance their recollections of him later, when they were alone. But some had to be gently reminded that while he was happy to exchange shooters for public access, this evening, Bo had not hung out his shingle.
One of the gentlemen—a committed father and husband who had spent his life making everyone’s life but his own as comfortable as possible—was a slight fellow in his early sixties, Bo guessed. He was meek and self-conscious in Bo’s presence, but he worked up the nerve to wonder aloud how big Bo’s arms might be. Bo allowed him a special smile—gentle and warming—and began rolling up his sleeve.
Tightening his biceps in the ancient archetypically heroic pose, he invited the timid gentleman to measure.
The man looked down, too embarrassed. “I don’t have a tape,” he muttered, sounding crushed by this self-failure.
“That’s okay,” Bo answered, his voice a directed whisper, “measure with your hands.”
The man froze, immobilized by the totality of his life. Bo gently lifted the guy's hand from his lap and placed it to his arm. The guy’s fingertips trembled as they made contact with the smooth, taut skin covering Bo’s muscles. “Maybe we could work out together, sometime.” Bo’s voice had gone gentle and intimate.
“That would be very nice,” the gentleman replied, despite the sudden lack of moisture in his mouth.
The waiter reappeared, this time with two shots. The first slid down Bo’s throat. With his head thrown back, the muscles of his neck striated and posed. The ribs of his windpipe pushed against his skin. The gentlemen quietly salivated at the imagined, sinful thrill of biting into his prominent Adam’s apple; hardly the fount of the knowledge of good and evil as enshrined in legend. Eve was right: it could be only good.
Replacing the glass on the tray, he took the second in hand. “Now which of you fine gentlemen think a few more of these would be a good idea?” he asked the assembled. There was an instant flurry of orders.
***
“How long have you worked here?” Todd asked.
“’Bout six months,” the bartender replied. He was a large fellow with an imposing body, and bad taste in facial hair. His expression said he wasn’t to be fucked with. His shirtlessness instructed that was to be tipped well.
“Grow up here?”
“’Coupl’a miles out of town,” he replied, refilling Todd’s glass.
“And when are you moving out?”
“Soon as I get enough money saved.”
It wasn’t a question of “if.” This county wasn’t a place young people stayed. Not, at least, for guys who could get tips for torsos. Yakumwa wasn’t dying, Todd reminded himself, just aging. It had had a stable, if limited, population for sixty years. The rich farm lands and even richer defense contractors saw to that. Only he himself was dying.
“Seattle?”
“Probably.” The bartender cleared the empties from in front of the guy who had been sitting next to Todd and wiped down the bar. “Maybe south, though—I’ve had it with these fucking winters.”
Todd nodded. They had been suffering a cold snap for a few weeks; something out of Canada. His clients had been complaining, and the forecast promised no relief. Todd grunted at the thought: yet another metaphor for his life.
“I heard it’s supposed to snow tonight,” the bartender offered.
“Gee,” Todd answered, raising the glass to his lips, “that’s swell.”
***
Bo laughed heartily, which ended up making him a little dizzy. He’d lost count of the shots, yet they were still going down smooth. Having mentioned that it was getting a bit warm in the bar, the gentleman sitting across from him had suggested Bo remove his shirt. “You don’t need to make it sound like it’s for me, guy,” Bo said, genially slapping the man’s knee. “If you want to see my tits, just say you want to see my tits.”
“I was just trying to be helpful,” the man protested with all the assertiveness of Tiny Tim.
“I want to see your tits,” the guy next to him offered. “Actually, I’d be satisfied with just seeing your tummy.”
“My tummy?” Bo asked, delightedly.
“I expect you have a delicious tummy,” the man explained, unaware of what his choice of the words had said about him. Bo grinned his big, sloppy grin.
“Okay, dad,” he said, lowering his voice again, “but you lift it. ’K?”
The man was startled by the suggestion. But enchantment won out over propriety. He reached over grasping the hem of Bo’s shirt. Bo took firm hold of his wrist, and slowly guided the hand upwards.
The upper margin of the blond patch of hair that fanned out below Bo’s beltline came into view. Higher up, it dwindled into a diminishing, bleached line of mouthwatering softness. All eyes at the table followed its Starry Night swirling curve. Bo tensed his stomach so that his lower abdominals stood out.
Bo’s skin shone. While pale, it seemed to remember its summertime tan, even in the dead of winter. There was more than mere youth in that glow: it was the smooth elasticity of vitality and health. One of the men sighed, and unconsciously bit his lower lip. When another rearranged the crease in his pants, and didn’t remove his hand, Bo lowered his shirt.
He downed another shot, then lifted the remaining glass. “You guys have been great, but I have to go talk to a friend of mine. Thanks for the drinks. Maybe I’ll see you around some time.” He toasted them with the shot glass and turned, without drinking it, toward the other side of the bar.
***
Todd had fallen into sighs. What was the point of talking to a stranger? It wasn’t why he was there, anyway. His reason lay in the gin. Unfortunately, he wasn’t finding the courage he sought in it. That shouldn’t be a surprise, he thought. It was a sober decision he had made; he’d have to face it sober.
His melancholy was interrupted by the staggering young man who sat down next to him.
“Listen,” the kid said as the cloud of vapors he was trailing caught up with him, “see those gentlemen over there?” He pointed by raising the shot glass toward them before he threw it back. “I just told them that I had to come over here to talk to a friend. So we gotta look like we’re talking.”
Todd looked at the assortment of men sitting around the table at the other end of the bar. The youngest was in his fifties; it was no wonder the kid was trying to escape. “I’m afraid I’m not going to be much company,” Todd said, turning his gaze back to his own glass.
“Don’t need to be,” Bo replied, motioning for the bartender, “we don’t got to actually talk. We just got to look like we’re talking.”
Todd smiled mirthlessly. The very trouble with the universe, presented in a teacup. And Bo kept his word, spending the next half-hour pouring back the shots he was buying on his own now, and periodically seeming to engage Todd in conversation. Eventually, the men at the other end of the bar stopped staring. Slowly, Todd fell back into his own private funk.
Bo didn’t mind the staring. Everyone stared at him. Everyone always stared at him. How could they not stare? It was just one of those inevitabilities of life he that had come to depend on, like the taste of ice cream after weed, or babies sitting behind you on the bus: notable only for its absence.
Unlike the guy sitting next to him: attractive enough guy—dressed like a dork, but probably a good body underneath. He had played along, pretending he was engaged by the conversation when Bo had sat down, but he clearly wasn’t. And it wasn’t because Bo had hung out his Do Not Approach sign. The guy just didn’t seem interested.
That, in itself, would have been curious on another night; but what with the floor beginning to dance under his feet when he tried to walk, and the way the walls were starting to tilt when he turned his head, Bo found he had other things to occupy his thoughts. He’d drunk a lot of vodka. He was going to puke. It wasn’t a matter of if anymore; it was a matter of when.
Maybe some cold air would do him good. He threw a few more bills onto the bar, collected his coat, and shuffled toward the door, despite its clear desire to drift to the left.
The next time he opened his eyes, he was still next to the same guy from the bar. But now they were out front, Bo sitting on the gravel of the parking lot, leaning against the weathered clapboards that made up the front facade of the bar. The guy stood before him.
“I said, “Do you have some place to go?”” the voice from above asked. It had nice boots.
Bo shrugged, then drew his sheepskin jacket closer as the movement of his shoulders had disturbed the pocket of warm air that had developed around his neck.
“Too cold to just stay here,” the voice said. “And the police’ll haul you in.”
Bo tried to thank the guy for his concern, and assure him he’d be fine. He was, evidently, unsuccessful, as the next time he opened his eyes he was in the passenger seat of the guy’s car, speeding down the highway. It can be stunning, sometimes, what can happen between blinks.
“Where’re we goin’?” he slurred.
“Someplace warm where you can sleep it off,” the guy said.
“I think you better let me out.”
“It’s okay,” came the unamused reply, “I’m not…that kind of psycho.”
“No, it’s not that,” Bo said, urgency rising in his voice, “I really think you better let me out.”
The only question on Bo’s mind as he passed out for good, was which side of the windows the puke ended up on.
The crack of 10:00 a.m. mooned the glass doors. Bo squinted uncomfortably as the sun began shining directly on his face. He was on a couch. He could smell coffee. He was in his boxers. His brain was three sizes larger than his skull. He smacked his lips and wondered who had wrapped his tongue in fur.
A man entered from the kitchen holding two mugs.
“Coffee?”
Bo pushed himself upright and nodded. The motion made his head throb. He took the cup and forced himself to down a few sips.
“Little hung over?” the man asked. Bo grunted in reply. “You want some food? I got eggs, or if you just want some toast or something, I could...”
“Did anything bad happen?” Bo asked interrupting him. The guy looked vaguely familiar.
“Don’t remember?”
“Not yet,” Bo allowed, taking another sip.
“Well, you threw up in my car. That wasn’t so pleasant.”
Bo frowned as the image of the painted windows returned to him.
“No, I mean, did anything...weird happen?”
“You might find this hard to believe,” the man said, “but I’d have to classify a stranger throwing up in my car as somewhat unusual.”
Bo pursed his lips. “I mean...did we do anything?”
“You were the perfect gentleman,” the guy answered. He paused, and then added, “Discounting the vomit, of course.” He shuffled back to the kitchen. “I’m making us some eggs. Think you can hold them down?”
“Yeah,” Bo called unconvincingly. “Thanks.”
He rubbed his temples trying to press away the echo of his heartbeat.
“I’m Bo,” he told the empty room.
“Todd,” came the answer from the kitchen.
Bo looked around for his clothes. They were not to be seen. All he was wearing were his fire engine boxers and socks. The room was appointed for comfort rather than style. A couch and well-used upholstered chair cornered a nondescript coffee table with a few out-of-date, ring-stained New Yorker magazines on it. Against one wall sat an ancient Zenith TV on what looked like a tray-table. Next to it, a laundry basket overflowing with clothes that had clearly failed the hamper-test. Against the opposite wall, a set of do-it-yourself shelves tried desperately to contain an overabundance of paperback books, more piles of magazines, a few knickknacks, and a long series of framed photographs.
“So we didn’t do anything?”
“Do? No. We didn’t do.”
“That’s a relief.” All noise from the kitchen stopped. “No,” Bo called, “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.” The sounds from the other room picked back up. He stood, testing his balance and joints. Finding them working, he padded over to the shelves. The pictures were of Todd and another guy. Todd and the other guy copiloting a jet-ski in Tahoe. Todd and the other guy caught by surprise by the photographer on a mountaintop. The other guy with what must have been a set of parents. The two of them laughing on the couch on which Bo had just spent the night. In the picture, the living room was enjoying better times than it was currently seeing. It had art on the walls, much more furniture, a sense of purpose. “I mean…” Bo continued, holding the picture up to the room to compare, “I was pretty drunk.”
“Yes, you were,” came the reply over the rhythmic beating of a wire whisk against in a bowl.
Replacing the picture knocked down its neighbor, revealing a prescription bottle. He read the label at a glance: 30 milligram oxycodone. Bo estimated about thirty. He carefully replaced the picture and walked to the kitchen doorway.
“Can you just tell me what happened? I’ll remember, but it’ll probably take the good part of the day for it all to come back to me, and it’d just be easier if you could sort of like, just tell me.” He leaned against the jamb.
He was a sight to see, even hung over and having spent the night on a couch. His hair, when messy, was roguishly sexy. It hadn’t darkened as he aged; golden blond, halfway between honey and straw, it was soft and fine yet thick enough to hold shape. He had shaved yesterday, so wouldn’t have to again for another two or three days. The growth over 24 hours was barely perceptible, save for a sense of subliminal scruffiness that he knew was entirely alluring. His skin was smooth, drawn over muscles built up from years of hard work. His shoulders were one of his finer features. Broad, thick, and capped by powerfully rounded thew.
He yawned and stretched in the doorway, knowing that the effect would be strikingly leonine. But the guy hardly glanced up from the frying pan.
“You were sitting next to me last night,” Todd told the eggs. “You came over trying to…to escape from a group of older guys. We chatted a little, but mostly you just drank. Then you tried to leave, but you walked into the wrong side of the door.”
“The wrong side of the door?”
“Well,” the guy said, flipping the omelet, “I think you were aiming for the knob, but you missed it. You walked right into the hinges. A bit comical, really.”
Bo nodded.
“Then about a half hour later, I made to leave, but there you were in the parking lot passed out against the front of the bar. You couldn’t tell me where you lived, so I brought you here.”
“But not before I puked in your car?”
“No good deed goes unpunished,” Todd said dryly, sliding a finished omelet onto a plate and re-buttering the pan. “So I dragged you up here, laid you down on the couch, threw your clothes in the laundry, hosed down my car, and went to sleep.”
“That was real nice of you,” Bo allowed.
Todd shrugged. “Not really. The car definitely needed hosing. Eat your eggs.”
Bo brushed the guy’s fingers while taking the plate. He didn’t flirt on purpose. It had become completely second nature. He didn’t even recognize it as flirting anymore. Todd returned to making a second omelet as Bo tested his.
“’S’good,” Bo said, mouth full.
Todd nodded, cracking eggs over the lip of a bowl. Bo surveyed him over forkfuls.
“I guess I should thank you somehow,” he finally said. “But I don’t got much money.” This is where the guy was supposed to grin and suggest perhaps they could think of a way if they put their minds to it. This one didn’t. The butter spattering in the pan seemed more interesting. This guy was curious for his lack of curiosity, Bo decided.
“That was a gay bar we were at, wasn’t it?”
This made Todd look up from his task. Suddenly cautious, he searched Bo’s eyes for signs of possible danger.
“For what it’s worth,” he replied. “It’s as close to a gay bar as this county can get, anyway. Why, weren’t you aiming for one?”
Bo grinned, despite the pain. “No, that’s where I was aiming. I mean, you’re gay, aren’t you?”
“Wow,” Todd answered without a hint of amusement in his voice, pouring the eggs into the pan. “All those straight-acting classes really paid off.”
Bo blinked. Todd pursed his lips. “Yes,” he allowed, “it’s where I was aiming too.”
“You’re a funny guy.”
“Oh,” Todd said, mirthlessly, “I’m a laugh riot. But only on the outside. Inside—pure tragedy.”
“I’m the other way around. I’m only funny on the inside.”
“Yeah? Well, I’d rather be that.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Bo said, scratching his ass. “Bet you got it better.”
“Ya think?” Todd asked the eggs. Bo nodded once. Todd looked up and they surveyed each other as the omelet solidified.
Bo took another forkful of eggs, then returned to the living room, plate in hand.
“You’re not from around here,” Todd observed from his station at the stove.
“It shows?”
“Not really,” Todd answered. “But this is kind of a small community. Even if everyone doesn’t know everyone else, everyone has at least seen everyone else. Where are you from?”
“Here and there,” Bo said, returning to the bookcase. The name on the pill case was Ryan something. It was dated the previous August. There was another photograph, different than the rest, down at the end of the shelf. Black and white, it was just the guy’s face staring out, kind of blankly. Bo stared back at it. The guy looked like he was about to say something. Bo sauntered back to the couch. “Michigan, originally.” Todd came through the door to the kitchen holding a plate with his own omelet. “These are good. Did you put something in them?”
“Nutmeg,” Todd answered.
“They’re good. Listen,” Bo said, sitting, “you got any weed? My head’s poundin’.”
Todd’s reaction was half way between wary and weary, as if Bo had just casually tossed a five-pound weight onto the ton already sitting on Todd’s shoulders. The guy seemed to sigh without breathing, is that even possible? Bo considered the idea briefly.
“I could probably scare some up,” Todd said finally, having, evidently, come to some decision. He put his plate down on the coffee table and headed toward the hallway, returning a few minutes later with two neatly rolled joints. He handed one to Bo, who mimed patting his boxers as if they had pockets. Todd rose again to retrieve a lighter and ashtray.
“Man, just what I needed,” Bo said as he finally released the smoke from his first hit. He handed the joint to Todd, who looked nonplussed for a moment, shrugged, and took a hit himself. They passed it back and forth a few times, each enjoying the foggy numbness that overtook them.
Bo stretched again, his arms up behind his head. It pushed his chest forward. His chest muscles were defined by the serrated cleft between them and accented by the small, widely spaced nipples that capped them. There was no hair to speak of, save for a few medium length translucent strands surrounding his areolae. His stomach, skin smooth to just below the navel, had the geology of a fine sand beach at low tide. Todd blinked at him, wondering if he had any idea how stunning he was, then decided that, indeed, he knew exactly how stunning he was. Still, Todd reminded himself, the kid was only near-naked because Todd had taken his clothes to wash. Even so, he hadn’t asked for them back.
“So what brings you to Yakumwa?” Todd asked, deciding not to offer to get the clothes out of the dryer just yet.
“Business,” Bo answered, taking another deep toke off the joint before handing it back.
“And what business is that?” asked Todd, trying to keep the judgment out of his voice. He drew the smoke into his lungs.
“I’m an alchemist,” Bo answered.
Todd snorted, the smoke hanging in a cloud about his head as he exhaled. That was hardly the answer he expected. “An alchemist?”
“Ya.”
“Like, turning-lead-into-gold alchemy?”
“Something like that,” Bo said, taking the joint, sucking a dose of joy out of it, then offering it back.
“I haven’t met many alchemists. Is there much call for that kind of thing these days?”
“Oh, yeah,” Bo said. “Way too much lead in the world.”
Todd smiled despite himself. The pot was relaxing and Bo might be more interesting than his beauty suggested. He took another deep drag. “I thought alchemy was...” he waved the joint around looking for the right word, “...somewhat discredited.”
Grinning, Bo took the joint from him. “Not a believer, then?”
“In magic?” Todd asked. “No. There hasn’t been magic in the world for a few centuries at least.”
“I don’t know,” Bo mused. His headache was receding. “I see magic all around.” Taking another deep breath, he handed the roach off, his hand coming to rest on his inner thigh, which he began to stroke absently. Despite himself, Todd found his eyes drawn to the motion.
“So how do you do it?” Todd finally asked.
“Do what?”
Todd’s gaze lifted. Bo was watching him watch him. Todd blushed and looked at the floor. “Turn lead into gold.”
“There’s gold in everything,” Bo said simply. “Sometimes, you just have to give it permission to come out.”
“I see,” Todd said, stubbing the roach out on the side of his plate. Bo sparked the second joint.
“That’s a good thing, man,” he said after another mighty intake. “That’s an important thing to see.”
Todd searched for sarcasm, but couldn’t find any. Whether or not the kid seemed genuine, he didn’t feel like he was being played. And, he supposed, hustlers don’t usually just admit they’re hustlers. Todd wondered how many of them defended themselves by denying what they did. The human mind could rationalize anything. Besides, on a purely pragmatic level, for all Bo knew, Todd could be a cop.
“And what do you do for work?” Bo asked, finally releasing the trapped smoke.
“I’m a therapist,” Todd answered.
“Cool,” Bo said, nodding. “So we’re in the same line of work.”
It took Todd more than a few seconds to decide how he wanted to respond. Finally, his decision was made for him as Bo handed him the joint. He took a deep drag. Sometimes, no answer is an answer.
“Man,” Bo sighed, drawing his feet up to lie lengthwise on the couch, “this is just what I needed. Fuck, I was drunk last night.” He sprawled like Cleopatra before Anthony. Forearm behind his head, the blond tuft of hair in his armpit was partially buried in the cavern created by the muscles fore and aft. His knees were bent, splayed in casual calculation, one against the backrest of the couch, the other horizontal against the cushion. The pouch of his boxers pocketed open, teasing the eye with the shadows that lay within.
With some difficulty, Todd returned to his eggs. “Why’d you get so drunk?” he asked, taking a forkful. The omelet was good.
Bo shrugged. “I don’t usually drink that much. Just needed a little escape,” he said. He could just make out a puppy in the texturing of the ceiling. And a horsy. He searched for other patterns.
“Escape from what?”
“It don’t matter,” Bo said, turning to look over at Todd. The guy was okay looking, really. He just needed to take a little better care of himself and loose the aura of sadness he wore like a funeral shroud.
Bo sighed. He had intended to take some time off, what with the increasing frequency with which the weirdness was beginning to happen. He was even enjoying the idea of taking a bit of a vacation. But it was pretty clear that there was work to be done here, and work was work. He sighed in resignation, then smiled his gentle smile. “Escape’s important some times, don’t you think?” He began to unconsciously pull at the fine hairs just below his navel, testing their length before letting them fall back into their natural swirl.
Todd nodded, deciding that his plate was the safest place on which to focus. He took another mouthful.
“But if you really wanna escape,” Bo continued, drawing in another relaxed hit off the joint, “you don’t want to be fucking with pain killers. They won’t do it. They just fuck you up for a while. Could end up worse than when you started, and that’d suck, you know?”
Todd looked up, his pupils one small. Bo continued easily, dragging on the joint as he paused.
“If you’re going to go the painkiller route, what you really want is Oxycontin. Take about ten of the hundred-sixty-milligram suckers, chop ’em up into one long line, then do all of it in one go. That’ll get you were you want to go. But barbiturates are better. ’Course, morphine’s the best. What you want to do is get a big ol’ dose—say, around fifty or a hundred milligrams—and shoot it up all in one go. That’ll do it, if you’re serious. Still, you don’t look like the type that can mainline, so you probably want to stick with the barbiturates. If you can’t get enough of them, you can always take ‘bout half a bottle of vodka first. Takes longer, but you won’t care, know what I mean?”
Todd’s mouth flapped wordlessly.
“’Course,” Bo continued casually, “you could skip the whole thing. But then you’d need to believe in magic. Much easier if you let magic work. This was so just what I needed,” he said coaxing a little more smoke out of the roach. “You want another hit before I kill it? And what do you got for ice cream?”