Hostage (15 page)

Crap, I wish I’d get plowed over by a Mack truck.

This could be something like post-traumatic stress syndrome. It could be plain old guilt. Instead, I’m afraid it’s reality. My reality. Before all this I never imagined killing anyone. Certainly not two people. But as time ticks by—tick, pause, tick, pause, which is to say, things are really draggin’ ‘round here—it’s becoming all too clear. That’s right. Time for another cyanide cocktail. I’m going to have to play bartender to the devil once again just so I can fulfill my darkest fantasy.

Care for a drop-dead nightcap, dahlink? After all, by command of His Highest Honcho, the Almighty God, ain’t no one gettin’ out of here alive.

Shaken by the day’s
events, Todd sat in a near state of shock in the rear seat of the taxi. It was the first time all day he’d been both quiet and still, and he stared blankly out the left window as the cab whisked around the northern edge of Lake Calhoun.

Given the gravity of the situation that had overtaken not only his life but the entire nation, he hoped he’d done well in his coverage, conveying accurately what he had witnessed. He’d tried to be impartial, tried to be objective, but of course that had been impossible. On the one hand, after speaking face to face with him, Todd thought worse of Clariton than ever before. On the other hand, what had happened was horrific. Recalling it all with a shudder, Todd was only just now realizing how frightened he’d been.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath. Just relax. You’re okay. But he couldn’t stop his mind from ricocheting from the abduction to national television—surely many members of congress and perhaps even the President himself had just seen him on TV—and then to matters more personal. Specifically, what had happened to Rawlins?

He opened his eyes and stared at the large grayish plain of the still-frozen lake, then pressed himself against the right window, saw his towering condominium building coming into sight. Lights dotted the structure here and there, and Todd quickly tried to find his apartment up there on the fifteenth floor. Lights on at his place would mean Rawlins was there and everything might be okay, right? Right? Starting from the ground, he tried counting floors, but then the car hit a pothole and Todd bounced in the backseat and lost focus.

Arriving at his tall building on Dean Parkway, Todd tipped the taxi driver generously, grabbed his briefcase, and bounded out of the vehicle. He waved briefly at the security guard, an older man who buzzed him in, and proceeded directly to the bank of mailboxes just off the main lobby.

“Hey,” called the guard, hanging out the door of his small room, “I just saw you on the evening news with that Dan Rather fellow!”

Todd struggled for a reply, finally saying with a shrug, “Big afternoon.”

“I’ll say!”

Todd took out his keys, found the smallest one, and opened his mailbox. He pulled out a magazine and a handful of envelopes, then opened his briefcase and dropped in his mail. Glancing over to make sure the guard wasn’t watching, Todd next pulled out the videotape of Clariton’s comments and slipped it into his mailbox, which he locked tight.

Crossing to the other side of the lobby, he hit a button and the elevator doors opened. Stepping in, he began to ascend, he hoped, to some kind of truth. It flashed through his mind that something had happened and Rawlins had never even left the apartment this morning. What if he’d slipped in the shower and knocked himself out? Or had a seizure of some sort? Perhaps. Or perhaps something else had come up and Rawlins had simply left a note to that effect, like maybe his mother in rural Minnesota had had a heart attack and he’d been called out of town.

Good grief.

By the time Todd stepped onto the fifteenth floor, he’d visited and weighed every possibility, still unable to settle on any kind of reasonable explanation for Rawlins’s absence and increasingly fearful of what it all meant. Hoping for some kind of immediate answer, he jabbed the key into the lock of his apartment, swung open the door.

Crap.

It was dark, not a light burning in the place. Todd stood in the doorway, wondering if he should just duck out and head straight over to Rawlins’s apartment. Wait, he reminded himself, Rawlins could be lying unconscious in the bathroom, his head split open, or there could be a note, or…

Why was it so cold in here?

Peering into his darkened home, Todd didn’t move. It wasn’t simply that it felt unusually cool or chilly, but there was a distinct draft, a real gust of air blowing through the apartment, out the door, and into the hall. Was one of the windows open? Without turning on a light Todd took several steps, letting his front door swing shut behind him. He moved past the dark kitchen and right up to the edge of the living room.

Todd froze.

The sliding glass door to his balcony was pulled open, and Rawlins stood on the balcony. Rather, Rawlins had one foot on a chair, the other on the balcony railing. In one instant Todd’s heart jolted with anger and a barrage of testy questions: Where the hell have you been? Why haven’t you called? What’s the matter with you? The next moment he understood something incomprehensible: Rawlins was about to jump.

An adrenaline-fueled rush of panic surged through Todd, but he didn’t budge. Oh, dear God.

He cleared his throat and, his voice weak and shaking, called, “Rawlins?”

When there was no reply Todd took a couple of steps closer. The cool air gushed in, and from the street below he could hear the stream of traffic, rubber tires humming against pavement, frustration turning to a mad honk, the screech of a quick brake, somewhere far off the safe sound of a siren—safe because it was exactly that, so very far away.

“Rawlins?”

Nothing. The solid figure, black against the dark blue hues of the early-evening sky, didn’t budge.

Todd inched still closer, wanting at once to dart forward, fearful at the same time of what that might precipitate. Trembling, he realized that of course he was right, of course Rawlins intended to jump. No fool would stand perched like that, poised as if to take a flying leap off a diving board. Even one wrong flinch and he’d lose his balance and go tumbling over.

“I’m… I’m here, Rawlins. It’s me… Todd. I’m home,” began Todd, stuffing the panic charging through him. “Hey, buddy, I’m here. Let’s… let’s talk.”

It was as if he’d lost his hearing, as if he were deaf as a rock. Rawlins just kept looking out, staring upward into the sky as if from here, from this fifteenth-floor balcony, he could leap right up there, into the heavens without touching earthly reality—and earthly pain—ever again.

God, no.

Todd wanted to scream, to go charging across the room, tackle Rawlins, pin him down, hold him here, and not let him go, not ever. Instead, a kind of surreal common sense shackled him, restraining him, holding him in control, and he crept across the soft carpet of his living room, one silent step at a time. More like an observer than a participant, he didn’t take his eyes off the dark figure, afraid that if he even blinked Rawlins would be gone, vanished into the void. And thus he moved past the black leather couch, past the glass coffee table. Past a side chair, the TV. The sliding glass door was pulled back, the screen door as well. Only another ten feet. Just past the table. Todd didn’t make a noise. Didn’t say a word. No, obviously nothing he could say would bring Rawlins back. Only force might.

Finally he reached the doorway to the balcony, and the cold night air blew over Todd, rippling his hair, chilling his bones. His eyes fixed laserlike on the back of Rawlins—a shirt, no jacket, jeans, leather shoes—and Todd took a quick appraisal of just how it could be done. He stood as still as if he were about to slap a fly, for one wrong move and things could tip the other way.

Then he leapt into action.

Todd grabbed onto the doorjamb with his left hand and with his right lunged out and grabbed Rawlins by the back of his jeans. Plucking his lover from the edge, Todd heaved as hard as he could, eliciting an angry scream from Rawlins. Todd tripped and fell inside, and Rawlins came flying from his precipitous perch onto Todd, the two of them landing with an ugly crash on the carpet of the living room floor. In an instant Todd’s lungs exploded as the weight of Rawlins crushed down on him. And as he lay wheezing on the floor, struggling for air, things truly blew up.

“You asshole!” screamed Rawlins. “You fucking asshole! What are you doing, goddammit all?”

For a brief instant Todd feared that Rawlins would do it, just get right back up and dart onto the balcony, hurl himself over with a flying leap. Instead, he was all over Todd, fists swinging, feet kicking. Unable to breathe, much less get up, Todd curled himself into a ball as Rawlins’s fury burst over him.

“You did this to me, didn’t you?” shrieked Rawlins.

“Wh-wha—” gasped Todd.

“You fucker!”

A fist plunged into his side, and Todd jerked back as the pain zipped through him. What the hell? He scrambled across the floor, scurrying on his hands and knees, trying to get away. Rawlins took another swing; Todd ducked. Gulping for air, Todd glanced over his shoulder and saw the rage—so absolute, so total—in Rawlins’s red, hysterical face.

“I’m going to kill you!” shouted Rawlins.

As Rawlins lunged at him Todd didn’t doubt he meant it, and Todd crawled across the room, grabbing for a chair, a pillow, something, anything, to shield the blows. Rawlins came at him shrieking, and Todd jabbed out a foot, catching Rawlins by the ankle and tripping him. Rawlins fell, crashing into the glass coffee table and smashing right through the top. The glass shattered beneath his weight, and then he lay there in the shards, his body heaving with sobs.

Todd, only just regaining his breath, half-reached out. “Rawlins?”

Amid the glassy mess the body moved, the head lifted.

Todd begged, “Wh-what is it? Rawlins, what the hell are you—”

He pushed himself up, his face a tight, wrinkled, crying mass, and sobbed, “I’m dead.”

“What?”

“I’m dead!”

“Rawlins, stop it! You’re being—”

“I have AIDS!” he screamed. “I’m going to die—just like John and Rick, just like Max, Al, David, Ed, Thomas, and Curt! You hear me? I have AIDS just like Curt did!”

Everything exploded, and Todd couldn’t move. “No… no…”

Rawlins sat back, staring at the palm of his left hand. There was a large chunk of glass sticking into him, and he looked at it, then pulled it free. As if he’d just uncorked a bottle, a deep, rich flow of blood started pouring out of his hand, curling, dripping down his wrist, trailing down his arm.

Oh, dear God, thought Todd. This couldn’t be. Looking at Rawlins’s bloody hand, he didn’t see the stuff of life dripping out of his lover. He saw poison gushing, oozing out. Their future flashed before him, his and Rawlins’s future—the doctors, the medications, the sores, the… No, he couldn’t lose Rawlins, and Todd grappled across the floor, his eyes welling with tears. He had to hold him. Take him back. Not let him go.

“Stop!”
shrieked Rawlins, holding up his bloody hand.

As if Rawlins had just pulled a gun on him, Todd jerked away, staring at the ribbon of blood as if it were some sort of hideous secret weapon, the plague to end all plagues.

“That’s right,” said Rawlins in a deep, ugly voice as he pressed his hand closer to Todd, “you don’t want to ever come close to me again.”

No. No, but…

This was insane. This was impossible. Todd did, indeed, pull back. But then he scrambled to his feet. And then he started running out of the lightless room. Down the dark hall. The door to the linen closet was cracked wide and he threw it open. Plunging in his hands, he started groping for a towel. Suddenly some unseen creature screeched and clawed him. Todd in turn screamed and jerked back as Curt’s cat, Girlfriend, who had been curled up on the towels, came shooting out like a missile, whizzing past Todd and disappearing into the bedroom. Todd caught his breath, reached a second time into the closet, grabbed a towel, thought better of it, took another. Rawlins had AIDS? He started shaking, trembling. Let there be some kind of mistake. Don’t let this be true.

He heard an odd noise from the living room, and it flashed through his mind: Rawlins did it; he jumped.

Carrying the towels, he tore back down the hall into the living room, where he was greeted by the darkness and a cool gush of air. Rawlins was no longer on the floor. The balcony door was open, the balcony itself as empty as if something had just flown away.

Todd couldn’t move and, his voice barely audible, gasped, “Rawlins?”

In response came a frightened sob. Todd ran across the room, found him there, curled in a ball and lying on his side behind a chair. He was sobbing. Todd stared down at this hysterical mass, saw Rawlins lost in his fears: Homo. Fag. Queer. You fuck with another man and you’re dead. Bad boy. You deserve it. You deserve to rot on this earth. Shame, shame, shame. Die, faggot!

“Did… did… did you do this… this to me?” begged Rawlins, looking up through his tears.

Perplexed, Todd stared at him, this strongest of men who’d regressed to some kind of panicked child, and said, “What?”