Sacrament (27 page)

i

He walked most of the way home. It took him almost five hours, his trek fuelled by Hershey bars and
doughnuts, washed down with a carton of milk, all consumed as he walked. Either he was steadily becoming
more used to the sights his eyes were showing him, or else his brain (perhaps for his own protection) had got the
trick of dialling down the amount of information he was assimilating. Whatever the reason, he didn't feel the
need to linger with the same obsessiveness, but wandered on his way taking mental snapshots of sights that
drew his attention, then pressing on. The conversation with Bethlynn had been more enlightening than he'd
expected it to be, and as he walked, taking his snapshots, he turned fragments of it over in his head. Whether or
not there was indeed a God-part of Patrick, a part that would never sicken or die, she was plainly quite sincere
in that belief, and if the possibility comforted Patrick (while putting food in the cat's bowl) then there was no
harm in it. Her assessment of Will, however, was another deal completely. She'd made, it seemed, an instinctual
judgment about him, based in part on what she'd heard from Patrick, in part on articles that she'd seen, and in
part on the work. He was a man with a dark heart, she'd decided, who wanted to taint others with that darkness.
So far, so simple. Whether she was right or wrong, there was nothing there that an intelligent individual with a
little imagination might not have construed. But there was more to her theory; more, he suspected, than she'd
been willing to share with him. He was an unwitting shaman; that, at least, she'd been ready to tell him.
Working change, inducing visions. And why? Because somebody in his past (somebody she didn't even want
him to name) had planted a seed.

That could only be Jacob Steep. Whatever else Jacob had done, good and bad, he'd been the first person in
Will's life to give him, if only for a few hours, a sense that he was special. Not a poor second best to a dead
brother, the lumpen clod to Nathaniel's perfected angel, but a chosen child. How many times in the three
decades since that night on the hilltop had he revisited the winter wood, the weapon buzzing in his hand as he
strode towards his victims? And seen their blood flow? And heard Jacob, at his back, whispering to him:

Suppose they were the last. The very last.

What had his life to date been but an extended footnote to that encounter: an attempt to make some idiot
recompense for the little murders he'd committed at Steep's behest; or rather for the unalloyed joy he'd taken in
the thought of shaping the world that way?

If there was some buried desire in him to be more than a witness to extinctions -to be, as Bethlynn had said, a
worker of change - then it was because Steep had planted that desire. Whether he had done it intentionally or
not was another question entirely. Was it possible that the whole initiation had been stagemanaged to make him
into some semblance of the man he'd become? Or had Jacob been about the work of making a child into a
murderer, and simply been interrupted in the process, leaving the smeared, unfinished thing Will was to stumble
off and puzzle out its purpose for itself? Most likely he would never know. And in that he shared a common
history with most of the men who wandered Folsom and Polk and Market this late afternoon. Men whose
mothers and fathers - however loving, however liberal - would never understand them the way they understood
their straight children, because these gay sons were genetic cul-de-sacs. Men who would be obliged to make
their own families: out of friends, out of lovers, out of divas. Men who were selfinvented, for better or worse,
makers of styles and mythologies which they constantly cast off with the impatience of souls who would never
find a description that quite fitted. If there was a sadness in this there was also a kind of unholy glee.

He almost wished Steep were here, so he could show him the sights. Take him into The Gestalt and buy him a
beer.

ii

By the time he got home it was almost six o'clock. There were three messages on the answering machine from
Drew, one from Adrianna, and one from Patrick, reporting that he'd just had what he characterized as an
intriguing conversation with Bethlynn.

'I couldn't figure out whether she liked you or not, but you certainly made an impression. And she was very
insistent about there not being any kind of rift between her and me. So, good job, buddy. I know how hard that
was for you to do. But thanks. It means a lot to me.'

Having listened to the messages, he went to sluice off the sweat of his journey and, roughly towelling himself
dry, wandered into the bedroom and lay down. Despite his fatigue, he had a sense of simple physical well-being
he couldn't remember having for a long time: months, perhaps years, before the events in Balthazar. There was
a gentle tremor in his muscles; and in his head an almost reverent calm.

So calm, in fact, that a perverse notion came trotting in to disturb it. 'Where are you, fox?' he said, very quietly.

The empty house made its cooling and settling sounds, as houses do, but there was nothing amid the ticks and
creaks that might have indicated Lord Fox's presence. No tapping of his claws on the boards, no swish of his tail
against the wall.

'I know you're there somewhere.'

This wasn't a lie. He believed it. The fox had walked the line between dreams and the waking world on two
occasions; now Will was ready to join him in that place, and see what the view was like. But first the animal
had to show itself.

'Stop being coy,' Will said. 'We're in this together.' He sat up. 'I want to be with you,' he said. 'That sounds
sexual, doesn't it? Maybe that's what it is.' He closed his eyes and tried to conjure the animal behind his lids. Its
gleaming fur and glittering teeth, its sway and swagger. It was his animal, wasn't it? First his tormentor, then his
truth-teller; the eater of dick-flesh and the dropper of bops mots. 'Where the fuck are you?' he wanted to know.
Still it didn't come.

Well, he thought, isn't this a perfect little paradox? After rejecting the fox's wisdom for so long, he'd finally
come round to understanding its place in his life, and the damn creature wasn't playing.

He got up off the bed, and was about to try his luck in another room when the telephone rang. It was Drew.
'What happened to you?' he wanted to know, 'I've been calling and calling.'

'I went over to Berkeley to kow-tow to Bethlynn. Then I walked back, which was wonderful, and now I'm
talking to you, which is even more wonderful.'

'You are up, buddy. Have you been poppin' some pills?'

'Nope. I'm just feeling good.'

'Are you in the mood for some fun tonight?'

'Like what?'

'Like I come over, and we lock the doors and make some serious love?'

'I'd like that.'

'Have you eaten?'

'Chocolate and doughnuts.'

'That's why you're flying. You're on a sugar rush. I'll bring some food with me. We'll have a lovefeast.'

'That sounds decadent.'

'It will be. I guarantee. I'll be over in an hour.'

'By which you mean two.'

'You know me so well,' Drew said.

'Oh no. I've got lots to learn,' Will breathed.

'Like what?'

'Like what kind of face you pull when I'm fucking the bejeezus out of you.'

Adrianna returned his call as he was making himself the ritual martini. He asked her how the job interview had
gone. Like shit, she told him; the instant she'd walked into the planning offices she'd known that after a week
working there she'd be stir crazy. 'When we were out in the mud somewhere being bitten to death by bugs,' she
said, 'I used to wish I had a nice clean job in a nice clean office with a view of the Bay Bridge. But I realized
today: I can't do it. Simple as that. I'll end up doing somebody serious harm with a typewriter. So I don't know.
I'll find something that suits me eventually, but you're quite a hard act to follow, Will. What's that clinking
sound?'

'I'm making a martini.'

'That brings back memories,' she sighed. Then: 'Remember what you said in Balthazar, about how you felt
everything was running down? Now I know how you feel.'

'It'll pass,' he said. 'You'll find something else.'

'Oh, so the ennui's yesterday's news, is it? What changed your mind? Drew?'

'Not exactly ...

'He makes a cute drunk, by the way, which I always thinks a good sign. Oh shit, I'm late for dinner.' She
shouted to Glenn that she was on her way, then whispered, 'We're dining with the other members of his string
quartet. I swear, if they break into four-part harmony over the soup, I'm leaving him. See you later, hon.'

The conversation over, he carried his drink through to the file-room and finally tidied up the photographs he'd
cast on the floor, a job he'd been putting off since Lord Fox had ignited their phantom life. It was a simple,
almost domestic task, and yet like so much else that he'd seen and done today, it felt charged, as though filled
with hidden significance. Not so hidden, perhaps. His initiation into the mysteries of his new existence had
begun here, with these pictures. They had been, as it were, a map of the territory he was to explore. Now the
map could be put away. The journey had begun.

With all the pictures stowed, he went back upstairs to shave, and there in the mirror had confirmation that what
he'd sensed in the room below was true. The face he saw was not one that he remembered ever seeing before.
The physiognomy was his, surely enough - the bones, the scars, the creases - but the way he looked at himself
(and thus the way he looked back) was in some subtle fashion different, and in the matter of a man's gaze, a
subtlety is everything. Here was the rarest creature in his universe; the great beast that had been, until now, too
far from him to be seen: behind the next copse, over the next hill. In truth, it had perhaps been easier to find than he'd pretended, but fear had kept him from looking too hard. Now he wondered why. There was nothing so terrible here;
nothing unfathomable. Just the child become a man; just the hair going to grey, and the skin a little leathery
from too much noon-day sun.
He thought of the fox, extolling the virtues of heterosexuality, of his children making children making
children. Will would not have the comfort of their progression. There would be no offspring to carry this face
into futurity. He was in a race of one.

Suppose this were the last.
Well, it was. And there was something pungent and powerful about that thought, the thought of living and
dying and passing away in the heat of his own fine fire.
'So be it,' he said, and set to shaving.

Drew was a mere thirty-five minutes late, which was more certain testament to his enthusiasm for the coming
liaison than his flushed cheeks or the tightness of his pants. He had hauled no less than six carrier-bags of
produce from the market to a cab and from the cab to the front door. Will offered to help, but he said he didn't
trust Will not to peek and kissing him on the cheek with self-enforced discretion, instructed him to go watch
television while he got everything ready. Unused to being bossed around, Will was thoroughly charmed, and
dutifully did as he was instructed.

There was nothing on television that caught his attention for more than thirty seconds. He sat watching with the
volume turned low, hoping to interpret the sounds of preparation in the kitchen and the bedroom above, like a
child going through Christmas gifts guessing what they were through the paper. At last, Drew came back. He'd
showered (his hair still slicked back) and changed into some more provocative clothing: a loose, but well cut
vest that showed off his ample arms and shoulders, and a pair of beige linen, draw-string trousers that looked
designed for easy access.

'Follow me,' he said, and led Will up the stairs.

By now, night had fallen and the bedroom was lit with just a few judiciously placed candles. The bed had been
stripped back and every cushion or pillow in the house nested upon it, while the floor had been laid with fresh
white sheets, on which the cornucopia Drew had lugged from the market had been arrayed.

'There's enough food here to feed the five thousand,' Will said. 'Without the miracle.'

Drew beamed. 'It's healthy to be excessive once in a while,' he said, slipping his arm around Will's waist. 'It's
good for the soul. Besides, we deserve it.'

'We do?'

'You do anyway. I'm just the slave-boy here. Ownership's yours for the night.'

Will put his mouth to Drew's face; cheeks, brows, chin, lips.

'Food first,' the slave-boy protested. 'I've got pears, peaches, strawberries, blueberries, kiwi-fruit - no grapes,
they're a cliche - some cold

lobster, some shrimp, Brie, Chardonnay, bread of course, chocolate mousse, carrot cake. Oh, there's some really
rare beef if you're in the mood, and hot mustard to go with it. Anything else?' He scanned the food. 'I'm sure
there's more.'

'We'll find it,' Will said.

They set to. Sprawled amongst the foodstuffs like a couple of Romans, they ate, and kissed, and ate some more,
and undressed, and ate some more, juices flowing, mouths full, one appetite growing as the other waned.
Mellowed by the wine, they talked freely, Drew unburdening himself of the disappointments of his life over the
last decade. He wasn't self-pitying in his account. He simply described in a witty and selfdeprecating manner
how much he'd fallen shy of his hopes for himself; how, in short, he'd wanted the world and ended up with
bankruptcy and a beerbelly.

'I don't think queers are very good to one another,' he remarked in the midst of this, apropos of nothing in
particular, 'and we should be. I mean, we're all in this together, aren't we? But fuck, the way you hear people
talk in a bar it's I hate blacks or I hate drag-queens or I hate muscle-boys 'cause they're all brainless Junks, and
I think: well fuck, the whole world hates us

'Not in San Francisco.'

'But this is a ghetto. It doesn't count. I go back to Colorado, and my family rag on me day and night about how
God wants me to be straight and if I don't mend my ways I'm going straight to hell.'

'What do you tell 'em?'

'I say: you may as well tell me to give up breathing, 'cause I'm queer all the way in-' he pushed his finger against
the middle of his chest. 'Heart and soul,' he said. 'You know what I wish?'

'What?'

'I wish my folks could see us like this right now. Hangin' out, talking, being us. Being happy.' He paused,
looking at the floor. 'Are you happy?'

'Right now?'

'Yeah.'

'Sure.'

'Because I am. I'm about as happy as I think I've ever been. And I've got a long memory,' he laughed. 'I can
remember seeing you for the very first time.'

'No, you can't.'

Drew looked up, his expression sweetly defiant. 'Oh yes I can,' he said. 'It was at Lewis's place. He had a
brunch, and I came along with Timothy. You remember Timothy?'

'Vaguely.'

'He was a big of drag-queen, who'd taken me under his wing. He'd brought me along - little Drew Dunwoody
from Buttfuck, Colorado - I

guess to show me off. And I was so damn nervous, 'cause there were all these circuit queens there who knew
everybody-'

'Or said they knew everybody.'

'Right. They were dropping names so fast it was like a fucking hailstorm, and once in a while one of them
would look at me and check me out like I was a piece of meat. You were late, I remember.'

'Oh,' said Will. 'So you get it from me.'

'I got everything from you. Everything I wanted. You lavished attention on me, as if nothing else mattered. Up
till then, I wasn't sure I was going to stay. I was thinking: this isn't for me. I don't belong here with these people.
I was plotting to get on the next plane home and propose to Melissa Mitchell, who would have married me in a
heartbeat and let me do what the fuck I liked behind her back. That was my plan, if being here didn't work out.
But you changed my mind.'

Gently, Will stroked Drew's face. 'No...' he said.

'Yes,' Drew replied. 'You might not remember it that way, but you weren't in my head. That's exactly what
happened. We didn't even sleep together right away. Timothy got very sniffy and said you weren't good people.'

'Did he indeed?'

'He said, oh, I don't know, you were crazy, you were English, you were uptight, you were pretentious.'

'I was not uptight. The rest, probably.'

'Anyway, you didn't call me, and I was afraid to call you in case Timothy got mad. I was kinda dependent on
him. He'd paid for me to fly out, I was living in his apartment. Then you did call.'

'And the rest's history.'

'Don't knock it. We had some fine times together.'

'Those I remember.'

'And of course by the time we broke up, there was no going back to Colorado for me. I was hooked.'

'What happened to Melissa?'

'Ha. You'll like this. She married this guy I used to jerk off with in high school.'

'So, she had a thing for fags,' Will said, moving behind Drew and letting him lean back against his body.

'I guess maybe she did. I still see her once in a while when I go home. Her kids go to the same school as my
brother's kids, so I meet her when I go to pick them up. She still looks pretty good. So...' He leaned his head
back and kissed Will's chin. 'That's the story of my life.'

Will hugged him close. 'What happened to Timothy?' Will said. 'We owe him.'

'Oh, he's been dead seven, maybe eight years. I guess his lover walked out on him when he got sick, and he
pretty much died without anyone.

I heard about it just after Christmas and he'd died on Thanksgiving. He's buried in Monterey. I go down there
once in a while. Put some flowers on the grave. Tell him I still think of him.'

'That's good. You're a good man, you know that?'

'Is that important?'

'Yeah. I'm beginning to think it is.'

They made love then. Not the hectic, no-holds barred mating of their first romance, eighteen years before, not
the tentative, faintly fearful encounter of a few nights ago. This time they met not as conquests or tricks, but as
lovers. They took their sensual time with their detections, passing kisses and touches back and forth with a lazy
ease, but by degrees becoming more agitated, each in their way demanding, each in their way conceding. In
waves then, they played, pressing steadily towards a destination they had debated and planned. Will had not
fucked anyone in four years, and Drew, though he had been a glutton for it earlier in his life, had sworn off the
act with so much risk attached. It had never been, even in simpler days, a natural act, despite tales of
Mid-Western farmhands, spit and a little lust. It was a conscious act of desire, especially in the heart of the
plague, when the condom and the lubricant had to be at hand, and there had to be, along with the erections, a
gentle overcoming of anxiety. Tenderly then, in the nest of pillows, they coupled, to the pleasure of both of
them.

When they finished, Drew went to shower. Mr Clean, Will called him. This wasn't a new preoccupation; he'd
always needed to wash off the sex immediately after he'd come. It was the church boy in him, he explained, to
which Will replied: 'You just had an Englishman in you. How many people have you got in there?'

Laughing, Drew went into the bathroom and closed the door. Will listened to the muted sound of the shower
being turned on - the slap of the water on the tiles, then the change of timbre as the water broke against Drew's
back and shoulders and butt. He shouted something, but Will didn't catch it. He stretched in the double luxury
of fatigue and satiety, his consciousness drifting. I should shower too, he thought; I'm greasy and sweaty and
rank. Drew won't crawl into bed beside me unless I wash. So he held onto consciousness, though it was hard
work. Twice he fell into the shallows of sleep. Woke the first time with the shower now turned off, and Drew
singing tunelessly as he towelled himself dry. Woke the second time to hear Drew thundering downstairs. 'I'm
just getting some water,' he yelled. 'You want anything?'

Woozily, Will sat up. He yawned and gazed down at the felon between his legs. 'Busy night?' he said, flipping his cock back and forth. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bed, knocking over one of the candles. 'Fuck,' he muttered, bending down to right it again, the smell of the extinguished wick sharp in his nostrils. As he stood up, the room pulsed. Thinking he'd risen too quickly, he closed his eyes. White patches throbbed behind his lids. He felt suddenly sick. He stood swaying at the end of the bed for a few moments, waiting for the feeling to pass, but instead it intensified, waves of nausea rising from his belly. He opened his eyes again, and started towards the hallway, determined not to end the evening
puking in the very room where they'd made such fine love. He got no more than a yard from the bed; then the
ache in his belly doubled him up. He dropped to his knees, surrounded by the leavings of their feast, his senses
horribly sensitized. He could smell the spoiling of fruit that had been fresh three hours before, of cheese and
cream that had been sweet and were now curdling, as though the heat of the room, of the deeds performed in the
room, was hastening everything to rot. The stench of it was too much. He began to puke, his belly cramping, the
white particles flaring in his head, washing out the room

And in the midst of the blaze, images from the adventures of the day: a sky, a wall, Bethlynn; Drew clothed,
Drew naked; the cat, the flowers, the bridge, all unreeling like a fragment of film tossed into the fire in his head,
the throbbing white fire that lay at the end of everything.

God help me, he tried to say, no longer afraid of being found in this state by Drew, only wanting him there to
extinguish the blaze

He raised his head, and squinted through the light towards the door. There was no sign of Drew. He started to
crawl towards the landing, knocking over two of the three remaining candles as he did so. The conflagration in
his head continued unchecked, the memories still flickering in its midst before they were consumed, like moth's
wings, fluttering and fluttering -the waters of the Bay, whipped by the wind; the flowers on Bethlynn Reichle's windowsill; Drew's face, sweating in ecstasy And then, suddenly, the blaze was gone, extinguished in a heartbeat. He was kneeling three or four yards from the door, the darkness grey, the light grey, the food in which he knelt drained of colour, his hands and legs and dick and belly all drained, all grey. It was strangely pleasurable after the assault and the sickness, to be thrown into this cool cell, detached from sensuality. His mind, he assumed, had simply decided enough was enough, and pulled the plug on all but the barest minimum of stimulation. He was no longer overpowered by the stench
of rot and curdle; even the glutinous textures of the food around him had been tamed.

The nausea had also receded, but he didn't want to risk any motion until he was certain it had passed
completely, so he stayed where he'd found himself when the episode had passed, kneeling by the light of a single candle-flame. Drew would come up the stairs very soon, he thought. He'd look at Will and take pity: come to him, soothe him, cradle him. All he had to do was be patient. He knew how to be patient. He could sit in the same position for hours. It wasn't hard.

Just breathe evenly, and empty the mind of useless thoughts. Sweat them away; then wait.
And look! His waiting was already over. There was a shadow on the wall. Drew was climbing the stairs right
now. Thirty seconds and he'd be on the landing, and the moment after he'd be coming to help Will back to
sanity. There he was, with a glass of water in his hand, his trousers barely hanging on his hips, his body piebald
with the marks Will had left on him. The flesh around his nipples flushed. The teeth marks on his neck and
shoulders neat as a tailor's stitch. His face mottled. He raised his head, oh so slowly (in this grey world nothing
had urgency), and a puzzled look came over his face as he stared towards the bedroom door. It seemed he
couldn't make out Will's face in the murk; or if he could, failed to make sense of what he saw. He smelled the
vomit, however, that much was plain. A look of disgust disfigured his face, the ugliness of his expression
troubling to Will. He didn't want to see that look on his saviour's face. He wanted compassion, tenderness.
Drew had hesitated now, and was staring through the open door. His disgust had turned into fearfulness. His
breath had quickened, and when he spoke - 'Will?' he said - the word was barely audible.
Damn you, Will thought; don't stay out there. Come on in. There's nothing to be afraid of, for God's sake.
Come on in.