The Ammonite Violin & Others (18 page)

“So, what’s
that)
”

“The
show?
he says, his orange-red mouth making a perfect 0 of the word. “You’ll see,
kitsune.
Be patient.”

“Suck my cock,” I reply, and he takes me literally and gets down on his knees in that absurd dress and takes me in his mouth, so that’s taking me twice over. I shut my eyes, not wanting to be here, not wanting to see anymore—the dry old men and their frivolous playthings, the playthings who think this is fucking Paradise on Earth. I want to be home in my cruddy little apartment with my fox boy, only he wouldn’t be a fox, and he wouldn’t be attired for the court of
Louis le Dernier
, either. After the sex, we could watch an old movie and have microwave popcorn and maybe go out somewhere for coffee. Or we could just curl up and sleep. Either way would be fine with me.

His tongue flicks quickly, expertly, back and forth across the underside of
my
dick, and he holds me gently with his teeth.

And behind my closed eyes, we’re lying in the fold-away bed. The window’s open despite the cold and the snow, and the curtains flutter and flap in the icy wind. My fox boy is asleep beside me, and I’m trying to remember his name. I hear sirens and smell the smoke a moment or two later. Not my building, though, somewhere else in flames, somewhere else burning down to the ground and roasting a hundred people alive. And I’m about to go back to sleep, when I see something at the window, hungry eyes flashing iridescent in the dark, and then the mink slips silently over the windowsill, smooth as satin, and it’s there in the room with us. I can hear its claws clicking on the hardwood, and there’s a huge raven watching from the sill. The raven knows what’s coming, just like it knows about the fire, just like it knows
my
fox boy’s secret name.

And then I open my eyes, open them wide, because I don’t need to see whatever the raven knows will happen next, and because my fox boy’s tongue is magic and I’m coming so hard I think this might finally be the day and the second and the place that my heart stops beating, and the wasps and bees will be happy to know they have my head all to themselves. Now there’s only the smoky room again and my hands tangled in his hair, only the animal masks and the sounds of men laughing and fucking and doing god knows what else to one another. He looks up at me, the fox boy who isn’t me, and wipes his lips and smiles.

“Is that better,
kitsune
?”

“How about we both get the hell out of here?” I ask him, needing another drink so bad it hurts, not even sure where the last one went.

“Oh, no,” he says, standing and dusting off the front of his gown. “We can’t do that. That’s not the way it works. No one leaves before the show. No one. Anyway, all the doors are locked from the outside. The windows, too. Didn’t they tell you?”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No,
kitsune.
I’m not into that.”

One of the bulldogs shows up then, this time with shot glasses of tequila and lime, and again I take two. Maybe, I think, there was more to the kitty flips than ecstasy and ket, maybe a dash of LSD, just to spice things up. Maybe more than a dash.

“Anyway,” my fox boy says, turning towards the stage. “It’s about to begin.”

“What’s about to begin?” and I toss back one of the tequilas before he can answer me.

“The changing of the guard,” he says in a tone that is only slightly exasperated, only vaguely condescending, and he sits back down on the sofa and kisses me. He tastes like lipstick and semen and alcohol. And I realize that there’s not so much noise as before, and almost everyone’s turning towards the stage and the golden throne. There are black candles lit now, set out all around the edges of the dais, dozens of them, and on either side of the throne stands a nude man with a purple blindfold tied about his face. Each of the men swings a smoking censer suspended from chains. I want to ask why they’re blindfolded, these men, why blindfolds instead of masks, but know my fox boy would roll his eyes at my ignorance, so I settle for the second tequila, instead.

“Like Mardi Gras,” I mutter, speaking to no one but myself, perhaps believing I’d not actually
spoken
at all, and my fox boy sighs and shakes his head, but keeps his eyes on the stage.

“No, it’s not like Mardi Gras,” he says.

“I bet you it fucking is,” I tell him, because both the shot glasses are empty and he’s already disgusted with me again, so what the hell have I got to lose?

“It’s not like that at all. You’ll see.”

“Ye Mistick Krewe of Comus,” I say and lay my head on his shoulder, wanting to shut my eyes, wishing there would only be darkness if I did—not the wasps, not the staring raven on my window-sill, not the grinning mink boy creeping across my bedroom floor. “Endymion, Rex, Bacchus, Orpheus. The King of fucking Carnival. I’ve
been to
New Orleans.”

“I’m sure you have,
kitsune
. Now shut up and watch.”

“The goddamn Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club. I know
exactly
what’s going on here, what all these queer old fucks are up to with their hokey-ass rituals and boy toys.” But I’m not even fooling myself, and I have no idea what these dry old men with bird faces have set in motion. All of them rich and untouchable and stranded way out there in the cruel wastes of December, perched on the high-voltage wires strung across the end of the year, the end of life, and staring greedily, jealously back past crackling autumn leaves and Persian rugs and pretty fox boys to all those long-lost Junes and Julys.

“You give great head,” I say, and my fox boy laughs.

Now the blindfolded men have been joined by a very tall ginger-skinned woman in a mask of peacock feathers. I’m about to tell my fox boy that I didn’t think women were allowed. But then I see her dick, so never mind those perfect breasts and brown nipples and the yellow-brown curves of her hips and belly and legs. A she-male or some other transgendered creature, and maybe this will start to make sense in another minute or two, but I doubt it. There’s a crimson jewel like a liquid drop of ruby poured into her navel and a belt of gold coins jingling about her waist, silver bracelets about her wrists and ankles, and around her throat a necklace of bleached white bones. She’s too far away for me to guess what the bones might have come from. She bows to the crowd, and the crowd applauds.

“Okay,” I say. “I will admit I didn’t see that one coming.”

“She is the Lady Salome,” my fox boy says; his green eyes sparkle, and I think I might have heard a scrap of something like reverence in his voice.

“Well, in case you haven’t noticed, she’s got an even bigger shlong than that mink son of a bitch.”

“You’re physically incapable of shutting up, aren’t you?” my fox boy asks, and I don’t bother to answer him. I look around for one of the bulldogs, but they all seem to have vanished.

“She’s the daughter of King Herod,” my fox boy says, and I’m straining to think through the fog of booze and drugs and wasps and crackling leaves, trying to figure out what the hell any of this has to do with the dry old men and their King of Birds, when the Lady Salome is joined by Old Man Raven himself. He wears an elaborate golden crown, and I think the crown must be meant to be the sun, that somehow Old Man Raven has climbed into the heavens and managed to pull down the sun so that this night might go on forever, and we will always be locked in here with him, his private, pretend menagerie. He wears a long purple robe over his tuxedo, purple to hide his feathers the way purple hides the eyes of the men at either side of the throne. He bows to Salome, and there’s more drunken applause.

“Fucking Mardi Gras bullshit,” I hear myself say, my words seeming to reach me from far, far away. I’m still resting my head on the shoulder of my fox boy, even though I’d have a better view if I sat up straight.

“No, but soon you’ll see,” my fox boy replies.

But I’m losing interest and thinking about my cock in his mouth, thinking maybe I should be a gentleman and return the favor, when everyone crowded into the loft—all the pets and the dry old men and even my fox boy—begins booing loudly. Some of them are cursing and shaking their fists at the ceiling, so I sit up to see for myself, tired of trading my questions for scowls. And I see that now a very muscular man in a leopard mask, dressed like a Roman centurion, is leading an emaciated, bearded man clothed only in rags roughly towards the stage. The bearded man’s hands are bound behind his back, and his legs are cuffed, as well. He wears no mask at all.

“That is Jokanaan, the Prophet,” my fox boy says, pointing towards the stage. “He is being brought before Lady Salome and the King by Naaman, the executioner. This is the night of his judgment.”

“You want me to Mow you?” I ask him, already growing bored again and hoping maybe we can slip away together, find some unoccupied corner or closet or something of the sort, and leave the rest to their theatrics. But my fox boy only shakes his head and shushes me. He isn’t going anywhere, not until it’s over and done with, whatever
it
might be, and I wish once more that I wasn’t so fucked up and it was safe to just shut my eyes and wait for all this pomp and fucking circumstance to pass me by “Do not
talk
,” my fox boy whispers through clenched teeth. “It will not be much longer now.”

The she-male or transsexual or whatever it might be—Salome, the woman in the mask of peacock feathers—takes a sudden, eager step towards the bearded man. He keeps his eyes on the floor, or his feet, or both.

“Jokanaan!” cries out the Lady Salome, and the booing and catcalls die away as suddenly as they began.

“Who speaketh?” asks the bearded man in rags.

“I am amorous of thy body, Jokanaan. Let me
touch
thy body!”

“Back, daughter of Sodom!” growls the ragged man, coming abruptly to life now, and I don’t care, only want to taste my fox boy’s lips again and find a bulldog with a sterling silver tray of martinis. But he’s watching the show, my scarecrow bundled from autumn leaves and carpet scraps and stuffed into that fox-faced countenance and that immense, rustling gown.

“Touch me not!” howls the prophet. “Profane not the temple of the Lord God.”

“Speak again, Jokanaan. Thy voice is wine to me!”

“Oscar Wilde,” I sigh, and my fox boy looks away from the stage long enough to glare at me. I think his eyes are green berries not yet ripened, something that will turn red, then black, something for the beaks of the dry old men to pluck out and devour.

“
What
?” he asks, sounding genuinely angry now for the first time. “What are you talking about?”

“You know. It’s Oscar Wilde. But it’s all out of order. And where’s Herodias and the young Syrian? They should both be in this scene, I think.”

He’s still glaring at me, those green berry eyes, those eyes I might like to taste myself—sour, but with some promise of sweetness yet to come.

“I’ll find you later,” he says coldly. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll find you later.” And then he’s up off the sofa and disappearing into the smoke and the crowd before I can stop him, before I can say no, I’m sorry, don’t leave me all alone in this place. And as he goes, I see there’s a hole cut neatly into the back of his dress for two fox tails, luxurious tawny fur tipped with warning dabs of white and grown so long and bushy that they almost drag the floor behind him. And it’s only the drugs that make them twitch and wag like living things. Only the drugs, the X and ketamine, the liquor and pot and whatever clandestine substances I might have unwittingly ingested, and nothing more. Nothing more at all. I let him go. I do not follow. I’ll find him later, I tell myself, when this shit’s over, and I’ll make nice and apologize.

“Who is this woman who is looking at me?” asks the ragged man in chains. “I will not
have
her look at me. Wherefore doth she look at me, with her golden eyes, under her gilded eyelids? I know not who she is. I do not
desire
to know who she is. Bid her begone. It is not to her that I would speak.”

“I am Salome, daughter of Herodias, Princess of Judæa.”

And now the Lady Salome takes another step towards the cringing prophet. I glance from the stage to the crowd, hoping for some glimpse of my vanished fox boy. But there are only minks and tigers and lynxes, rabbits and toads and a hedgehog or two.

“Speak again, Jokanaan,” purrs Salome. “Thy voice is as music to mine ear.”

“Daughter of Sodom,” the prophet moans and tries to pull free of the executioner’s grip. “Come
not
near me! But cover thy face with a veil, and scatter ashes upon thine head, and get thee to the desert, and seek out the Son of Man.”

“Who is he, this Son of Man?” asks the Lady Salome, standing so close now to the bearded man that her breasts brush against him. “Is he as beautiful is thou art, Jokanaan?”

“Get thee
behind
me! I hear in the palace the beating of the wings of the angel of death.”

“Finish him!” someone shouts from the crowd, and the Lady Salome grins a wide carnivorous grin for her audience. And I see that her teeth are not human teeth, but the sharp teeth of some night-stalking beast, the teeth of a shadow slipping over the windowsill.

“Put the sad old bastard out of his misery!” shouts someone else, a boy in a wolf mask snuggled up next to one of the owls.

“Fuck
that!
Put him out of
ours?
” shouts one of the rabbits. “
Peace!
” bellows Old Man Raven with a voice like thunder heard from many miles away. “You are
always
crying out, you lot. You cry out like a
beast of prey.
Your voices weary me.
Peace
, I tell you!” And then he turns to the ginger-skinned creature. “Salome, think on what thou art doing. It may be that this man comes from God. He is a
holy man.
”

The crowd snickers, and there’s a smattering of applause. “Indeed, he is!” shouts a rabbit. “He is
wholly
limp and flaccid!” An eruption of laughter then, and I want to go after my fox boy now. Not later. Later, he might have found someone else. Later, he might not even remember me.

“I will kiss thy mouth, Jokanaan,” Lady Salome tells the prophet, speaking past that mouthful of dagger teeth, her voice even more poisonous than the stingers in my head.