Authors: Unknown Author
Randall turned from the window. He seemed startled, and Eric realized that in his attempt to keep his tone neutral he had put the dark undertone of a threat in his words. “Because you’re younger, you mean? That’s why you’ll live longer.”
“I guess,” Randall said, sounding distracted.
His shadow moved to the chair draped with his clothes. By the time he heard the rattle of Randall’s belt buckle sliding to his waist, Eric was speaking again. “Randall.” He could see Randall’s head turn. “I’m asking you to stay.”
Randall paused, then moved to the foot of the bed and crawled across it on all fours until his mouth was inches from Eric’s. Randall was still shirtless, his jeans unbuttoned. His typically gelled and spiked hair was slightly mussed and matted from being twisted against the pillow. He stared at Eric, eyes bright, teeth sinking slowly into his lower lip, and Eric felt his stomach tighten in anticipation. Randall’s mischievous grin drew out Eric’s original, burning attraction to the pretematurally assured young man. A no-longer-buried desire to have him, shape him, and conquer him; a desire that to his consternation had not gone away after simply taking the boy to bed.
“No,” Randall said. “I like you better when you don’t get everything you want.”
Randall’s kiss was brief but firm. His weight left the mattress, and Eric slouched back onto the pillows, rolling over onto one side and listening to the mournful sirens that no longer seemed to be approaching or departing, but had joined together in a consistent, off-key wail, its direction distorted by the wind.
“Want to cut through the Elms?”
“Shut up, April.”
“They’re a good shortcut if you’re not loaded. Or you don't have an overactive imagination.”
The snow was driving now, cutting into their bare faces, and they were forced to walk with their shoulders hunched. April had brought her jacket up over her neck. Kathryn could hear sirens coming from the city below the hill. Kathryn shot a glance leftward at the expanse of suggestive shadows. To bypass it, they had to walk through residential streets.
“
I
don't get it,” Kathryn said.
“How much money did they spend to build the Tech Center?”
“Loads probably.”
“And they still haven’t managed to build on the Elms?”
Up ahead, the four houses fringing Fraternity Green were fishbowls of light. Strobe lights from inside Burton House cut stained-glass shapes across the snowy lawn. “You think they should put a dorm there just because it gives you the creeps?” April asked.
“No. It’s just weird that Michael Price can’t get his hands on a piece of prime real estate.”
“Please. Be grateful. If someone doesn’t stop that jerk, he’s going to coat the entire campus in chrome!”
Michael Price was one of Atherton’s most prominent alumni, featured, it seemed, in every issue of the alumni magazine as well as spreads in everything from
Architectural Digest
to
The New York Times.
Kathryn had studied a photo of him in
Paper
during a Psychology Intro lecture. Swollen and strong boned, he exhibited a brutal, sexualized assurance that repelled her. Captured in freeze frame, he seemed like the kind of man who swaggered, who believed that little was out of his reach. It was that rare quality that might have led him to import cold and sterile modern architecture to his alma mater. From the blinding, plate-glass Technology Center to the massive refurbishment of the fifteen-story Sciences Library, students and faculty alike found Price’s additions glaringly inappropriate for a predominantly Gothic campus.
“You know the Pamela Milford story, right?” April asked. Kathryn shook her head. They were steps from Burton House and the bass pounding of disco was already throbbing in their gums. “I think it was the eighties. She wandered out of some party here, drunk off her ass, stumbled into the Elms, and drowned.”
“How did she drown?”
“There’s some kind of creek, I think.”
“All the more reason to raze it.”
Kathryn shivered. On the front porch of the house, she looked back to the green. “He might be inside. Can we just go in?”
April tugged on her shoulder.
Inside, they were instantly swallowed by the shoulder-to-shoulder throng clogging the front hallway. The frat’s living room had been transformed into a poor man’s Studio 54. Half the dancers were wearing neon-colored wigs and a Warhol film was being projected onto the ceiling, shaggy-headed sylphs staggering and jerking across the frame. Kathryn scanned the crowd for Randall.
A rail-thin boy done up in drag shoved a tray of Jell-O shots in their faces. April took one, shot it, and then handed one to Kathryn. “I told you they didn’t card!”
“What’s in this?” Kathryn asked the drag queen.
“X,” he shouted back, before vanishing onto the adjacent dance floor.
April brought one hand to her mouth. “Oh God!”
“He was probably kidding,” Kathryn said, as she placed her shot on the stair above her head.
“Whatever. If I’m still awake in four hours, cuddling up against you in bed and stroking your hair, then these freaks are going in front of the Disciplinary Council!”
Kathryn hooked her by the arm. “Let’s find Randall!”
The kitchen was as crowded as the rest of the house. What counter space was not covered in empty beer cases and liquor bottles was blocked by drunken couples holding on to each for support as they were rocked onto the balls of their feet by a steady procession toward the open back door. A hand slapped Kathryn’s ass. When she turned, she saw April several steps behind her, and whirled to face her offender. Tim Mathis grinned back at her. His dimpled cheeks had the blush of too many drinks. A stranger might have thought the short, stocky, peroxide blond with the bicycle chain around his neck was making an ill-advised pass. Kathryn knew better. Tim threw both arms skyward with a squeal before enfolding Kathryn in a sloppy embrace.
“Have you seen Randall?” Kathryn asked as she pried herself free.
“Nope. No sign of the Ice Queen. But his
roommate
is certainly here, though!” Tim said, exaggerating the words with a sexual suggestiveness that turned Kathryn’s stomach.
“He's
out on the dance floor bumping and grinding with some twelve-year-old girl.”
“Who?” Kathryn asked, before she could stop herself.
“Someone who doesn’t know any better" April cut in, grabbing at Kathryn’s shoulders.
“What’s the guy’s deal, anyway?” Tim squinted at her. “Randall wouldn’t give me any of the dirt. Is he a member of the spur posse or something?” Kathryn was being pressed up against Tim’s spandexed chest. April’s hand gripped her shoulder, ready to pull Kathryn away from a conversation she knew Kathryn wanted to avoid. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. Jesse Lowry is a Bruce Weber photo waiting to be
snapped,
but forgive me for thinking that a man who sleeps with that many women doesn’t have something to prove!”
“Have you quit smoking yet?” April asked in her ear.
“No.”
“Let’s go have one. I can’t breathe in here.”
“No, I wasn’t talking. Really,” Tim cut in. “And aren't you a med student?”
“Nice try,” April replied. “Biomedical ethics. And aren’t you a music major?”
“No!”
“Then why don't you try talking without
sing-ing”
“You’re just pissed at everyone because you’re a dyke.”
“I’m also black. Which fills me with rage. Kathryn, cigarette!”
“No, no. Not so fast!” Tim grabbed Kathryn’s other shoulder. “Seriously, Kathryn, I know how you and Randall are. You two probably did the
:
whole finger-pricking, blood-sharing thing. He picks out your clothes, you set him up on dates with all your non-threatening male friends. It’s a strong bond, I know. And I hate to be the first one to tell you, but I think there might be more going down behind that door than you ever—”
“No offense to you or your kind, Tim, but Jesse Lowry is as heterosexual as they come,” April cut in.
“Bullshit. He’s sexual. When are you girls ever going to learn the difference?”
“Maybe you can interview Jesse for your column,” Kathryn managed. “A man, his penis, and the doormats he rubs it on.”
“I’m sure he does more than rub.”
“All right,” April growled behind her, patience gone.
“But screw that,” Tim continued, unfazed. “I’m about to quit anyway. They think if they make me a news editor then I’ll stop trying to rile things up. I mean, do you guys even read the
Atherton Herald?
It’s, like, three pages long and the major headline is always something real scintillating like ‘Sophomore Plants Tree.’ ”
Kathryn laughed.
“I am claustrophobic!” April barked.
“Jesus, April. All right. Tim, if you see Randall, tell him I’m looking for him.”
“Yeah, right. Like I ever see Randall anymore,” Tim muttered, raising his plastic cup in a sarcastic toast.
On the patio, smokers shivered in huddles. Trash cans lined the clapboard fence, spilling flattened beer cases. “That was rude,” Kathryn finally said.
“Me? No,
he
was rude. The guy’s got to know what you think of Jesse, and he was throwing out all the shit just to milk you for info on Randall. He needs to move on. Randall’s too intense for that guy anyway. But just in case you were wondering—” April paused for effect, pulling a cigarette free from the pack Kathryn had just removed from her jacket pocket “—Jesse obviously isn’t the only guy on this campus who goes through people like a Ginsu knife.”
“Tim and Randall dated, April.”
April rolled her eyes.
“How’s that shot treating you?” Kathryn finally asked. “Are you rolling?”
“Shit. It’s Sig.”
“God bless you.”
“Sigrid,” April hissed.
Kathryn followed her roommate’s spooked stare to where one of April’s previous girlfriends of the moment stood smoking in a corner of the patio, shooting slant-eyed glances at the surrounding crowd, as if any number of the other guests were going to slap an apron on her and force her to cook dinner.
“Is that Abba?”
“I told you not to call her that. You and Randall need to start learning people’s real names. You’re both sociopaths.”
The girl had claimed to be Swedish royalty, so rather than risk embarrassment in attempting to pronounce her name, Kathryn and Randall had nicknamed her after the famous Swedish pop group. “How royal is she, exactly?”
“I have to talk to her.”
“Why? You dumped her last month.”
“That’s why I have to talk to her. It’s like noblesse oblige. Wait here.”
“For what?”
But April was already crossing the patio. Kathryn turned, scanning the other guests to see if anyone had begun staring at the girl who had just been left standing awkwardly by herself.
Where the hell was Randall?
She shoved her way back inside. There was no sign of Tim in the kitchen, so she edged into the front hallway and stopped in the doorway to the living room, narrowing her eyes against the flashing strobe lights to make out the wild forms on the dance floor. There were plenty of blonde heads, but none of them belonged to Randall.
When her eyes met Jesse Lowry’s, her breath came out in a startled hiss.
He was dancing halfway across the living room, and his partner was a stick figure of a brunette who clung to Jesse’s broad frame as if she were in a drunken swoon. Their slow, swaying embrace was completely out of synch with the urgent disco. Jesse wore his usual UCLA baseball cap, with the bill shading his eyes from the flashing strobe lights, but Kathryn could make out his slight, suggestive smile, directed now at her. It was a smile that implied Kathryn had been watching Jesse for hours. He wore a tight, cable-knit sweater that accented the swells of his chest. Most girls went weak in the knees—not unlike his current dancing partner and next victim—when Jesse bothered to look their way. Kathryn had trained herself to react to him with a mixture of disgust and suspicion.
They stared icily at each other for several seconds. Kathryn saw that Jesse’s other arm was plastered between his body and the girl’s, and she realized it wasn’t alcohol that had turned the girl into a limp noodle in Jesse’s embrace. One of Jesse’s hands disappeared into the unbuttoned, distended waistline of the girl's jeans. She was rocking up onto her toes, trying to bring her mouth to Jesse’s, before her intended kiss became a defeated gasp against his cheek.
Jesse withdrew his hands from the girl’s pants. His eyes locked on Kathryn’s, he slid his middle finger between his lips. Kathryn left the doorway.
When he returned home from getting Chinese takeout that evening, it had still been light out. Eric lingered in the dark on the first floor, where the snowy windows glowed brighter than anything inside the house. The parked cars along Victoria Street sat beneath layers of white, and the snowfall had thinned to frail flakes that danced on their descent; the evening’s storm had turned into a dusting.
Wearing only his bathrobe, he padded across the living room without hitting a single switch. He turned on the gas fireplace with a flick of his wrist and lit it with the fireplace lighter. The flames caught with a sudden
whoosh
as they punched through the fake charred coals. Weak firelight played across
The Garden of Earthly Delights
and Eric was struck by the flickering image of Hieronymus Bosch’s altarpiece. Above the bookcase, Eden, Earth, and Hell were dancing in the frame. He had launched his academic career with a controversial book that claimed that the medieval painter wasn’t truly a member of the established church, but a mitigated Cathar who held the heretical belief that the earth was Satan’s terrain, and the body a trap from which one must spiritually escape, and whose vile desires must be denied.