Geno drove to Heading, the car window rolled down and the soft summery air blowing over him. Eagles singing “Take it Easy.” Thinking about the exhaustion of secrets. Slippery secrets that didn’t like holding still in his mind, let alone being dressed in words. The raw open knife wound of his mother’s death. The persistent, worry rash that was his father’s workaholic distraction. The black hole vacuum where once his brother’s stars shone.
Maybe all that would end tonight.
At 11:14, he pulled up to the curb outside 17 Lantern Street and texted Carlito he was there.
On the radio, the Eagles “Take it Easy” ended and Heart’s “Barracuda” began.
By 11:20 he was getting annoyed. He texted his brother again. Dude, you coming?
Carlito replied, Come inside.
I’m not in the mood to be social.
I just need you to help carry some shit, okay?
Exhaling, eyes rolling, Geno turned off the engine, got out of the car and headed up the walkway.
His memory of that night would always be fractured, shards and slivers scattered across his mind like broken glass. Some were crystal clear and sharp. Others blurred and scratched. Some had turned to obsidian, blacked-out and useless.
He remembered whistling “Barracuda” as he went up the walkway. His shoe kicked a pebble that bounced and skipped ahead of him on the flagstone path.
He remembered ringing the bell and the two-tone chime from deep within the belly of the house.
He remembered the scent in the front hall. Like the place had just been cleaned. Lemon and pine. Plus a faint, sweet smell curling around the air, like cookies in the oven.
“Carlito’s downstairs,” Anthony Fox said. “Want a drink?”
Geno remembered staring a moment at the man, annoyed by his easy use of Carlito, a family endearment. It suggested intimacy he had no right to infer.
Fox was in his early forties. Tall and built with salt-and-pepper hair and dark blue eyes. A friendly, normal-looking guy, but he made a wary suspicion twist in Geno’s stomach. A prejudice rooted in unpleasant memories from the time his mother was ill.
That goddamn Fox was in my henhouse.
“Get you a beer?” Anthony said, looking off to the kitchen a moment. Geno remembered his stare intensifying at Anthony’s ear. It looked inside-out. Squashed and deformed and weird.
Anthony caught him looking and smiled. “Nice, huh?” he said, touching it. “Souvenir from my wrestling days. They call it cauliflower ear.”
“Oh.”
“Get you a beer?”
“I’m driving,” Geno said pointedly.
“How about a Coke?”
“Sure,” Geno said, to be polite.
Be kind.
“Go downstairs, I’ll bring you one.”
Geno remembered the smell of the downstairs TV room was thick and hoppy, like someone had thrown a keg party recently. Couch and recliners were arranged before a big flat screen TV. At the far side of the room, Carlito and two other men were standing around a pool table. Not playing. They were looking at black-and-white photographs spread across the green felt. Various shots from around Manhattan.
Anthony came down and gave Geno a Coke.
Geno remembered the can was opened. He thought nothing of it at the time. If only he had. But why would he?
If only he’d paid more attention to the curl of distrust in his gut.
Paid more attention to the dreadful conviction when Anthony leaned to look at a photograph and slid his hand along the back of Carlito’s neck.
The way the other men stared as he drank the Coke, then exchanged glances.
The way Carlito wouldn’t meet his eyes. Wouldn’t acknowledge Geno’s repeated throat-clearing and the mental nudges of, Can we go now? Come on. Let’s go.
But by then it was too late. The walls of the room were growing blurry. The blacks and whites of the pictures morphing into grey then popping with color. Geno’s fingers stroked the green felt. Soft. It tickled. Everything was giggling. Geno’s eyes stared at Anthony’s ear, fascinated with its weirdness.
“What’s happening?” he remembered saying, tongue thick and sweet in his mouth. The cookie-laden air from upstairs had come down to play. It filled his lungs. He was baking.
“You better lie down, okay?” Anthony said, like a 45 record slowed down to 33.
“Don’t hurt him,” Carlito said, playing at 78.
“Don’t worry, he’ll love it,” Anthony said. “Won’t you, baby boy?”
His hands settled on Geno’s shoulders, like two warm loaves of bread.
With butter, Geno thought. Butter and pickle always made him laugh.
Anthony’s ear was pickled.
Geno laughed. Everyone did. Except Carlos, who stared down at the grassy green pool table. Geno’s laughing brain looked back as Anthony led him toward a room, but Carlos turned away.
The walls of Geno’s mind were closing in, pressing him small and tight, folding him up into a letter. He laughed and laughed, thinking it was a game and Carlito was missing out on the fun.
He was tingling and burning. His skin so soft and warm. It gave under Anthony’s hands, like warm, buttered bread dough.
“Wait,” he said, thinking so much of his skin shouldn’t be showing. Not in this place. Not with this man.
“It’ll be fine,” Anthony said, unbuckling Geno’s belt. “You’ll do great. We’re just going to play.”
“Is it a game?”
“Yeah. It’s fun. You’ll be good at it.”
“I don’t think I…”
“Shh,” Anthony said. “Let me do the thinking, baby boy.”
Geno’s brain shrugged.
The last clear thing he remembered was Anthony saying, “You’ll love it.”
He was so high. So up, up, up, high in a cloudy, sugary haze.
Then he was down.
A bunch of mixed up, mashed up and fucked up things happened.
Things were on him and in him. In his mouth and against his back and shoved deep inside.
His mind scattered like a startled flock of birds.
He didn’t love this.
It wasn’t a game and it wasn’t fun, but his fractured mind couldn’t wrap around what was happening. It was a dream. It had to be a bad dream. He’d wake up soon.
Through the shapeless hours of the night, the game went on. Different players came on and off the field, in and out of the room. In and out of Geno. Whatever was in the Coke wore off, then Geno started to fight. He lashed out and hit whatever he could. He was hit back. Hard. The sides of his head clanging back and forth like a bell.
“Don’t fucking hit his face,” Fox yelled. “Jesus Christ, what are you thinking? Give him another shot, you moron.”
A sharp stab in Geno’s leg and he went all blurry and giggling again, the rules of the game sliding and slipping around his mind like a wet bar of soap.
“Smile for me, baby boy,” Fox said, his hand stroking up and down Geno’s toasty skin, flicking off grains of sugar. “That’s it.”
It was the game. Men came and went and did it with Geno. Time turned inside-out. Sugar turned to salt, running wet and stinging from Geno’s eyes into his mouth. Now his hands were cuffed to the bed and the panic rose up in the back of his throat. He fought harder. Yelled and yanked at his wrists, cried for help, screamed his lungs apart.
No help came, only more men.
From far away he heard Carlos yelling. “Let him go. I did what you wanted, now let him go. You promised…”
His voice was full of rage. Then it was full of pain. When they dragged him into the bedroom, Carlos was crying. “You promised. You promised.”
He was cuffed to the leg of Geno’s bed and Anthony started playing with him. Another man held Geno’s head, making him watch. Another man took pictures.
Geno kicked and bucked in his prison bed, trying to hide his face, twisting and writhing against the rules of the game.
Then it was Geno’s turn, but nobody made Carlos watch.
Lying on the floor, his hands still restrained, he turned his head away.
Geno begged his brother.
He babbled and bawled like a baby, imploring his twin to look at him.
Carlos stared off at nothing. As if none of this were happening.
Forty-four hours, the Caan twins were held captive at Anthony Fox’s house.
It never stopped happening.