Chapter Eleven
Gazing patiently through the lace curtains on the front window, John saw Harry park in front of the house and get out of the car. But instead of coming inside, Harry spent a moment staring at the house before shuffling up the sidewalk in the direction of the park. John was sorely tempted to follow, but Harry had ordered him to stay put, and so he did.
It was over an hour before Harry returned, his trouser cuffs wet from the rain and his eyes troubled. He appeared to be sober, however, as he nodded at John and went into the bedroom, returning a few minutes later in jeans and a white T-shirt. John thought that a better look for him, more natural than a suit. The shadow of a beard had sprouted on Harry’s chin and cheeks, and John found himself longing to stroke it.
With a sigh too heavy for such a young man, Harry collapsed onto an armchair. “You’ve been listening to the radio.”
“I can turn it off if—”
“No, I’m glad you like it. That’s why I bought it.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.
“Harry? Can I help you with something? I’m much stronger than I was.” John could stand for a long time now, and when he looked down at his arms, they were no longer skeletal. Although he was grateful for the vigor, it also made him restless and a bit uneasy.
Harry peeled his eyes open. “Yeah. You look….” He pressed his mouth closed and looked away.
“Do you have work for me to do? I can clean, I think. I’m not sure whether I can cook, but I suppose I can try.”
“No. Just….” Harry’s jaw worked and then he raised his chin. “I don’t know how long you have here. Maybe just a couple of days. And after that… I don’t know. So relax while you can. Read your books and listen to Nat King Cole.” He gestured toward the radio.
It was good advice. If John was sent back to that cell—or worse—he’d need all the good memories he could collect. Treasures he could cherish when despair dug its talons into him. But maybe it would be worse than ever to lie naked, weak, and filthy in the darkness, knowing how much he had lost.
John gathered his courage. “Do you want me to go back to the cell?”
“No! Jesus, no.”
“Then why send me there? Why can’t we stay here? I’ll be no trouble, I promise. Or we could go somewhere. Anywhere you like.” He crossed the room and fell to his knees in front of Harry. “Please. I’ll do anything you tell me to. I’ll be your faithful servant—your slave. Don’t send me away. Please, Harry.” Something tickled his cheek, and when he brushed at it with his fingertips, they came away wet.
Harry shot out of his chair and rushed to the opposite side of the small room, then backed into the corner as if trapped. “Don’t. Don’t do this, John.” He sounded close to tears.
“I have to. What other hope do I have but you? And I do hope. I feel. I….” He pressed his hands to his chest. “My heart doesn’t beat, but it aches.”
Harry fled past him and out the front door, not even pausing to grab his coat and hat.
John sank to the floor and hugged his knees against his chest.
***
Harry returned soaked and shivering, his T-shirt transparent and hair dripping. But he stood in the doorway to the living room for a long time, silent except for water droplets pattering on the floor.
John spoke first, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I’m sorry. You’ve given me so much already. I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t.” Harry rubbed his face. “I need to tell you things. Everything, I guess.”
“Dry off first. I can wait.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Harry returned quickly, wrapped in a blanket and with hair in disarray from a towel-rub. He sat in the armchair, tucking his bare feet and legs under his body. His face still looked cold-tinged, and he hadn’t stopped shivering.
“Do you want something hot to drink?” John asked. “Or soup?”
“Stop being so fucking considerate!”
Still sitting on the floor, John shrank back against the couch and ducked his head.
When Harry spoke again, his tone was soft. “Sorry. But you need to stop being nice to me. I don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Yeah. Look, there’s things I have to tell you. About me, and about… what’s going to happen. They’re not nice things.”
John raised his head to look at Harry. “I’m a monster. That’s not nice at all.”
“I don’t even know what that word means anymore. People have called me a monster, or close to it. My own daddy used to say I was a worthless piece of garbage, and Mama said I was the Devil’s work.”
Although Harry’s tone was matter-of-fact, the words wounded John. He’d thought parents were supposed to love their child. Yes, he’d learned that Harry’s father was troubled, but to go so far with his own flesh and blood? “Why would they say that about you?”
“Lots of reasons. I ain’t smart. I’m not good at much of anything. I never fit in with anyone, not even my own family.” Harry let out a deep breath. “And I’m a queer. That’s one of the things I had to tell you.”
“Queer?”
“I fuck men. Or let them fuck me.”
John had to process this. He understood the concepts but not the disgusted way Harry had said them. “Do you…. When you have sex, you don’t force anyone? And they don’t force you?”
“It’s voluntary.”
“Then why does it make you… those things your parents called you? Sex feels nice, doesn’t it? It doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“Yeah, it feels good. But two men together ain’t natural.”
John surprised himself with a bitter laugh. “Bringing the dead back to life—that’s unnatural. A perversion. If two people make each other feel good, I think that’s a beautiful thing.” He looked down at his feet. “But I guess I’m no judge of morality.”
After a long pause, Harry rose from the chair. Still wrapped in his blanket, he sat next to John. “It doesn’t bother you.”
“No. Of course not.”
“It bothers most folks.”
John smiled at him. “I’m not most folks, am I?”
Harry’s answering smile nearly broke John’s heart. “I guess not. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.” He scooted slightly closer until they were almost touching. John felt the warmth of him. “Everyone always called me brainless and clumsy. Daddy said I was a waste of good food. But they let me stick around at least. Until I was sixteen and Mama found a letter I wrote to Cary Grant.”
“Who’s that?”
“An actor.” Harry snorted softly. “Real handsome. I saw him in a movie and wrote this stupid letter. I wasn’t gonna mail it, of course, but I guess I had to get those feelings out somehow, even if nobody was supposed to read them. I hid the letter in this little box where I kept a few things. That box was the only thing that was really mine. But Mama found it a couple of months later and she showed Daddy.”
“What happened?”
Harry hunched in on himself. “He… he was sick then, but still pretty strong.”
Although Harry didn’t elaborate, John could imagine the rest: a man’s hands hard against a boy’s young body. A child damaged by the man who was supposed to protect him.
“I’m sorry.” John knew that sympathy from a monster was inadequate comfort, but it was all he had to offer.
Harry nodded twice. “I had to quit school, find whatever jobs I could get, sleep wherever I could afford a bed. The rest of them—Mama, my brothers and sisters—they wouldn’t even talk to me at Daddy’s funeral. Like I was a stranger to them. It took me a long time to save enough money to go to California, but I did, eventually.”
“You’re very strong.”
Harry blinked at him. “No I ain’t.”
“Of course you are. You were left on your own at an age when you should have been nurtured. You were called foul things. But you survived and found a dream and pursued it.”
“It was a stupid dream.”
A heavy realization hit John: Harry, in his own way, was as alone in the world as John, and perhaps nearly as vulnerable. John had always thought that being human meant having love and connections to others. How heartrending that it wasn’t so.
“I don’t know if anyone has ever treated you with kindness, Harry. But you’ve been nothing but kind to me, a monster. You didn’t have to. I suspect you weren’t expected to do so. But you did. That proves how strong you are.”
Judging from Harry’s astonishment, he’d rarely been praised. “You’re easy to be nice to,” he whispered.
John traced fingertips over one of his scars, a thick raised one that circled his neck like a collar. It wasn’t painful, but it felt ugly. He wished he were beautiful, or even just plain. For Harry’s sake and for his own. An ache had spread from his heart throughout his body, filling him with a type of want he’d never experienced. Desire. Oh God, this was desire.
Would Harry be disgusted to know that John yearned to touch him? Perhaps. But John owed him an honesty in return for the one Harry had given him.
“If I were a man, I would very much want to… to make love with you.”
Harry swallowed audibly. “Shit.”
“I know what I am. I know I’m not—”
“Stop.” Harry put a hand on John’s knee. “You’re going to say you’re a monster again, and I wish you wouldn’t. You need to hear the rest of what I have to tell you.”
“All right.”
“You say that like it’s so easy. It ain’t.”
“Then take your time with it. I’m not going anywhere.”
Harry nodded, his hand still heavy and warm on John’s knee. John almost wished he were still terribly weak, unable to even sit unaided, because then Harry might hold him again. Might once more clean him with a soft wet cloth. Might even touch John’s skin with his own.
After a long time—four different songs played on the radio, interspersed with advertisements for a car dealership and an appliance store—Harry shifted position. “The Bureau sent me here. You know what the Bureau is?”
“The cell.”
“Yeah. They’re the ones who killed the man who made you, and then they took you away, and…. Fuck, John. They tortured you.”
John couldn’t suppress a shudder. “I suppose they wanted to see what I am. How I’m made. You took me away from that place.”
“But I can’t keep you. Told you that from the start.”
“You did.”
After a quick squeeze of John’s knee, Harry pulled his hand back under the blanket. “Here’s the whole story. It’s ugly.”
“Like me,” John said, attempting a joke.
But Harry didn’t smile. “You’re not ugly.”
An odd thrill swirled through John, making his skin tingle. But he warned himself to concentrate—Harry was about to reveal John’s purpose and his future.
“The Bureau thinks a guy here in Portland, named Swan, is trying to make… more like you.”
“Why would he want that?”
“I don’t know, John. Why do people want to do stupid things? Because we’re fools. Anyway, it’s illegal, and the Bureau wants to catch him. But they don’t have enough of the goods on him yet, so they sent me here to see if I can get him to spill the beans.” Harry went silent, perhaps giving John a chance to process that.
“You work for the Bureau?”
“No,” Harry said bitterly. “I applied—that was my dream—and they turned me down. But then Townsend said he’d give me another chance. If I help them nail Swan, I get to be an agent.”
“That’s wonderful! You can fulfill your ambition.”
Harry scowled. “Right. It’s all peachy keen. Townsend gave you to me to use as bait, so I can convince Swan to admit what he’s up to. I’m supposed to offer you to him. Some kinda goddamn prize for Swan so I get the evidence the Bureau needs.” His hand reappeared, and he rubbed his palm down his mouth and chin. “Two days from now.”
John’s existence in the cell had been simple. Not better—definitely not that—but uncomplicated. He had his patch of sunlight, his fragments of knowledge unmoored from memory, the name he’d given himself. He had almost no choices to make, and his emotions were largely limited to misery and anguish. Now, though, his swirling feelings made him so dizzy that he was grateful to be sitting. How was it possible to feel so many things at once, many of them in direct conflict with others? Is this what it was like for real people, and if so, were they able to endure it more gracefully?
“Two days,” was all John could say, although the timeframe was hardly the point.
Suddenly Harry twisted around and grasped John’s shoulders, allowing the blanket to fall to his waist. “Go. Put your shoes on and just get the hell out of town. You can take the car.”
“But… your plans.”
“Townsend’s plans, not mine, and he can fuck himself. I’ll find a way to get what he wants out of Swan. I don’t need to drag you into this.”
John allowed himself a moment to seriously consider Harry’s offer, but he found no promise in it. “Where would I go?”
“Anywhere. I’ll…. They gave me some cash. It’s yours. You’re really smart. You’ll manage.”
“I don’t know anything about the world, not really. I doubt there’s a place in it for something like me. And what about you? The Bureau won’t be happy you let their property get away. They won’t give you a job.”
Still holding John’s shoulders, Harry made a frustrated growl. “I don’t care! Townsend was probably lying anyway. Once this thing’s over, I bet he planned to cut me loose. He doesn’t really want me. Anyway….” Harry let go of John and moved back slightly. “I don’t want the goddamn job if it means sending you back to those bastards.”
Oh.
Something enormous inside John shifted. It hurt, yet he felt immeasurably more whole. More real.
“You care about me,” John said softly.
Harry let out a long breath. “Yeah. Guess I do.”
“That’s…. I never hoped for anything so precious. Thank you. I wish I could express what a gift you’ve given me. Will you believe me when I tell you—even though I’m a monster—that I care for you as well? Does that offend you?”
“I believe you,” said Harry, eyes shining.
Moving slowly so as not to spook him, John raised his arms and settled his hands on Harry’s shoulders, a mirror of Harry’s recent touch. The shoulders were bare, the lightly tanned skin warm, unscarred, and perfect. Harry didn’t pull away from the contact, although his breathing grew a trifle rougher and a rosy flush spread from his cheeks down to his chest.
“If I run,” John said, “the Bureau will hunt me down and find me, won’t they?”
“I don’t—”
“Please be honest.”
“Y-yes. I think they will.”
John nodded. “I won’t spend my limited freedom as a fugitive. I’d prefer to spend it with you.”
“Even if it’s only two days?”
“Yes.”
“I… I can ask Townsend…. Explain things. Tell him how you really are. Maybe he’ll listen and let you go.”
John had seen the way Townsend looked at him. No possibility of sympathy there. He lifted one hand and very gently stroked Harry’s cheek. Rough bristles and soft skin. Harry leaned into the caress. “Perhaps when you are an agent, you can come visit me in my cell sometimes. I’d like that.”
“John—”
“No. We can’t change who we are or the circumstances under which we find ourselves. But perhaps we can find some happiness in what we do have. Happiness is such a valuable thing, John. We shouldn’t waste it.”
“Happiness,” Harry echoed dreamily.
Then he leaned forward and touched his lips to John’s.
John knew about kisses in the abstract, just as he’d once known about grass and the sky. But the reality was infinitely grander, a bouquet of sensory information that made John want to swoon. Harry smelled like rain and soap. His lips were a little dry, and he tasted of something rich, bitter, and sweet. Oh, and his mouth was wet and hot, tongue slick against John’s, hands solid and strong as they cradled John’s face.
When the kiss ended, they remained nose to nose. Harry was panting. “You like men too?” he asked with a grin.
John had no idea what his preferences might have been before he died, but those didn’t matter anymore. He knew how he felt now. “I like you.”
“Even though—”
“Yes. Just as you care for me, even though.” In fact, John thought, their respective shortcomings made their feelings exquisite. It was probably easy to fall for someone who was flawless, but to ache for someone who was not… didn’t that mean the emotion was more genuine?
“It’s really hard for me to think clearly when you’re so close,” Harry said, “and I’m not all that good at thinking under the best of circumstances. I’m going for a walk.”
Harry made as if to stand, but John stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve already been soaked once tonight. Stay here. I’ll…. If it’s all right with you, I’d like a bath.”
“Yeah, sure.”
John rose to his feet, no longer experiencing any weakness. Whereas two days earlier he could barely walk, now he felt as if he could run for miles. He smiled down at Harry and then made his way to the bathroom.
It took a few moments for John to work out how to run the water. He wasn’t dirty, but he thought this might give Harry the space he needed. Besides, John would not likely be afforded this luxury again.
As the tub filled, he shed his clothing, stroking each item fondly before hanging it on a hook. And then he did something he’d been avoiding—he faced his reflection in the mirror.
He saw a young man, thin but not remarkably so, with skin as pale as the moon. Long scars mapped him, jagged ridges on limbs, abdomen and chest, smaller puckers scattered everywhere. His body was nearly hairless except for tawny sprigs at his crotch and in his armpits. His cock and balls—not noticeably marred—were a bit pinker than the rest of him. He had long, slender fingers, like a pianist, and rosy nipples. His narrow face with high cheekbones bore an almost aristocratic mien, with full lips, a Roman nose, and pale brows arching over bright blue eyes. Butter-colored hair grew on his scalp, quite short but no longer sparse.
The man in the mirror was handsome if you overlooked the scars.
But to John he was a complete stranger.