 
Kepler's Revenge

By Robert Seidel Costic

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 Robert Seidel Costic
Dedicated to Linda Seidel
Chapter I

Michael Kepler scrambled about his house in his tattered jeans and flannel shirt, chasing the renovators that his son Richard had hired. "You don't have to do anything!" he fretted. "You don't have to change anything!" He came upon his son in the living room. Richard, his hands in his pockets, gazed back at him with a look that made Michael's face wrinkle and tighten. He sweated. "Please, just leave me alone."

"We're not hurting you. We're just fixing your house," Richard told his father, keeping his arms crossed. "You've really let it go, and if we don't fix it the city is going to condemn it. And if that happens, you'll either have to live with me in New York or live in the streets." Indeed, in the years that Richard had moved away Michael had let the place fall into a terrible state of disrepair. The pipes had burst, the furnace was broken, one of the living room windows was shattered, the walls were covered with a slimy brownish green mildew, and some of the boards of the hardwood floor had snapped into pieces.

Richard's father exploded with a burst of panic as one of the renovators took a down from the wall a picture, an inexpensive, framed print of a mythological, romantically stylized flying horse, illuminated by the sun overhead, bursting through a robust cumulonimbus cloud. The renovator stared at the old man as he placed the print on the dining table, keeping a distance from the crazy man.

"Are you sure don't want to tear down this house?" the renovator asked Richard. "It will cost you just as much to build a new one as to renovate this one."

"No, no," Richard said.

"You don't care about my feelings!" Michael screamed at his son. "God dammit! Damn it all! I'm a nothing, a nobody." He ran into the empty ground floor bedroom, locked the door, and sobbed. Richard casually walked over to the door and turned the knob until the lock caught it. Michael pounded on the door. "Get out of my house!"

"How about we put you up in a hotel? That way you won't have to put up with the renovators."

"No!" Michael screamed. "I have not slept anywhere but in this house for the past thirty years. I am not going to sleep in a hotel."

"Well then maybe you should stay in your bedroom or go out for a walk while the renovators are here."

"I can't do that."

"Why?"

"Because they might do something while I'm away."

"What would they do?"

"Hurt me."

"How would they hurt you?"

"Did I ever tell you the story about when my father Henry got a horse?"

"No," Richard replied.

Michael gulped and sniffed and then began, "Well, as you know, back during the Depression Otto," Michael's grandfather, "organized a bunch of guys together to mine the mountains out where they lived. It was completely spontaneous, just the miners themselves -- no corporation or business to make them do it -- and he bought a whole train car full of horses to help move the coal.

"He let Henry choose one of the horses to have as his pet, so Henry picked a beautiful white horse and immediately fell in love with it. Whenever the horse wasn't at work Henry would ride it and go on adventures with it throughout the mountains in Pennsylvania. It was the best friend that he had! He didn't know anyone outside of his family besides that horse! But when Otto didn't need the horse anymore he took an axe to it and killed it and ground it into meat and raked in the insurance money that he had on the animal. And my father was heartbroken! It destroyed him, and he never talked to his father again. Never!

"So when Henry told me that story I thought I would give him a present. I found that print at the National Gallery back when I was living in Washington, and on his birthday I gave Henry that print. When he saw it he cried! He bawled and he loved it. It was like he saw his horse up in heaven, flying around and having a grand time. So understand, that picture means a lot to me. I don't like it when some stranger touches it!"

There was something magical about animals in Michael's family. It was not just with Henry; Michael felt a peculiar relationship with them, too, sensing that God talked to him through the actions of the rabbits, deer, horses, dogs, and the like that he encountered as child when he walked through the streets of his hometown village or the rocked-laden forest that surrounded it. Richard once surmised that the fascination had something to do with living deep in the forested mountains, where the lack of civilization made natural events seem more mystical or allowed superstition's imagination to take flight.

"Look," Richard said, "nothing is going to happen to your picture. I just want to fix your house so the city doesn't condemn it. You've done nothing to maintain this place for the past ten years. I don't understand why you've let the place go like this." His father again burst into tears and wailed behind the door.

"You just want to inherit this place after I die."

"Hardly."

"I want to keep this place like it was. The best years of my life were when I raised you. I don't want to change anything because I want to keep it like it was back then. Everything now is just like back then. That's the first time that picture has been moved in thirty years."

"But," Richard replied, "this isn't even the place that I remember anymore. I remember this place being clean. You can't just do nothing and pretend that everything is the same. If you don't do anything it'll just decay; it won't stay the same. You can't hold onto things like that." Richard looked about the place as the renovators went to work. "It takes work to keep things going. I wish you wouldn't let the past debilitate you."

"There's nothing I can do about it!" Michael wailed. "Everything is going to decay, anyway! We're all going to die! There's no point in fighting against nature. It's better to just accept what's going to happen." Michael blew his nose and wept, "This is all happening because my spiritual powers are failing! My ruby ring is failing me!" Michael's father may have fought in Italy during World War II, but Michael's uncle Tom fought earlier -- in the Allies' North Africa campaign -- and died at his campgrounds not far from the sandy shore of the Mediterranean. The military refused to explain to Henry's family the cause of Tom's death, but because he was not killed during combat the family suspected that Tom committed suicide because the war was too stressful for him. He was originally buried in North Africa with his ruby ring, but when Henry's mother was told of Tom's death she made a special request for it. The story goes that the ring was never returned, but one day while Michael was planting roses in his family's backyard he discovered a ruby ring that he believed to be Tom's. Convinced that the ring sought him out, Michael decided that the ring must have had some sort of spiritual power. Over time this spiritual power came specifically to mean that the world would work according to Michael's desires. If something happened to upset him, it probably meant that his spiritual powers became too weak to prevent it. In this case, with the renovations to the house, his powers felt especially weak.

Michael twisted the ring around his finger, fidgeting with it and making it sparkle as if he were jiggling a handle to make a broken toilet flush. Richard could not see what Michael was doing, but he could guess what was running through his father's mind. "You don't care about me," Michael said, panting for a moment and burying his face into his side of the door.

Richard did not respond. The renovators opened the windows and turned on some fans. They bleached the walls and the house began to stink, and then, from somewhere afar, someone yelled, "Jesus!" Richard went after the sound, traveling through the kitchen and living room into the basement, and found that one of the workers had opened the furnace to find the corpse of a kitten that had died years ago, mostly bones and tufts of hair, trapped in the rusted and dusty parts of the machine.

Chapter II

James stepped out of his church, having just received communion, and went to the closest diner that he could find. Once he sat down and got the attention of a waitress he ordered pancakes, toast, poached eggs, home fries, fish, a vanilla smoothie, and a glass of orange juice. He waited patiently for the food to arrive, occasionally looking at the undersides of his forearms and resisting the temptation to carve a knife into them. When the food came he ate it greedily, and when he finished he made his way to a stall in the bathroom so that he could gag himself and puke everything he had just eaten. As he did so he wondered whether he was also ejecting the communion that he had received just a while ago.

Satisfied that he had finished his meal, James went to the sink and took out a little bottle of mouthwash and rinsed his mouth while looking at himself in the mirror to ensure that he looked adequately breathtaking. Or as the case may be, that he did not have any specks of vomit on his clothing. He noticed that a couple of hairs were sticking out of his nose, so he took out his tweezers and plucked them out. After some more examination he left and took the short walk to Richard's apartment, where he greeted his friend.

"Do you want to get anything to eat first, or are you ready for drinks?" Richard asked.

"Oh, I already ate," James said.

"Okay, that's good. Do you just want to go to the Stonewall bar?"

"That's fine. Whatever you want."

"All right then." They started walking. "How has class been going?"

James taught Latin and Greek at a Catholic school in lower Manhattan. "It's been going okay, although I don't think I'm going to enjoy my new students this year as much as the ones I had last. They don't seem to be as interested in their studies, there don't seem to be any that particularly stand out, and so far I can't pick out any of the gay ones."

"No one to give highlighting tips?" Richard asked with a laugh.

"Not this year!"

"Well I have to grant you this: years ago I used to think pretty lowly of you, given how much you seemed to so openly despise yourself, but since you got that job I've gained a lot of respect for you. You take those kids' education very seriously, and you serve an important role for the gay kids, given that they are learning in such a hostile environment."

"Yes, well, the problem is that I have to put up with that hostile environment, too. I made a mistake moving in to the apartments on campus. I have to deal with the idiots around there absolutely all the time. And I told you about my roommate, haven't you? The retarded one with the hairy back? I don't understand how he can be there. He may be teaching just the elementary children, but to be honest I think his students are probably smarter than him."

"Oh dear. Well I would tell you that you should move out."

"But rent is so expensive here, I wouldn't be able to teach and live here otherwise. At least the apartment I get is free."

"That just seems like a difficult situation. And you can't even bring guys home."

"Well I don't consider that a huge loss. I've more or less become celibate."

"Do you still hate yourself when you have sex?"

"No, no." There was a long pause. "I just think my sex drive has declined. I have so much going on, I don't really even think about it."

They arrived at the Stonewall bar and ordered their drinks. Richard had a vodka tonic while James had a Manhattan. They took their seats and checked out the crowd, which at the moment consisted of a mostly older set. It was still daylight outside, and there were not yet many patrons.

"There's been something I've been meaning to tell you," James said. "I'm thinking about joining a monastery."

"Okay."

"Well, you know I've thought about it before. It's been something that I've considered doing ever since I was a teenager, and I think it's getting to the point now that I need to decide whether I'm really ever going to do it or not. I'll be turning 30 not too long from now, and I know that if I get too old it will be harder for me to be accepted. So, if it is something that I'm going to pursue I should start doing it soon before it gets too late."

"Well you know in the past I would've thought that you were a fool, but right now I really don't care."

"I know. That's why I brought it up."

"So would that mean that you would be giving up your teaching?"

"Probably."

"Okay. Are you doing anything about it?"

"I have an interview at a monastery near here a couple of weeks from now. Depending on how the interview goes and how I feel about the place we'll see if anything happens."

"Well keep me updated."

"I will. I have to admit, part of my motivation is that I'm thinking that I may not be capable of being in a relationship. Getting into a relationship in the first place is so hard for me, and the relationships I do get into are all with guys who have huge problems reconciling their faith with their sexuality."

"Well you go after guys who have had similar problems to your own."

"Anyway, if I were to join a monastery I would be a member of a community, a group of people that I could work with and with whom I could grow old. My greatest fear right now is that I'll grow old alone, that I'll be doomed to a lonely life."

"Well when I'm married and have kids you can be my governess."

"Thanks."

Richard laughed.

At that moment a couple of guys walked into the bar and ordered some drinks. At first Richard did not notice them, but once he did he turned to James. "Oh shit! Let's get out of here! It's Brock. I don't want to see him."

"All right." Richard gulped down the rest of his drink, and the two of them rushed out of there. As they walked away Brock told Richard, "You know, you're never going to win your ex back if you keep running away like such a coward."

"He was right there with his boyfriend! I could tell. I can't deal with that." Although Richard's face was as stony as ever, a trickle of blood ran down his nose onto his lip. "I don't know what to do. I feel so helpless."

"It would help if you stopped treating him like a god. He's just a human like everyone else. If you were a little more religious you could see that."

"No, he isn't," Richard said. "He isn't like everyone else."

James sighed.

"Did I ever tell you about how my father was once going to be a preacher? He went to a school on a scholarship from his church – was a really good student. Was studying theology. Would've been for the United Church of Christ. But then he fell in love with a rich Catholic girl – a big family taboo back then – and was later dumped by her. It ruined him. He took to drinking, and one night he got into a car accident. Since he was drunk he was afraid of being spotted by the police, so he fled the scene rather than get out of the car and exchange contact info like you're supposed to. But the other guy in the accident got my dad's license plate number and got the police to find him anyway. He was arrested, and when everyone found out the school suspended him and his church revoked the scholarship. Now there was a religious guy, and looked what love did to him."

"Well, he also wasn't Catholic."

A sardonic smirk briefly appeared on Richard's face. "You know, when my father first met my mother – it was at a college party back at U. Penn. – the first thing he said to her was, 'I died in a car accident several years ago.' She jokes that she should've known right then that he was a nutcase."

"How is he doing, anyway?"

"Terribly. I've been getting phone calls from the neighbors complaining about how his house has been falling apart. I think I may have to go over there sometime soon and do something about it."

Chapter III

Richard gazed upon the huge expanse of the Roxy Nightclub, a giant warehouse of a club -- a cathedral of sensuality -- in lower Manhattan, with its dance floor, bars, lights, disco balls, strippers, and hundreds of scantily clad, dancing bodies pulsing to the music's steady, throbbing beat. Richard saw not individuals but a writhing sea of flesh, and he did so with the greatest air of total, drunken detachment that he could muster. In a place where people went to lose themselves in the energy of the drugs, lights, and music, Richard felt like an alien, a stranger, an interloper. He went there -- clad in a tight, blue tee-shirt and pin-striped dress pants -- because he wanted a distraction; but instead he felt alone, like the sole spectator at a three-ring circus. The only way he could lose himself, he convinced himself, was by drinking himself into oblivion.

Richard began sipping his sixth vodka tonic of the night in one corner of the main room when from seemingly out of nowhere an energetic, shirtless, tanned circuit boy approached and introduced himself as Mark. Mark flittered about Richard and at moments affectionately petted Richard's left arm, which incongruously matched Richard's dour mood, but Richard smiled stupidly at him and even touched him with his free hand -- the one that was not holding the drink -- so that he could feel Mark's chest, abs, and waist.

"Are you having a good time?" Mark asked.

"No."

"Aww. I know. I saw you looking so unhappy. But you know, you're way too cute to be sad." Mark smiled at him.

"Thanks."

Mark flirtatiously squeezed the left side of Richard's torso, and Richard returned favor by casually grasping and massaging the back of Mark's neck. Mark bobbed around to the music but more or less kept in place, so Richard progressed, pulling Mark to him and, wrapping his arm around Mark's torso, pulling him in so that Mark's body was tight against Richard's. "You're beautiful," Richard whispered Mark's his ear. Richard's depression gave his words some gravity, at least to himself. Even if this was bound to be a fleeting moment, Richard thought, at least he could enjoy it in its immediacy. Mark blushed, smiled, and rocked back and forth with the joy of a child.

"Do you like how I dance?" Marked asked.

"Yeah, it's cute," Richard said, slurring his speech slightly. "Let's leave this place," he whispered. Mark assented, and the two went outside to wander the city streets. As they walked Richard gazed briefly to his right, where he saw the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the distance, hovering like giant twin brothers. He turned back to Mark. "Wait," he said. Mark stopped walking and turned to Richard, who then approached and kissed him. He held Mark for a moment, but then -- "Okay, we can go again." They walked. "I don't want to know anything about you," Richard finally said after a moment of silence.

"Why?"

"I just don't. It'll mean more to me the less I know." It suddenly dawned on Richard that his comment could have been insulting; he frowned. "I'm sorry. I should explain." His cheeks tightened. "It's like -- well first of all, if I don't know anything, then I can fill in all the missing information myself; I can give this moment whatever meaning I want. And if I don't know anything, I don't have to worry about anything. I can just focus on what's going on right now. So. Does that make sense?"

"Yeah, sure. I've had that feeling," Mark said. "But isn't that kind of like misleading yourself?" Richard didn't answer the question; he just frowned. The two of them walked until they reached a small park that was lined with benches. A couple of homeless people were sleeping on a couple of them. Richard's head was hurting, so he proposed that they sit there and relax for a while. They sat, and Richard held Mark, burying his face into him.

"You're beautiful," Richard said again.

"And what if I turn out better than you imagined?" Mark blurted out, in apparent disagreement with Richard's earlier comment. "Don't you think that could happen?" He petted Richard's head and held him by wrapping one arm across his back.

"Yes, it could," Richard said. "It's happened before." He wondered if he should tell Mark how he was in love with someone else, someone who broke up with him four years ago, and that he was there tonight because he was looking for a distraction. He wondered if the experience would then be as meaningful for Mark, but as inebriated as Richard was, he restrained himself because he enjoyed the moment too much. He did not want to ruin it to prove a point. He enjoyed Mark's warmth. "Why do you have to be so cute?" Richard asked.

"Why?"

"Yes, why. You know it hurts my feelings."

"Why's that?"

"It just does. People shouldn't be so cute." Richard dwelled on his childhood, when his father refused to fix their pet cats because he was afraid the veterinary would kill them -- and because it was, in his mind, a futile attempt to control nature. The cats gave birth to kittens -- adorable kittens, lots of kittens, over a period of many years. But because so many were born, so many died through sickness and accidents. Multiple times Richard felt heartbroken in childhood to see kittens that he loved die. At times he would come home from school to find a dead kitten lying on the floor with its body outstretched and its mouth gapping open because it had been in such severe pain in its death. In one particular instance a mother cat \-- one of the many starved by Michael, who couldn't afford to feed all the animals -- cannibalized its offspring, leaving a gory mess of dismembered kitten appendages for Richard to find when he got home. His father, always poorly equipped emotionally, could not bear to pick up the carnage.

As far as Richard was concerned, he would have been fine if Mark disappeared forever the next day. He just wanted to enjoy the moment of being with him without worrying about building a future relationship that he would only lose. Richard's left hand caressed Mark's torso and descended to Mark's inner thigh, which Richard held tightly. "You know I like pictures," Richard told Mark, failing to share his morbid train of thought. "I like them because in the picture the image will stay the same forever, and you don't have to worry about what's inside it because it doesn't move. If you have a picture of a kitten, that kitten will be there forever. It'll never grow old and it will never die because it's always there in that picture. That image is there forever."

"But there are a lot of bad pictures too!" Mark exclaimed.

"I guess, but I think what's really bad is that the good things go away. That's what I hate the most. At least with a picture, you can keep what's good -- which, of course," Richard began in a sudden, drunkenly cheerful tone, "is why I wish I could have a picture of this moment." Richard's cheeks tightened into a mock frown, and he blushed at his own comment. He put his head on Mark's lap and looked up at Mark, who rolled his eyes and smiled.

Chapter IV

Notes slid, groaned, growled, roared, and reverberated through the concert hall. As the four band members ripped through their guitars and percussion instruments on stage it the music seemed at first to be a complete mess. The music seemed to jump from one idea to another. It seemed to go forward, then backward, then forward again. Sometimes the musicians seemed to be ignoring each other, doing their separate things. But as the music progressed it became clear that there was a structure holding all the sounds together, that they weren't random but part of a single message.

After the show Richard traveled from his front row seat in the concert hall to the dressing rooms to meet the musicians. Steve Goodman, the lead singer and a guitarist, saw Richard first and shouted out, "Hey Richard, are you coming with us?"

"Yeah." Richard said. "You guys did a good job tonight." The truth was that he was upset, but he desperately wanted a distraction and knew that these folks could provide some sort of relief. It took all of his energy to be as composed as he was.

"Well Frank's tripping on something right now."

"Oh is that right. How cliché."

"Well, the music's straining him. Performing every night was getting to us." Fortunately they were at the end of their tour, finishing in their home of New York after having traveled across the United States. The other musicians, John Albert and Frank Worszick, appeared, and shortly thereafter Richard and the band all hopped into a rented limo and went to Steve's home, a nice three-bedroom apartment in Chelsea, where Steve was hosting a post-concert party. Richard and the band members arrived first, and as they entered the home Richard instinctively went to the liquor cabinet and helped himself to a vodka tonic.

The guests who came were a curious assortment of college students, businessmen, academics, musicians, artists, and sundry bohemians. Some of them were tripping on their drugs of choice, but those who did not typically stuck to their glasses of wine or cocktails. Depending on who one talked to the conversation could either be profoundly serious, unsettlingly surreal, or frivolous. Richard at first stuck close to Steve, one of the few people there he really knew, but half an hour into the party he was accosted by Charles Blair, a friend of Steve's who owned and ran a small book publishing company. Richard always ran into Charles at Steve's parties and often had mixed feelings of dread and interest whenever they conversed. Charles approached Richard holding in one hand a tiny glass of port and in the other an umbrella which he held like a cane.

"It's good to see you again, my fellow!" Charles beamed with his characteristically rosy, rotund face. His large belly gyrated to the beat of his speech. "I hope you are doing well. Did you go to the concert earlier tonight? Of course I didn't go. It has depressed me so that Steve's sold out to make money in popular music. I can't bear to listen to the stuff. It's all trash, you know."

"No, I didn't know that," Richard replied before sipping his drink. "You know I prefer classical music, but I have nothing against popular music generally. There are artists out there doing decent stuff. I don't think the problems really have anything to do with the genres per se so much as what artists do with what they have. I think Steve's done a good job."

Charles snorted with a contrived air of offense. "Well I don't want to beat up Steve, but what I hold against popular music is that it's intellectually retarded. Let's compare popular music to classical. Classical is like a full meal; popular is like candy. The latter may taste sweet and be thoroughly enjoyable, but really all it is is colored sugar, simple chemical compounds that'll rot your brain if it's all you listen to, and for most people that is all they consume. And what offends me about it all is that the culture industry treats popular music as if it has somehow surpassed classical in quality. No one believes in high and low culture anymore; it's all the same. It's like a golden shower. We're constantly sprayed with this piss, told all the while that it's better than a glass of chardonnay." He sipped his port.

"Uh huh."

"When they blast that trash in clubs and bars it's so the patrons won't feel obliged to talk," Charles mused. "And god forbid they do that! I'd hate to see what would happen, especially since most conversations would be so pathetically inane and petty that the conversers might as well give up on having a meaningful life and shoot themselves."

Richard's friend James entered the apartment. Richard waved to him and received a similar acknowledgement, but James was soon caught up in conversation with another guest, leaving Richard to languish with Charles.

"So I hope you aren't still a fan of Shostakovich," Charles continued.

"What do you have against Shostakovich?"

"Oh God, his music is so masturbatory. He wrote all of his works to show himself off and convey all these cute self-references. It makes me sick. I don't go to a concert hall and subject myself to a musical program as a way of worshipping an artist. It isn't church. I expect intellectually challenging music that I can engage myself with, not a little game whose conclusion is to make me realize how clever the composer is."

Richard was reminded of how a guy he once took home from a bar -- a violin teacher – saw Richard's large CD collection and spotted a recording of Shostakovich's cello concertos. The teacher insisted that they play the first concerto, so Richard did, playing it on his surround-sound stereo, and before he knew it the teacher was playing air cello along with the music, explaining all the technical difficulties in the work and various aspects of how the work was structured. Richard never ended up having sex with him. Rather than bring up this memory to Charles, however, Richard replied, "Well I think a work can still be interesting even if the composer is masturbatory. Some people masturbate well, and you can learn things from how they do it. You love Wagner, don't you?"

"Yes I do," Charles chuckled and smirked, "but you aren't accusing Wagner of being masturbatory, are you?"

"Umm," Richard sipped his drink, "I think you could make the argument."

Steve appeared. "Richard, there's someone I want you to meet. Excuse me, Charles." Steve put his hand around Richard's back and escorted him to his friend. "Richard, this is my friend Diane Mihailis. I knew her from Julliard."

"So this is your friend Richard?" she said as she shook Richard's hand. "Steve has said a lot of good things about you." She leaned against the wall and put the leather boot of her left foot against it, positioning her body so she was directly facing Steve's friend.

"I'm a fan of your album," Richard returned, trying to exchange polite words while being sincere. "You have a way of doing edgy alternative music without sounding depressed or jaded. Your songs are kind of crazy, but you always sound like you're having fun with what you do."

"I do have fun," she said.

"So Diane has been telling me that she wants a new lawyer," Steve said, "and of course I recommended you."

"Yeah the guy I have right now sucks ass and is sucking me dry of cash. I want to lose him." Diane finished off her drink. "He never returns my phone calls but always remembers to mail me the bill for his work. Pisses me off."

"Well I'd be happy to work for you. I could use the work." Richard put his drink down on a nearby table, took out his business card, and gave it to Diane.

She looked at it, said, "Thank you," and put it in her pleather pants pocket. Steve meanwhile went off to make Diane a new drink.

"So why are you an attorney?" Diane asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Steve tells me that you really love music. That you spend all your time listening to music, trying to write music, talking to your musician friends about music. It seems that you should've been a musician instead."

"I love music, but I don't play it. Maybe if some things in my life had worked out differently, I would've. But I never would've made it out of Indiana being a musician."

"Was getting out of Indiana that important to you?"

"Yes. I needed to get away and start a new life."

John, who was nearby, walked over with drink in hand to join the conversation. "Music is not that big a deal, anyway. At the end of the day, all you're doing is building up tension and then releasing it. That's all it is. That's what keep people hooked."

"You're just saying that because you're sick of touring."

"It's true, though. There's a whole science of how to build tension and propel the music forward. Once you've got that, you're set. There's no magic to it."

"The next thing you know you'll be telling us there's no God," Diane said.

Steve returned and handed a new drink to Diane. "Richard, could I talk to you for a minute?" Richard nodded, so the two of them left their friends and went to the other side of the room. "So I got to hang out with your friend Mark the other day," he said. "Have you seen him recently?"

"No. I haven't gone out with Mark yet," Richard said. "I just got back from Indiana. What's up?"

"Well he just recently moved over here from Alabama. Well, ran away. His parents disowned him when they found out that he was gay, so he ran away and took a bus up here and started street hustling. I think he's living with a couple of other hustlers for now. I invited him and his friends to the party, but they said they couldn't make it."

Richard sighed.

Chapter V

"I have a confession to make to you," Michael told his son as he drove him from the Indianapolis airport to his hotel. "I sold my soul to the devil -- well, I didn't sell my soul, but I made a deal with him, and I have been regretting it ever since. But I should tell you because I had been keeping a secret from you for a few years, and I feel terrible about hiding it."

Richard was unmoved by the news. "What is it?"

"I think I used to have cancer. Years ago, while you were out at law school, a bunch of tumors started to appear around my balls, and over time it got worse and worse. I thought I was going to die."

"Why didn't you go to a doctor?"

"When I went to the bathroom I pissed blood and puss, and the pain was just awful. I began to have fevers, and one night when I was in my bed, delirious in pain, I thought to myself, 'If only I could get better, I would lead a life of debauchery!'

"Well, that night I passed out. It was the first time I had slept in days. I didn't wake up until three days later. When I did, I felt a little better. It became less painful, and over time the tumors fell off by themselves. I made a complete recovery. It was like a miracle. But then, after a month or so had passed, I met a strange woman. As I was walking across downtown one night I ran into this big, black woman named Samantha, who was outside closing the sex shop where she worked -- you know, the one not far from the courthouse. She's a very extroverted woman, and when she saw me she said hello and made me talk to her. Of course I wasn't thrilled, but I was polite and talked to her. Next thing I knew, we were dating, but boy, what a mistake that was. She had such a terrible life. A long time ago her husband was found driving cocaine into the country from Mexico, and he got killed in a gunfight with the police. She lost her job as a desk receptionist and ended up at the sex store. And she's been so awful since."

"Why's that?"

"Because the owners of the store are monsters, and she hasn't done anything about it. They had this kid there, some kid who was living there because he was homeless, and one day the owner and his lover -- or whatever -- had their way with the kid in the back room while Samantha worked the front counter, and she didn't do anything about it. I never forgave her for that." Michael then yelled out, "But the point is, I think this is my punishment for promising to lead a debauched life." He burst into tears.

"Uh huh. Dad, I think you'll be all right. No one is making you have sex."

"Oh but it gets worse! It gets so much worse! The other day I was riding my bicycle to the lake, to the state park outside our town. It was getting late, I was on my last lap, when a violent thunderstorm came up. It got very dark, and began to rain -- a very heavy rain -- and a cloud burst. I turned on my bike light -- a flashing red light on my seat \-- one that your mother had sent me -- and took off through the rain back to town. It was very dark and the rain was very heavy, decreasing the visibility. I could barely see the road, and cars coming up behind me would, without that light, have no idea that I was on the road. I was thanking God for that strobe light, praising your mother for mailing it to me, and not long after I left the park, the light disappeared. Perhaps it fell off. I don't know. Of course, it had been on my bike for over a year -- never once got loose -- but the first time I really needed it, counted on it, depended on it to save my life, it disappeared. I know it happened soon, because the first vehicle that came up behind me was a white van, came very close to me as it passed (nothing unusual) but then it pulled into a driveway, waited for me to pass, and when I did, backed out and followed me, staying a little behind me -- lighting my way and protecting me from other overtaking cars. Of course, at the time, I did not know why the van was doing that, since I still assumed the light was flashing, and that I was visible. Anyway, the van followed me the entire lake road, even stayed with me as I rode the shoulder of the highway. They stayed with me until I passed the interstate intersection.

"When they did, I was once more riding in the dark, in a very heavy downpour, but I was strangely happy -- perhaps because I was going so fast. Thought at first that the wind was responsible, that it was pushing me at great speed. But seeing the way the raindrops were falling in the light of the headlights of passing cars, I realized the wind was from the north and I was traveling east. There had to be another explanation for my great speed -- and I was really moving fast. Finally it occurred to me, that my body was scared by the darkness and the constant lightning flashes, and the thunder, and was pumping enormous qualities of adrenaline into my system -- that I was on an adrenaline high -- and was in a state of euphoria. I felt strong and powerful and happy, when I should have been miserable. It was, after all, dark. The rain was heavy, the road was covered with water. Every time a car passed me I was engulfed in a huge splash wave. The shoulder was covered with water, so my rear wheel was spinning out a stream of cold water onto the center of my naked back. Lightning was flashing. But I felt truly alive.

"Anyway, as I was speeding up the long hill, a vehicle came up behind me, and I braced myself for the splash wave, but the vehicle did not pass me, just rode along side me, keeping pace. I looked over at it, but it was so dark that all I could make out was that it was a pickup truck and that the passenger side window was open. At first I thought they were going to offer me a ride, then thought they were just riding beside me to furnish light and protection, the way the van did. But after a few minutes, I heard a feminine voice calling out to me -- calling out in a seductive tone, was very alluring. I looked back at the truck again, and just then there was a series of lightning flashes, and in the truck I could see a teenage girl, with her body turned directly into the window, and she was topless, and was holding her bare teenage breasts in her hands, and they were full and beautiful, and she started bouncing them up and down, and then leaned out the window with the breasts hanging there in the rain, wet, and glistening silver white in the lightning. And I was filled with incredible longing -- and at that moment the driver put his foot to the gas pedal, and I was immediately engulfed in the splash wave, and when I could see again, the truck had disappeared over the crest of the animal shelter hill, and I was alone in the dark.

"I kept thinking of the girl and her young beauty the rest of way into town. The town had streetlights, so I could see a little better, but with the heavy rain, visibility was still poor. When the town 'improved' that street into town a few years ago, they failed to install storm drains. Even in a light rain, the street is flooded, with the water gushing down the southbound lane. That night, in the heavy cloud burst, the street was like an Alpine torrent, with the water roaring down the hill six or seven inches deep. There was no way I could ride through that current. I had to ride in the center of the street, close to the center line, and as I did, I was thanking God that I had that flashing rear reflector, praising your mother for sending it, because at least with it, cars might have a chance to see me. Of course the flashing light had long before disappeared. So I drove up the hill, almost invisible to cars coming up behind me -- and many did. And when they did, I had to stay in the center of the street. There was no way I could move over to the side of the road. I could not ride across that raging current; it would have toppled the bike. So if a car wanted to get pass me, it had to pass using the oncoming lane -- and many did. Of course once I got up to the top of the hill, I could turn off, and travel the back streets, streets without any traffic and so got safely home.

"Once I jumped off my bike, threw open the garage door, and pushed the bike in out of the rain, I immediately noticed that the flashing light was gone, realized that it had probably fallen off out at the lake, that I have been riding with no rear reflector, that cars had not been able to see me until they were almost bumping my rear wheel, that I had been in great danger, that I had been riding with Death at my side. That thought made me immediately think of the bare breasts, and immediately I realized that the teenage girl was Marguerita, that I had been reliving one of the final scenes from the oratorio Faust, by Berlioz, the scene in which Faust is galloping through the night, through the wind, through the rain and lightening, and Satan is riding beside him, and soaring up from behind is Death, ready to cast Faust down into the pits of hell, while Faust is lost in hopeless passion, obsessed with the image of Marguerita, with the image of youth, and beauty, and sexual pleasure. I am that Faust. Can there be a clearer reminder of my own Faustian bargain?"

Richard sighed.

Amid tears, Michael tried to change the subject. "Now I should warn you that my place isn't looking too great right now."

"I know. That's why I got a hotel. You know part of the reason I'm out here is because I want to clean up your house."

"No! Please don't!" Michael's mouth opened to give a soundless groan. "No! I don't get to see you often, and I was hoping we could just hang out and have a good time. Maybe ride the bicycles that I have in my garage. I don't want to be spending time doing chores. Don't be messing around the house."

"It's too late. I've already called the renovators."

"What!" Michael screamed. "You got renovators!" He pulled onto the side of the street and stopped the car. He looked at his son. "You can't just do that! Why didn't you talk to me about it first?"

"Because I knew if I told you you would just complain and say anything you could possibly think up to try and make me stop."

"But you just can't do that. Don't you care about my feelings, about what I think? You know it isn't your house!"

"No. You're crazy. I'm not going to let you destroy yourself. That house is falling apart. If I let you continue to live as you are the city is going to condemn your house. Your neighbors have been complaining about it. And if you get thrown out of your house I'm not going to be taking care of you."

"No, I can't. You can get a taxicab." Michael stopped the car, got out, opened the trunk, took out Richard's luggage, and put it on the sidewalk. Richard, unsurprised by his father's anger, quietly got out of the car. Michael hopped back into his car and drove off. Richard walked with his luggage until he could find a convenience store where he could call for a cab. During the ride Richard thought of his mother Jacqueline, who, after a marriage of twenty years, ended her relationship with Michael. Referring to Michael's madness, she once told a close friend of hers, "Everything I had worried about when I married Michael -- all of it came true," and yet for several years after the divorce she stayed close to Michael and took care of him in subtle ways. She paid the rest of the mortgage to his home and gave him a small monthly allowance, since Michael was too maladjusted to work and make money for himself. When Richard got a job Jacqueline moved back to Washington, DC, her hometown, to retire and spend time with her old friends, and in the process she put her son in charge of his father. Richard gave Michael an allowance, but he was too busy to look after him for any length of time -- at least not for more than one week every year.

As the hotel appeared a dark gloom overcame him. His heart sank as he imagined his last lover having sex with another man. He wanted to disappear, to escape from his thoughts and concerns, and he hated himself because it all made him feel so helpless. He prided himself in being strong-willed. At least he could hope to accomplish something for his father. Fixing a house is easy, he thought, because it's all wood and no feelings.

Chapter VI

John sat in front of his laptop, tweaking the songs that the band had recently recorded. He needed to make sure that the sounds were clear and balanced and that the songs maintained the same general volume. He had spent the whole day working on this, secluded in his home office, where he would occasionally look out his window or have a snack – in this case, a bag of potato chips – to take a break.

At around 7pm he received a telephone call from Richard. "John, how are you doing?"

"I'm all right. Just working. What's up?"

"Oh, well, to be honest, I saw Patrick today, and he said that you two had broken up. I wanted to call and see how you were doing."

"Oh, right. Well, we decided to stop seeing each other."

"You did?"

"Yeah. He's sweet and all, and I thought we hit it off all right, but I don't see it working."

"Why not?"

"Well, all our schedules aren't very compatible. I work a lot, and he's a flight attendant, and it isn't easy finding a time when we're both free. And I have to admit, I'm a little embarrassed about his job. If I'm at a party and someone asks me what my boyfriend does, I don't want to have to tell them that he's a flight attendant. It would be like having a boyfriend who dresses up as a clown and makes balloon animals at children's birthday parties."

"Well I'm sorry it didn't work out," Richard said.

"Yeah, thank you for setting us up, though. He's a nice guy."

"Do you think you'll ever hit it off with someone?"

"You know, I really don't know. I really consider work my first priority, and it's hard to find someone for a relationship when I have so much going on with the band. If at some point I run into someone, that would be great, but it's not something I'm really looking for."

"That sounds like half of New York." Richard sighed. "How's the album coming?"

"All right. Sometimes it's a little frustrating, though. We could be making so much more money than we are, but Steve's songwriting is so odd. You know, when it comes to pop music there's like a set number of conventions that if you follow will make a popular song. It's really not hard at all. There are books on it. As long as you make some good lyrics to go along with them and play the songs well, it's not a big deal. We have the talent to do it. But he doesn't see it that way."

"Well it's not like you guys aren't selling any albums."

"No. But I'm just saying."

After the phone call John focused on the music again, but rather than tinker with the band's album he pulled up a software program he was developing. The software computed musical scores into algorithms that then created their own pieces of music. All John needed to do was plug a few popular music songs into the software, and the software could create an endless supply of songs in the same style, done so stylistically similar to the originals that, if a person did not know better, one would not be able to tell that they were not from the same artist.

John found the software to be a very efficient way to compose music, much better than having to sit around all day, thinking about composing oneself. Computers are much smarter than people, John decided, and so why put himself through the agony of thinking when the computer could do it for him? He could never tell his colleagues about the software, though, because he knew from talking with them that they would never approve. They had grand ideas about music, about its ability to speak to the soul, but John saw this as nonsense. So, when a computer generated a song that he thought could be used for the band, he would present the song to them without mentioning how he composed it. He also sold some of the songs to other artists who used them for their own albums. It provided a nice income that John could keep all for himself.

Chapter VII

Shortly after work Richard went to a bar in the East Village neighborhood, a kind of poorly lit dive featuring the aesthetics of wood paneling and brick, to meet Mark and his friends. They had not arrived yet, however, so he found himself sitting by himself on a bar stool next to the counter having a vodka tonic. Richard loosened his tie and took off his suit jacket as a couple of lesbians at a booth close to him chatted, and he noticed that one of them began talking about his zodiac sign, the Sagittarius, and what it signified. He wanted to eavesdrop on the conversation, but his concentration was interrupted by a shabby, forlorn man drinking not far from him on the bar counter who introduced himself.

"What do you do?" Richard asked.

"I play the organ and piano. Freelance. Do it around the city."

"Oh really? I'm an entertainment lawyer. I represent music artists and the like."

"Go figure. Well maybe you could help me with a case."

"Oh yeah?" Richard said. It was difficult enough for him to be there, waiting to meet strangers he felt like he already distrusted; he did not want to be engaging this poor eccentric.

"Yeah. Would you like to hear it? I've been trying to get a lawyer to take it, but I don't have any money and I can't get any to take it pro bono. I want to sue the government because they gave me the same social security number as a fellow in Idaho. I wouldn't really care about that, but this Ohio guy --"

"You mean Idaho?"

"Yeah, whatever. This Idaho guy has the same name as me."

"Interesting." Richard sipped his drink.

"Yeah. The problem is that the guy is a creep, and everyone thinks he's me. He's gone bankrupt three times and has terrible credit, but because we have the same name and social security number all the creditors think I'm the same person as this guy. So I can't get a mortgage, can't get a loan, can't get a credit card. So I want to sue the government for screwing my life over by giving me that social security number."

"I see."

"So will you take up my case?"

"Well that sounds like a field of law that I don't normally practice. I'd probably have to refer you to someone else."

"Could you do that? Because I really need to get someone to take my case. They're all ruining my life out there." Richard gave the man his business card. "Thank you. You know I have a theory for what they're doing to me. Do you want to hear what I'd call it? I'd call it 'deprivation of prosperity.' Sounds good, doesn't it? It sounds like a legal theory, doesn't it?"

"Sounds nice, but I've never heard that before, and courts don't just adopt phrases like that on a whim, you know."

"But it sounds good, right?"

"It sounds nice," Richard reflected in amusement, "but it could mean a lot of different things. If it were a real legal theory it could mean that anyone who wasn't able to get wealthy could sue someone in court."

The stranger frowned. "You know it's not like it's my fault for being so poor. I went into the military after I graduated from college and served in the Grenada and Gulf Wars. Only reason why I quit was because I was hit by schrapnel from an exploding truck in Iraq and had to get a medical discharge. And when I got out I discovered that I had terrible credit because some guy in Iowa had the same social security number as me. I've never even taken out a loan before! I never had a credit card or a mortgage because I was in the military!"

"That's terrible."

"Damn right it's terrible! They ruined my life!"

At that moment Mark, his friends Joe and Sam, and an elderly man, Roger, entered the bar. Joe and Sam were roughly of the same height, taller than Mark, with dark tans and lean, toned bodies that showed through their tight, brightly colored clothing. Roger, on the other hand, looked tired, greasy, and as if he could weigh more than the two of them combined. Richard noticed them immediately and, completely forgetting the stranger, approached them. "Hey, how are you?" Richard said, embracing Mark. Mark introduced Richard to his friends.

"Joe, don't I recognize you?" Richard asked with a coy smile.

"Do you?"

"Yeah. You've done porn, right? I'm sure I recognize your face."

Joe laughed a little. "Yeah. Not recently, though. It's a lot of work and I wasn't up for doing it very long."

"Really?"

"Yeah. It's not as exciting as you might think it is – not nearly as hot and heavy as they try to make it on screen – more like having someone barking orders to you, 'stand here, move there, go faster,' and stuff. I haven't been in a video since I moved to New York."

"Aww. Well I'll have to look up your videos sometime. It's been a while since I last saw them. What were their names, again?"

"Umm, Peachy is one of them. The others are Lies and Lying Down and Used to Loving."

"So you and Steve went out the other day," Richard said nonchalantly to Mark.

"We did! He's a really cool guy. We went bar crawling with my friends, and he introduced me to some people he knows. He really gets around, doesn't he?" Mark hopped about. "He reminds me a lot you."

"Oh, how so?" asked Richard.

"Oh, umm, good things. But he's pretty uptight for a band member."

"Frankly," said Roger, leaning into Richard, "I think Steve takes himself way too seriously. He's a fucker. There are a million albums out there. I have thousands in my home. But he thinks his music is so important. Who does he think he is? It's just another album."

"But anyway," Mark said, "so, I wanted to let you know that I'm living with Joe and Sam."

"You are?"

"Hey, what about my case!" the stranger yelled.

"Yeah. I found them just a couple of days after I moved to New York. They've been real sweethearts. And they have such a huge television!"

"Well you could have always stayed at my place." Richard could not help but think how Mark lacked a Southern accent for someone who was supposed to be from Alabama.

"That's all right. I was already living with them for over a week when I met you."

Richard turned to Joe and Sam. "Are you two together?"

"Yeah," Sam said, "We've been together for fifteen years."

"That's a long time!" Richard exclaimed with abrupt, forced, gaiety. "Congratulations! When's your anniversary?"

"Oh, I don't really know. It's not like we got married or anything," Joe said.

"Well when did you two start dating?"

"Hey, what about my fucking case, you fucker!" the stranger yelled.

"Well, I met Sam at Roxy sometime around July. It was a lot like how we met Mark, actually \-- we met him there. But anyway, I was young, had just run away, was trying to make it on my own, and I ran into Sam, and he was very giving. He set me up and established me here. We moved to Los Angeles for a while to do porn, and when we got sick of that we came back here. We've been together since."

"Oh that's nice. What do you do?"

"Uh, I design furniture."

"Ah." Richard sipped his drink. He turned to Mark. "Yeah, Steve was telling me that you had run away from Alabama."

"Yeah I did. My parents weren't happy with me being gay. Actually they were pretty upset. My father is a Pentecostal minister, and he considered it an embarrassment to his family. I wasn't even going to tell them about it, but my mom caught me fooling around with a boy from high school I had a crush on, and when they told me I could never see him again I just decided to tell them. They wanted to send me to therapy because they thought I was sick -- said it was either that or that they'd disown me, and there was just no way I was going to do that \-- get sent to a funny farm -- so I took some of their money and came up here."

"Are you worried about them coming after you?"

"Not really. I'm 18 years old, so it's not like they own me -- and honestly, I don't think they would want to look for me at this point anyway."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Richard said.

"Don't worry about it." Mark blushed and looked down at the floor. "I was afraid to tell you after what you said at the club when I met you. It's not a big deal."

"Don't say that. I think it's pretty serious if you had to run away from your parents like that. It's not like I wouldn't have helped you if I knew you were in trouble. I shouldn't have told you what I did. I've just been having a lot on my own mind lately."

"I should've run away from them a long time ago," Mark said. "My father was always beating me and my siblings within an inch of our lives. If the house wasn't perfectly clean, he'd beat us. If we messed up with his newspaper, he'd beat us. If we didn't do any of our chores, he'd beat us. Sometimes he'd just beat us because he was in a bad mood."

"That sounds awful."

"Yeah. It got so bad that at one point we kids were all begging my mom to divorce him, but she wouldn't do it."

"So you're getting along well with Joe and Sam?"

"We're taking care of him all right," Sam said.

"Yeah they're helping me out," Mark said. "They helped me buy all the clothing that I'm wearing right now." Richard noted to himself that Mark looked quite flamboyant; he was wearing blue jeans so tight they formed a bulge at his crotch, and he had on a tight purple and black striped button-down shirt from which Richard could also notice Mark's protruding nipples.

"Isn't he so cute?" Roger said as he then caressed, pinched, and twisted Mark's left nipple, doing what some call a "nipple cripple" or "titty twister."

"Stop that!" Mark said, batting Roger's hand away.

"So Roger," Richard interjected, "how do you know these folks?"

"I'm just a good friend," he replied with a shit-face grin. "I've known Joe and Sam for years."

"Super."

"Roger sells antique furniture," Sam added.

"Oh well then," Richard said, "I'm sure you and Sam must have a lot to talk about."

"What do you mean?" Roger asked.

"Uh, well because Joe designs furniture."

"Oh right."

"So is this a store that you have?" Richard asked Roger.

"Yes, it's on A Avenue. I'm always looking out for good furniture."

Sam snorted.

"You know I don't know a thing about furniture," Mark said.

"Neither do I," said Richard. "I know what I like, but I'm not good at explaining my tastes. I guess I like stuff that's comfortable and looks simple. I'm not into anything flashy or eccentric -- usually care more about making it match the paintings and posters I buy, more than anything."

"Ah that's so unfortunate!" Roger exclaimed. "Furniture is such a wonderful thing to think about. I love furniture so much. It's what makes a home, you know \-- gives a sense of order and stability to life. I'd hate to live in a home that didn't have great furniture; it would give me angst \-- the chaos, the mess, the poor taste. If I could I would obliterate my mind with furniture."

"Fascinating," Richard said. Mark smiled at him and rubbed his back for a few seconds. Richard was not sure what to think. "Aren't you guys going to have anything to drink? This is a bar, after all. Mark, would you like a Coke or something?" Mark assented, so Richard bought him the Coke and got himself another vodka tonic. The others declined to drink.

When Mark got his drink he told Richard, "The guys were thinking about going back to Roger's place and partying for a little while. Would you like to come?"

"Aww," Richard said, "I would, but I was hoping that I could just spend some time with you catching up on stuff."

Joe added, "Well maybe the rest of us could go to Roger's place now, and Mark can come over after you guys are done." So after some forced pleasantries were exchanged Joe, Sam, and Roger left. Richard encouraged Mark to sit on the stool, so he did. Unfortunately, the stranger from earlier was still there, and although he did not talk to Richard now he was still glaring at him. Mark noticed this and chuckled.

"So what's up with that Roger character?" Richard said. "What was up with that nipple play?"

Mark laughed and said, "Yeah well."

"Steve tells me that you've been hustling the streets. Is he one of your clients?" Mark jumped slightly in his seat and didn't say anything, so Richard just sipped his drink and looked at the wood paneling of the counter.

"Yeah he is. I'm sorry!"

"Why are you sorry?"

"I don't know."

"Mark, I wish you wouldn't prostitute yourself. It's really unsafe."

"I know."

Richard frowned.

"Have you ever fallen in love?" Mark asked.

"Yes."

"Well, I have a secret. I think I've fallen in love with Joe."

"You have?"

"Yes. He's such a sweetheart." Mark smiled. "Like when I came out here I had no idea what I'd have to put up with. All I knew was that I had to get away from my parents. So I wasn't crazy about prostituting myself. Joe and Sam, they're into that, and of course they got me into that too because they knew I needed to make some money, but I know Joe knows I'm not really into this.

"The other day we all went with Roger to a bathhouse, and we were all sitting in a bath all naked and everything, and Roger was starting to have his way with me, playing with my dick and my balls and kissing me and stuff, and I so wasn't into it. So Joe saved me by playing with Roger and getting Roger to mess around with him instead. I knew he did that to cover my ass. He's always doing stuff like that.

"And today he bought me a rose!"

"He did?"

"Yes!" Mark beamed. "I thought that was so sweet."

"What does Sam think about it?"

"About what? About me? Or about the rose?"

"Well, the rose. It sounds like Joe likes you, too."

"I'm -- I'm not sure what Sam thinks."

"How close are Joe and Sam?"

"Oh I don't know. I don't think they spend a lot of time together."

Richard ordered another vodka tonic. When he received it he turned his attention back to Mark. "Well I don't know Joe and Sam very well, but it sounds like they're tired of each other. A lot of times when gay couples lose the romantic chemistry they start having threesomes and open relationships to try to keep themselves entertained."

"Yeah I can see that," Mark said. "But why wouldn't they just break up then?"

"Sometimes because they've convinced themselves that they'll never be able to settle down with anyone else. It brings stability, security -- lets them know that they have someone at the end of the day if everything else fails. Sometimes too it's because they have all their finances tied up and it would be a nightmare breaking them apart. Sometimes there's just no motivation to change the status quo." Richard sipped his drink. "Do you want them to break up?"

Mark blushed. "Would it make me a bad person if I did?"

"Not really." Richard chugged the rest of his drink. "Well it's getting late and I have work tomorrow. It was good catching up with you. If you ever need anything -- money, a place to stay, whatever -- just give me a call. Just promise me that you won't get yourself into trouble."

"All right."

The two of them got up, embraced, and left the bar. Mark got on the subway, leaving Richard to go home by himself. It was dark outside but the streets were still packed with vehicular and pedestrian traffic. As he walked Richard took out his cell phone and called his friend Steve. He mentioned his rendezvous with Mark and Mark's friends, and he asked about Roger. "Do you know anything about his antique furniture store?"

"Yeah," Steve said. "I know where it is. We can go sometime if you want."

Chapter VIII

With long, greasy hair, large, thick glasses, a fashion sense that consisted of sweat pants and shirts, and the charisma of a refrigerator, Richard did not make for a popular child in his hometown. One day Richard walked home from school, and along the way a classmate ran him down with his bicycle, knocking Richard into the dirt. The kid took a good, proud look at Richard, scraped and smeared with dirt, and chuckled. "That's what you get, you stupid faggot," and with that he rode off. Richard absorbed the pain, picked himself up, and walked the rest of the way home.

Richard stormed into the kitchen, where Michael quietly washed the dishes and looked out the window to see a gutted deer hanging from a tree across the street. When Richard finished recounting what happened to him, Michael heaved a long sigh, breathing out cigarette smoke, and mumbled with his cigarette bobbing up and down in his mouth, "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Could you do something about it?" Richard asked.

"Like what?"

"Call his parents? Call the police? I don't know! He needs to be punished!"

"What would be the point?"

"What do you mean, what would be the point?" Richard said. "Kids are not going to stop beating me up if they aren't punished for it!"

"That's how kids are, "Michael said. "Get used to it."

"Get used to it?" Richard screamed. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"Look, life is tough. Look at that deer out there."

"That's no excuse!" Richard raged. "Jesus Christ. The problem is that you are weak!" With that Richard stormed out of the house and walked back to the street where the kid struck Richard. The kid could not be seen, so Richard wandered up and down various streets, at first randomly but then more methodically. When he approached a nearby park he saw the kid sitting on top of a picnic table smoking a cigarette. His bicycle leaned against the table.

Richard ran up to the kid. At first the kid did not even notice, but when he saw Richard running toward him he smiled to see the greasy hair, dirt, and scraped arms flying everywhere. It surprised him when Richard sprung on him and slammed him against the picnic table. The kid first fell on his back, but Richard grabbed him by a shoulder and an arm and spun him around so that the kid's face slammed on the table. Richard pinned the kid. The kid gave a nervous laugh and let a tear fall down one of his eyes out of sheer pain.

"Tell me that you're sorry!" Richard screamed. The kid only laughed, so Richard pulled the kid up a few inches off the table and then slammed his face against it again with all his strength. "Say you're sorry!" Richard screamed.

"You are going to be in so much trouble," the kid said. That was not the response Richard wanted. He picked the kid up and slammed him against the table a couple more times. The kid's nose bled, and he had scraps all along his face. Richard was going to slam him a third time when the kid finally yelled out, "All right! I'm sorry! Jesus Christ!" Richard let him go, and just as he did the kid tried to retaliate, but Richard quickly gained the advantage and threw him against the picnic table yet again.

"I don't think you're really sorry," Richard said.

"No, really, I'm sorry. Just let me go."

"No." Richard picked the kid up and slammed him against the table again. "This time I'm not going to let you go until you cry. Until you really cry."

"What?" This time the kid really did sound horrified. Richard picked the kid up and threw him against the table again. "Aww shit," the kid said. He was hurting. And in fact he did begin to cry. What terrified him more than anything was that it wouldn't end, that Richard would keep doing this to him again and again. Richard listened to the kid whimper. The kid's muscles relaxed under Richard's grip and sank into the table, and with that Richard let him go. The kid stayed calmly on the table as Richard left the park and walked home.

When Richard returned to his house he found his father watching the television. Richard reported to Michael what he had done, and Michael asked, "Are you happy now?"

"Yes," Richard responded. "I'm quite satisfied."

Chapter IX

Richard and Steve approached Roger's furniture store, a kind of boutique sheltered on the first floor of an old office building and spilling out onto the avenue. The two front windows flanking the entrance offered a view of two separate displays of gilded furniture and tapestries arranged to resemble miniature, gaudy, late 19th century aristocratic dens. Richard personally considered it in poor taste but also remarked to himself that the displays mirrored his friend James' own sensibilities for interior decoration.

Customers suffocated and drowned in the stuffy, cramped, and claustrophobic store. Richard could hardly spot the other customers among the stacks of couches, chairs, desks, drawers, lamps, china, crystal, chandeliers, and statues. Steve planted himself and his friend in the middle of the store and waited. Several minutes passed uneventfully, with only the modest rustlings of a couple of customers, but in a sudden moment Roger came with a big grin, walking towards Steve and Richard from the back of the store, almost magically, as if he instantly grew out of the froth of the goods. "Greetings! How are you doing?

"We're doing all right," Steve replied. "Richard wanted to see your store, so I thought I'd take him over here." Roger shook hands with Steve and gave Richard a sidelong glance as Steve spoke. Richard remained quiet.

"Oh well isn't that nice. I'm glad to see you care so much about me," Roger said. "I don't suppose you're actually going to buy anything here, are you? Somehow I got the impression when we met that you wouldn't jive with my taste in furniture, since you don't have any yourself -- taste, that is." Richard's left eyebrow curled. "Oh don't worry. I'm just joking. Would you like me to give you a tour?"

"Is the rest of the store any different from where we are right now?" Steve asked.

"Well the back of the store is where I fuck my employees when I'm not at work." Roger laughed. "Of course I'm kidding. I'm too delicate to fuck anyone anywhere than on my waterbed -- or at least not anywhere that doesn't have water involved. I only have my desk and file cabinets back there, and that just won't do."

"I hear you're a fan of bathhouses," Richard remarked.

"Why yes I am," Roger said excitedly. "Why, did your little boy Mark tell you about our excursion there the other day? I know you're sweet on him, you little bastard. You know I'm not too fond of him. He never does what I want him to do. If he keeps up that attitude I'm going to stop spending any more on him."

"I don't think he feels comfortable around you."

"That's not the point!" Roger suddenly screamed. "I pay good money for him to feel comfortable around me! That's what we call work! I don't care about what he thinks! I care what about what he does!" And at this point he began pounding on the top of a chest of drawers next to him in time with his speech so that he accented each word with a wood-rattling thud. "If he doesn't do what I want him to do he can go to hell!" And then he recomposed himself. "But it's not as if it's your fault. There's no reason why I should share my grief with you."

"So how long have you had this store?" Richard asked. He an elderly and frail customer who, from a corner of the store, eavesdropped on the conversation and stole horrified glances at the men as she browsed.

"Over twenty years. You were just a baby when I got this place."

"You must love the work to be committed to it for so long."

Roger laughed. "It has nothing to do with love. I make a shitload of money out of this place. It's a job I know how to do. I go to the auction for some dead old lady whose estate was eaten up by creditors who want nothing to do with her furniture other than sell it off, and I buy as much of that trash as I can. I'll tell you, I hate auctions. I hate the competition because I don't like to lose. I'd rather just chop the heads off of the other auctioneers with a machete and plunder the place, gore-splattered furniture and all, but in lieu of that I at least get the satisfaction of beating them out in the contest." Roger looked at the elderly lady as she left the store. "But surely you must know what it is like, being a lawyer."

"Well that's unfortunate," Richard said. "When we talked the other day you seemed really excited by furniture."

"Oh I am. I wouldn't know what to do if I didn't have furniture. Do you know what civilization would be like if we didn't have furniture? We'd be animals. We'd be eating and working and sleeping on the floor. We wouldn't have any place to put our papers or clothes. I find it painful to think that there was ever a time when humans went without furniture. I try to keep myself from thinking about those sorts of things."

"I take it you aren't big on camping," Steve joked.

"No. I'll have plenty of time to bond with nature once I'm dead."

"Well your store sure makes me feel alive," Richard said. Privately, he remembered the joy of hiking through the forested mountains, where the wind would murmur through the trees in which his father's hometown, a village of a couple hundred people, nestled. Richard suffered the joy of a Romantic out there. At night he went outside so that he could see the Milky Way spread across the sky. Once while he hiked out there he saw the Hale-Bopp comet blazing with quiet celestial stillness, and its beauty touched Richard as if it were a love letter from God. He could never live there, but its magically mysterious charm enchanted him.

"That's cute," Roger said. "My store is closing in about an hour. I need to get to the back so that I can start getting ready. Feel free to stay here and browse, if you like. You might actually buy something. Good day." With that he exchanged some brief and cordial parting words with Steve and left him with Richard.

Chapter X

Diane sat across from Richard in his office. "So I did some research on those lyrics you want to use," Richard said. "The songs you took those lyrics from were written in the 1930s, and although the estate that owns them claims to own the copyrights I found out that they didn't do everything they need to maintain them, so those songs have fallen into the public domain. Basically, this means that you don't have to pay them any royalties."

"Well that's good!" Diane said.

"I've written a letter addressed to the estate explaining my research and the conclusion I have reached." He took out the letter and showed it to Diane. "Take a look at it, and if it looks good to you I'll send it to my paralegal to prepare and send out by certified mail."

Diane read through it and looked up, nodding. "This looks good. Send it out."

"Is there anything else?" Richard asked.

"As far as legal issues go, yes, but I was wondering if there was something else you could help me out with."

"What is it?"

"Well," she looked at the floor and pulled a string of her hair behind an ear, "I have a niece, and she and her parents own a cat that they've had forever. A while ago the cat had kittens, and since her parents didn't want to take care of them my brother-in-law dumped the kittens in a sack and threw it into a river. It was supposed to be a secret from my niece, but I guess she must have known and followed him, because she jumped into the river and got the sack. Most of the kittens had already died, but she found one alive and took it back home and let the family cat nurse the kitten in her bedroom closet. My sister finally found it weeks later and got my niece to tell her what happened. Anyway, long story short, I have the kitten now, but I already have four cats and they don't like the kitten and I can't have a fifth cat, so I was wondering if you would be willing to adopt it."

"Did Steve put you up to this?"

"No. Why do you ask?" Diane blushed.

"I don't know."

"You could come over and take a look at him."

"I don't know."

"Do you have work to do?"

"Eh." Richard looked at the files on his desk. "Nothing that has to be done today."

"Then come. It won't take all day."

Richard sighed. "Fine! Let's go."

They got up and took a taxi to Diane's apartment in the Upper East Side. When they reached the apartment Diane gave Richard a brief tour and then took him to the bedroom. The tabby kitten laid on its back on the ruffled bed, its tiny paws hanging on the air. When Diane and Richard approached it stared at them with its tiny, round, yellow eyes.

"It's so cute!" Richard said. "Is it a boy or a girl?"

"A boy," Diane said. Richard petted the kitten's head with one of his fingers as it looked back at him. After a few minutes it moved its paws a little and started to purr. "He's old enough to eat on his own," she continued, "but he's not larger enough to get in a litter box yet. I've been trying to get him to go on some newspapers, but eh."

"Does he have a name?"

"Not yet."

"Well then I'll call him Ulysseus."

"Does that mean you'll keep him?"

Chapter XI

Most of Richard's grandparents immigrated to the United States from Germany shortly after World War I, and as strong adherents to the culture that they fled they raised their children to love all things German. Michael read the German philosopher Schopenhauer in the author's original language, he listened to Wagner, and he kept a small bust of Beethoven on the piano in the living room. Most of the prints that he owned and kept on the walls were of thoroughly disturbing depictions of gritty and pathetic mortals suffering before fearsomely admonishing angels. Dürer figured prominently. Aesthetically his home was a microcosm of a specific kind of Germanism, of a variety that thrived in the 19th century and valued asceticism.

Richard rebelled against his father not by rejecting Germanism but by adopting a different variety. He fell in love with Nietzsche, Richard Strauss, and the German Expressionism that was to be found in painters like Franz Marc and the early Kandinsky. He saw his father's sensibilities as essentially nihilistic and unreflectively selfish, the latter particularly because Michael seemed to take so much pride in his despair. Michael often described his misery as being fundamentally inescapable, as if despair existed for everyone in some grand metaphysical sense, but to Richard Michael was simply enjoying his misery too much to escape it -- and moreover, was too egomaniacal to recognize that some people might see things differently, and came up with grand philosophical arguments to assign the blame for his attitude outside of himself.

Michael once relayed to Richard a story by Gottfried Keller that he once read years ago. As the story goes, one day the residents of Purgatory went to Heaven to perform a festival concert in celebration for all those people who were good enough to become angels when they died. The music that the Purgatorians played comprised of tunes that they knew from living on Earth, and of course the tunes all sounded infinitely inferior to the music that everyone in Heaven routinely heard; but when the angels heard those songs the citizens of Heaven bawled and wept and carried on uncontrollably, because the music reminded them of all their experiences from their past lives. God had to storm in and throw thunderbolts to drive sense back to them, but the point of the whole experience was that even if one's life could be better, even if things could improve, Paradise is always right now. The angels did not know it while they were mortals on Earth, but it is always with us; it always has been.

In some ways Richard appreciated the story. For those people who have suffered through much of their lives, he thought, this story might show them a way to color meaning into their difficulties. But the downside is that it could also make people nostalgic for pain. Individuals who believe in the imminence of Paradise may lose motivation to improve their lot, since there is nothing greater to achieve than the present; worse, they might seek out the miserable existences they lived before and grow self-absorbed in their feelings, like Richard's father Michael. That is why Richard in the end could not accept the story. The story stuck with him, and at times he debated with his father about it.

"Consider two scenarios," Richard once told his father. In the first scenario the first person is absolutely in love with the second, and in that maddening love that person believes he can see the whole universe in his love; but rather than express that love in acts that communicate or express that view to the object of his love, our person crumbles under the weight of those feelings and shrinks back from acting on them. "It is good enough that I can at least be here and be aware of my love's beauty," he convinces himself. He contents himself with at least bearing witness to Paradise.

But in the second scenario our lover does more, going out of his way to try to emanate the kind of sublimity that he sees in his loved one. He writes to his loved one gushing love letters and embarrassingly saccharine poems, he pays a skywriter to convey his love with a smoke-written message a thousand feet high, he works and saves up money so he can buy his love a thoughtful gift, and so on. He may even try to improve his own well-being as a way to prove how his witness to the heavenliness of the other has made him a better person; or to evoke in the other the feelings he has through his crafted virtues.

When Michael heard Richard's two scenarios he laughed. "You talk about them as if there is a choice between the two," he said. "There isn't. Look, there are two types of people in the world. There are people who build, and there are people who decay. They don't choose to be who they are; they just are."

"I don't agree. I don't think it works like that. No one is fundamentally anything. You aren't some puppet that fate is controlling; you're part of the world." That was one of the major differences between Richard and Michael. "People are who they are because they came from somewhere, and I think it's possible for a person to escape from where he came." Michael doubted his assertions, but Richard counted on them.

Chapter XII

Steve prepared some hummus, pita bread, assorted cheeses, salmon, and fruit. His party would begin in an hour. Richard, gazing upon the food with a vodka tonic in hand, told Steve, "I'm always surprised that you never bother to get catering. You know you could easily afford it."

"I know," Steve said, "but it's not my style. l wanted you to come here early so I could tell you about Roger's party. It was really something else."

"Did you go alone?"

"I went with the band. He lives in a big townhouse in Greenwich, and when we entered the lobby the first thing I noticed was a large, framed photograph of Ronald Reagan with the message, 'Best wishes, Ronald,' scrawled across the bottom of it. The doorman escorted us to a large dining room covered in murals depicting Roman mythology. Roger had decorations, furniture, and trinkets suffocating the whole room. It reminded me of his store. Frank felt claustrophobic there.

"We sat down at the dining table with about thirty other people, mostly old businessmen accompanied by escort, all pretty boys. I couldn't hold a conversation with most of them because they were too busy groping each other to bother paying attention. The servants -- all of whom, by the way, looked like starving male prostitutes taken off the street -- began giving us the first course of the meal, even though Roger himself had not yet made an appearance. They served a variety of fruits, cheeses, watercress soup, oysters, calamari, and sausage and placed a huge slab of swordfish in the center table, flanked by silver dishes that had Roger's name engraved on the rims.

"As we helped ourselves to the food Roger entered the room to the sound of trumpets and took his seat with such an affected, pompous air of royalty that one of the escorts -- probably cracked out anyway -- burst out laughing. He announced to us that he he had been busy playing a game, and that he came so that we would no longer pain ourselves by expecting him. He then brought out yet another one of his servants, who carried a chessboard made of obscenely composed pieces. He continued to play the game while the rest of us ate.

"As we finished the swordfish the servants brought in a wooden chicken sitting atop a tray surrounded by straw. After they placed the piece on the table they rooted through the straw and produced these strange eggs, which they put on our plates. They weren't real eggs but were a kind of a jelled fat that we were apparently supposed to dig through. I didn't want to bother, but when John opened his I saw that creamy chocolate filled the center, so I opened mine and ate the filling. Roger had the servants bring in wine to help us wash it down.

"Servants replaced the wooden chicken with a dish of sundry treats, and as we picked our share we saw that the signs of the zodiac ornamented the dish. Roger, seeing it as if for the first time, gave us a lecture about the meaning of each zodiac sign and the type of people who fall into them. I found it retarded, but everyone cheered and called him a genius – I think mostly because they loved the food so much. In the commotion a couple of giant St. Bernard dogs rushed through the doors and greeted the guests. When Frank saw them he laughed.

"Servants brought in a giant, roasted pig, and one of the servant boys entered dressed in vine leaves, prancing about the table, handing each of us grapes. Roger excused himself and left the room. I was glad because everything seemed so tense with him around. Unfortunately, it wasn't as if I could talk to the other guests, so John, Frank, and I basically sat there, eating, and listening to what other people had to say.

"One of the guests near me commented about a funeral he attended earlier in the day. He said, 'I hate that god-damn son of a bitch so much, before the service began I ran into the bathroom, masturbated, and smeared the cum all over my body so that when I went in everyone could smell the stench of my cum. It was fantastic.'

"Another guest said that he knew the dead guy, too, and hated him so much that he came in his dinner before he served it to him at a party a long time ago. And then a third guest deadpanned, 'Gee, all I did was cum in his ass,' which made everyone there laugh. I have to tell you, it made me wonder what all was really in the food we ate.

"Roger eventually returned in a rage, dragging a servant by the arm and flinging him into the room. The servant shivered and cried, and Roger yelled out, 'This worthless little boy forgot to scent my toilet paper!' And with that he revealed a gun and pointed it at the servant, and I guess he decided to kill him for this.

"If I had thought a little bit more I might not have picked an argument with an insane man wielding a gun, but I just blurted out Roger was ridiculous. Even as Roger pointed the gun the two giant dogs came up to the servant and licked and pawed to figure out the commotion. It told Roger, 'Everyone makes a mistake here and there. Don't kill the boy for not scenting your toilet paper. If he does it again none of us will bother to say a good word for him, but let him off. If not for him, at least do it for my sake.' This seemed to work on Roger -- but then again, I felt that this was more part of the show than an actual desire on Roger's part to kill the boy.

"Roger put the gun down but then blurted out, 'When I am in my home I want things to be perfect! I don't want to be reminded that things are not! When you shithead servants do something wrong, it makes me realize that you don't care enough about me to do it right! Don't ever do that to me!' And with that he recomposed himself and sat down. With his return the servants poured an ever greater barrage of treats and attention to us. The guests talked about the glass and crystal and dinner plates, and they went on about literature and the arts, blah blah blah.

"When dinner had finally ended Roger again drew attention to himself. He took a glass of wine, declared that it was poisoned, and pronounced that he would drink it out of duty to decadent pleasure. He chugged the wine and then pretended to faint, slowly withdrawing from his chair to lie down on the floor. As he did so his whole lot of servants surrounded him and dotted over him like a family of cherubs watching a loved one taken by the Angel of Death. One of the escorts at the dinner table declared the spectacle beautiful and burst into tears, and with that the other guests gave out a round of applause for Roger's apparently profound spectacle."

Chapter XIII

"That's pretty fucked up," Richard said.

"Yep, pretty much."

"So you invited him to this party?"

"Yes."

"Uh, why?"

"Because I can keep an eye on him."

"Aren't you afraid that your party won't live up to Roger's standards? You certainly don't throw parties that are as crazy or as lavish as what you described Roger as having."

"I'm not worried about that. I think that party was more for his sake than the guests. He wanted to show how great he was. I'm sure he'll feel magnanimous for condescending to visit my home. After all, he doesn't seem like the kind of person who is above visiting a dive or hanging out with poor people."

"So long as he's with male prostitutes."

"Yes, well. Too bad your boy couldn't be here."

"Yes, well."

John and Frank arrived. Steve greeted them, and after Richard gave his usual salutations to them he reported that Steve had told him about their adventure at Roger's home. They both lit up with excited amusement. "It was great!" John exclaimed. "Everyone was so totally fucked up! I've been to some pretty crazy parties, but they weren't nearly as imaginative."

"I think it was the two St. Bernards that did it for me," Frank said.

"I was afraid they were going to become part of the meal," John said.

"That's true. We ate everything in sight. I debated with myself for a long time about whether I should have stopped. I was getting so full, but everything was so delicious. So I kept eating, and it got so ridiculous that at one point I excused myself to go the bathroom. I thought I was going to have to puke just because I had so much food, but I lied down on the floor and stayed there for a few minutes. That helped."

"I was wondering where you went," Steve said.

"I feel jealous of you guys," said Richard. "It sounds like you had a blast."

"It was scary as all hell, too," John said. "Roger kept surprising us and upping the ante so much that I don't think any of us knew where it was going to go. At times I was really afraid that someone was going to get killed. Forget Roger, although he was scary in his own way -- those boys were doing hard stuff."

Steve spoke to Richard, "Maybe Roger will invite you to one of his parties if you get in good with him tonight."

"Wonderful."

"I can't say I would be in a hurry to go to one of his parties," Frank added. "Roger seems like a really terrible person. The entertainment was something else, but he and his friends just seem like slime."

"I say use them for what they're worth," Steve said.

"No," Richard said.

"No?"

"No, I don't think you should use a person if you think he's slime, because that validates him. You should expect more from people."

"But not everyone wants to be more."

"That's the problem!"

"Look, to be honest I think you should just leave people alone."

"So I was going to say something about the album," John said.

"No. You can't," Richard said to Steve. "That's not how people are. No one lives in a vacuum. If you leave them alone they will fall apart."

"You're just saying that because of your father," said Steve.

"I thought we might talk about some of the lyrics, um," John said.

"No I am not! I see how people are out here, and they treat each other like shit."

"You're just like Roger sometimes, you know that? You act like you're just doing what's best for everyone, but in truth you just want to control them."

At that moment James entered. John sighed in relief.

"Hello everyone," James said.

Steve gave James a glass of wine.

"So have you guys been composing any songs?" Richard asked.

"We don't have anything put together yet," Steve said, "but we've been working on it. I think we're still trying to figure out what the album should be about."

"I don't think you guys have ever told me how you go about making new songs," James said.

"Well we have different personal styles and ways of going about it," Steve said.

"Yeah, I usually like to drop some acid and see what happens!" Frank said.

"I'm willing to bet you're much more methodical about it," Richard said to Steve.

"I guess you could say that. I actually believe in sitting down and writing out drafts with score sheets and stuff."

"Do you think it makes you a better songwriter?" Richard asked.

"I think so. Of course, John and Frank let me get away with it only so much. Once I've sketched something out, I get together with them and we play and tinker with it."

"His stuff is way too rigid otherwise," Frank said.

"I see," Richard said. "Do you think of yourself as a rigid person, Steve?"

"I don't think so. I'm certainly not as anal as James."

"Hey!"

"Well you were the one who once told us that you tried to stop yourself from shitting when you were a child."

"Come on, now. You don't have to bring that up again! I did a lot of strange things when I was young. It was part of my childhood."

"You tried to stop shitting for years! If I remember correctly, you said you tried up until you were ten!"

James frowned.

"Well you have to admit," said Richard, "it would be nice if we didn't have to shit. If I had the option, I would never shit again."

Frank guffawed.

"What?" Richard asked.

"I personally like shitting," Frank said. "It's kind of novel."

"I sort of like to shit, too," John said. "It would be kind of cool if I could shit on command, rather than be held hostage by it, but I have nothing against it really. Constipation and diarrhea can suck, I guess, but there are worse things in life."

At that point Charles Blair arrived at the party. As Steve let Charles into his home Frank yelled at him from across the room, "Hey Charles! We have a question for you! If you were given the option, would you choose never to shit again?"

"Pardon me?" he said, his eyes wide and startled. "So it's going to be that kind of party, is it? Before you know we'll be like chimpanzees, shitting in our hands and smearing it all over the walls. But actually, I like shitting quite a lot. I shit all the time, you know. In fact, just a few hours ago I made quite a prodigious shit. It was ten inches long and about two inches wide in the middle -- nice and firm without being too hard. I was quite proud. 'It took a great meal to make a great shit like that,' I thought to myself."

"What about you?" James asked Steve.

"I wouldn't shit, but only because it would make rimming healthier. You know the fecal-oral route is the easiest way to get diseases."

"I hadn't thought of that," Frank said, feeling that he had just learned something new.

"Well you don't keep track of these things," Steve said. "You throw caution to the wind. See, that's why I won't lick just any man's ass. That thing has to be in a shower before I put my tongue all over it."

James turned to Charles. "So how are you doing, Charles?"

"I'm doing well, thank you. I was reading and editing manuscripts all day."

"Anything interesting?" Steve asked.

"Actually, there is. A friend of mine recently gave me a copy of a book he wrote about the Occult and art. It was difficult yet beautiful to read -- predictably esoteric, you know -- but it basically suggested that the compositions -- or certain structures, certain compositions -- of artworks can literally create or introduce supernatural, otherworldly forces."

"That sounds sort of scary," Frank said.

"Bullshit," John said.

"It doesn't sound that unusual to me," James said. "I think Catholics have at times felt that way about art -- at least in the Middle Ages. They thought about art as heaven-inspired -- or that it should evoke heavenly forces and such."

"Have you ever read 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'?" Steve said.

"Yes, of course," John said.

"Or 'The Oval Portrait'?" Richard said.

"Not many people read anything by Poe besides 'The Raven' anymore," Charles said to Richard. "It's a shame. We don't let art evoke magic anymore. If we only looked properly we'd see that -- we'd recognize that good art radiates magic. What we have today -- most of the works that are floating around in the galleries -- is a golden shower of filth. It's piss that people drink because they can't taste the difference between it and champagne. It's pissed sprayed all over the galleries and museums of Manhattan, gallons and gallons of piss."

Richard fantasized about the painting of the flying horse -- or rather, the poster Michael had bought for his own father Henry. Did Henry find the painting magical? Did it speak to him that his horse was alive? Richard imagined that it did, that the horse in the painting signified the life of Henry's horse, or at least evoked the love for that horse, which was perhaps magical enough.

Steve said, "That reminds me of the time when were in concert and someone from the balcony decided to take a piss right there and then, spraying the people below him. He got arrested, and it turned out that he was from the local city council. I thought that was special."

John said to Charles, "You should have asked if anyone was into piss before you said all that. You know some people like piss."

"Obviously," said Charles.

"You might have offended someone!" John said.

"Why are you looking at me!" Frank said. "I'm not into piss!"

"Oh okay."

"I'm not!"

"That's too bad," Richard said. "Now no one here can make the argument that golden showers are magical."

"Well, they aren't," Frank said. "When was the last time anyone was able to see a rainbow in a golden shower? Never. That should tell you that golden showers aren't magical."

"Are you saying that rainbows are magical?" John asked.

"Haven't you ever seen 'The Wizard of Oz'? Of course they are!"

"I usually think of gays when I think of rainbows," Steve said.

"Well fairies are magical, right? So, there you go. Rainbows. Gays. Fairies. Magic."

"Who knew that fucking a man could make someone magical."

"It can be," Richard said. "Uh, sex, that is." He blushed.

"I guess it depends on the structure, the composition, of the fucking, huh?"

"Yep." Richard finished his drink.

"Usually when I hear someone talking about the magic of sex it's a Catholic," James said, "and the magic he has in mind is making babies."

"Well, see, heterosexual sex doesn't turn people into fairies," Frank said, "so obviously it isn't magical."

"You don't think that making babies is magical?" James asked.

"Of course not!" Frank said. "What could be more base, more brutally natural -- more bestial -- than making babies? If anything, gay sex is more magical because it doesn't make sense --"

"It does make sense \--"

"What I'm saying is that it doesn't make sense when you think about what our tools are designed for. We didn't evolve so that we could stick dicks up each other's butts. Something else is going on to make us go butt-fucking. That's what's magical."

"Some people would call it Satanic."

"That's because they're going about butt-fucking in entirely the wrong way."

"So there's Satanic butt-fucking?"

"Well in a way there can be, but not all butt-fucking is Satanic. Not even half."

"What would make butt-fucking Satanic, in your mind?"

"If there was an evil intent in it. It's all about the expression put into it."

"I see," James said, completely confused.

At that moment Roger arrived. Steve let him in. Roger surveyed the small crowd that had gathered and gave Richard a scowl. Roger asked Steve for a gin and tonic.

"Roger, it's good to see you again!" Frank said.

"I do what I can."

"Roger, we were talking about this earlier, and I wanted to know, if you had the power would you choose never to shit again?"

Roger stared at Frank.

"Never mind Frank," Steve said. "He just doesn't know his manners sometimes."

"It's all right. I need to be reminded of the harsh realities of life every once in a while. It keeps me strong."

"Harsh realities?" said Frank. "Like shitting?"

"Like you."

"Hey mister!"

"You are the proof that there is no god."

"Hey now," said John. "Frank's not so bad. He keeps it real."

"Frank does so much LSD I doubt he even knows what's real and what's not."

"Hey now! The last time I did LSD was last Tuesday."

"That's funny," said James, "I did an LDS last Tuesday."

"I doubt that!" said Frank. "You hate sex too much."

"Just because I hate sex doesn't mean I don't do it," James replied.

"Why on earth would you have sex if you hate it?" Charles asked.

"It's something to do."

"Take up finger painting."

"It's out of my hands."

"Finger painting?"

"Sex."

"Why?"

"God works in mysterious ways."

"You work in mysterious ways," Steve said.

"There's nothing mysterious about James," John said.

"I'm all right if we don't settle that one," James said.

Richard turned to Roger, "So you aren't with Sam and Joe tonight?"

"Oh I'll be seeing them later," Roger said. "I can tell your little friend Mark has quite the crush on Joe."

"Yes, he's told me a little about it."

"Joe gets that a lot," Roger said. "I hope Mark doesn't mind that Joe has HIV."

"He does?"

"Yes. He and Sam, both of them."

"Have they told Mark?"

"Who knows," Roger said, studying Richard's expression.

Chapter XIV

Throughout his life Michael maintained a specific system for listening to music. He organized his large collection of LPs and CDs alphabetically by composer, and he listened to the music in order, working his way from John Adams to Zemlinsky, regardless of what he actually wanted to hear. It took about four months for him to go through all of his albums once. He played music all day long, regardless of what he did, which meant that sometimes he even played music while watching the television.

Richard grew up in this environment, and so he heard this music from the moment his father woke up to the moment he went to bed. Michael would quiz Richard on the composers and the pieces of music, so that by the time Richard reached his teenage years he knew as much about music as his father and began acquiring his own albums. Unlike his father, however, Richard listened to whatever interested him at the moment. He could pick up an album and listen to the same track over and over again until he got sick of it.

As Richard's tastes refined he grew less tolerant of others'. At one point he convinced a friend to listen to Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, and when his friend said that he found the music boring Richard concluded that his friend was hopelessly stupid. "Are all these people deaf?" he sometimes asked himself about his less cultured friends. "Don't they listen?" Indeed, it sometimes seemed to him that his friends did not listen to music at all, but rather paid all of their attention to the lyrics popular music stars would speak through their songs.

The most enraging moments came when, as Richard would discuss music, a friend would state something to the effect of, "I don't know why you take music so seriously. It's just entertainment," to which Richard would reply, "Maybe I shouldn't take you seriously. Maybe you are just entertainment." To Richard, music spoke to the magic of existence. Of all the arts, he felt music, with its non-linguistic, abstract, non-representational construction, best delivered people to the sensation of pure being.

For years, it tormented Richard that so many people could be so ignorant of music's power. To him, they seemed like broken people, or inferior people, or not even people at all. He concluded that people who only sought entertainment were as much mindless commodities as the products they bought. He lost some friendships over this issue, especially with people who loved music from the 1980s, which he considered the most hopelessly disgraceful period of music ever, but when he moved to New York he forced himself to put his feelings under wraps – not because he had mellowed, but because as a Midwesterner trying to establish himself he did not want to make too many enemies.

And yet, Richard never gave up pushing his non-musical friends to expand their horizons. He would take them to performances, mention music he heard recently, and lend them CDs. "Popular music is fine," he would sometimes claim for rhetorical position, "but it's like candy. It tastes sweet but isn't nourishing." He kept asking them to challenge themselves. "Don't let yourself be so complacent," he would say. "Don't let your musical tastes get only as sophisticated as your high school education."

In the end, Richard concluded that many of his friends had the same problem with music that his father had with his house. They were trapped by their inferior, shallow tastes, unwilling to change, too scared to challenge themselves. Thank God people like him existed, Richard thought, to force these people to consider something outside of themselves.

Chapter XV

At about 4am on a Saturday morning Richard's cell phone began to ring. It took a few seconds before Richard woke up enough to recognize it, and once he did he finally rolled over in his bed to answer.

"Could I come over to your place?" Mark asked.

"Sure," Richard said.

"Is it okay if I bring someone with me?"

"Yes, that's fine." Richard hung up and put his cell phone back on his nightstand. He laid in the dark under the sheets of his bed, sleepy and wondering what was up with Mark. About twenty minutes later he received a knock at the entrance to his apartment, so he crawled out of bed in his boxers, went through the living room and opened the door. Behind it was Mark, his face marked by two streams of tears, and a scrawny, twenty-something, wasted man who was shaking violently.

Mark said, "Could we use your bathroom?" Richard obliged, showing them the way. Mark rested the man on the toilet seat, grabbed a wash cloth that was hanging on the towel rack behind the bathroom door, wetted it with cold faucet water, dabbed the cloth over the man's sweaty face, and then proceeded to slap the man lightly on the cheeks. The man's eyes went to the back of his sockets, and he continued to shiver. "Alan's ODed. He needs to stay awake until he gets over it," Mark said.

"Is there anything I can do?" Richard asked. Mark suggested that Richard play some music to calm him down and pass the time, so Richard went to his stereo and put on a Beethoven quartet. It was not quite what Mark had in mind, but it did the job.

"You can go to sleep if you want," Mark told Richard.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I can handle it."

"Shouldn't you send him to the hospital?"

"No, he'll be all right. I've done this before."

The thought of going back to sleep appealed to Richard. "Well whenever you guys are done you can sleep on my couch or in my bed, if you want." Richard went back to bed and fell asleep. When he woke up again six hours later he saw that Mark had in fact slipped into his bed. Mark was sleeping on his side with his shirtless back turned to Richard. Ulysses, the little kitten, slept between them. Some of the morning sunlight that came through his bedroom window lit the exposed portion of Mark's body. Mark's soft, tan skin wrapped tightly around his thin frame so that Richard could easily distinguish Mark's back muscles. Richard wanted to hug and cuddle the boy, but he feared that he would wake Mark up and that Mark would not approve. He stayed put and quietly admired the sight.

When Mark awoke he turned, saw Richard looking at him, grabbed Richard's arm and pulled it around his torso so that Richard was hugging him -- in just the way that Richard had fantasized. They had inadvertently squeezed Ulysses, who gave a panicked cry and climbed out of the way of Mark's rocky hard butt and Richard's hard penis to perch on top of Richard's body.

"Good morning," Mark said.

"Good morning." Richard buried his face into Mark's back. "What happened last night?"

Mark sighed. He stroked Richard's leg. Richard in turn massaged a part of Mark's chest with a couple of his fingers. After a few minutes of silence Mark whispered, "So last night Joe, Sam, Roger, and I went to a hotel with this guy Alan. We were just hanging out -- casual -- but then Joe and Sam left me. They made up some lame excuse that they were going somewhere to get something, and they wanted me to stay with Roger to keep him company. They did it on purpose, I know it. I could tell when they left.

"So I was there with Roger and Alan, and Alan begins to overdose on whatever it is that he was offering us -- I refused to take it -- and Roger completely ignored him and tried to have sex with me. There Alan was, convulsing and going unconscious on the floor, and I was like, 'Shouldn't we do something about Alan?' but he didn't care. I was freaking out. I didn't want to have sex. Roger wouldn't leave me alone, he kept putting his hands all over me, and I couldn't get off the bed, so I grabbed the hotel telephone that was sitting next to me on the nightstand, and I beat Roger in the head with it until he got off of me. He screamed and called me all sorts of things and told me to get out. So I picked up Alan and got of the room, and I called you from the lobby."

"Is Alan all right?"

"Yeah, he's sleeping on your couch."

Richard, suddenly alert, left his bed and snuck into the living room, where he saw that Alan was in fact sleeping on the couch. Richard was relieved and went back into his bedroom and slipped back into bed. "I have something to tell you."

"What is it?"

"Last night I was at a party hosted by Steve. Roger came, and he said that Joe and Sam have HIV."

"He did? Do you believe him?"

"Who knows. But I thought I should tell you."

Mark sighed. "Well I've always been using protection when I've had sex. I guess I should get tested."

"Yeah. There's a clinic not far from here."

Mark sighed again. "I can't believe it. I thought I could trust Joe."

"Don't worry about it," Richard said. "That was pretty impressive of you to get out of there and take care of Alan. A lot of people I know of wouldn't have done that."

"Thanks."

"You should call the police and report what happened. You could get a restraining order."

"No, I don't want to do that," Mark said. "That's going to be too much trouble. I just want to move on. I don't want to have anything to do with him anymore. I don't want to stay with Joe and Sam, either. I can't trust them." He paused. "Would you mind if I stayed here for a while?"

"Yes, of course!"

"I need to go back there and get what little I have." Mark dragged himself out of bed. "I should do that now."

"Should I go with you?" Richard asked.

"No. I'll be fine. Take care of Alan. If I'm not here when he wakes up he may need you. I don't know if he'll know where he is or how he got here." Mark went into the bathroom and washed his face while Richard looked up at the ceiling from his bed. He didn't particularly care to look after a drug-dealing stranger, but he felt obliged for Mark's sake. Once Mark was ready to head out Richard saw him out the door and then returned to the living room. Not sure what to do with himself, he went to the kitchen and brewed a pot of coffee. He then grabbed a book and read it, and once the coffee was ready he got a cup of it and drank it as he read. Alan eventually woke up. He looked at Richard.

"Hello," Richard said, taking note of the stranger's gaze. "My name's Richard. Your friend Mark brought you here last night when you were overdosing on some narcotic. Mark left, but he should be returning sometime later today. He tells me that your name is Alan. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

"Coffee?" Alan said the word as if he had never heard of it before. "No thanks." He dragged himself so that he was sitting upright. He felt weak and dizzy, and he grabbed the right arm of the couch to hold himself up.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." Alan spat on the floor. Richard looked at it with a suppressed frown. "I'm just wasted, that's all."

"You should get some breakfast. There's a diner right around here. I'll pay if you go."

"I don't know. I should get back home–"

"Do you have an appointment?" Richard interrupted. "Come on, it's on me."

"Fine."

Richard finished his coffee, grabbed his wallet, and took Alan out to the diner. Alan marveled at how all of the booths and utensils and the jukebox looked so shiny and new, and how a disco ball hung in the back of the room. A large gay clientele filled the place. Richard ordered eggs benedict and orange juice while Alan ordered scrambled eggs with bacon, a hash brown, toast, and a glass of water. Alan generally made a point of not looking at Richard.

"So what were you guys up to last night?" Richard asked.

"Nothing," Alan replied.

"Hmm. Well it's good that Mark brought you over."

"I would've been fine."

"Are you friends with Roger?"

"I know him. We've gone out sometimes."

"Do you know Joe and Sam?"

"Yeah."

"My friend Mark has been living with Joe and Sam."

"Why?"

"He ran away from his parents in Alabama and needed a place to stay."

"Now why did he do that?"

"What?"

"Run away?"

"His parents didn't want him to be gay. They were going to send him to therapy."

"Huh. Parents. All my parents ever did was beat me."

"Jesus. I'm sorry to hear that."

"Eh. I think they were just annoyed that I was there. They didn't want to be bothered. So I just went off and did my own thing."

"Do you ever see yourself getting out of this -- out of what you do?"

"Dude, what else would I do? I'm not going to work some gas station or drive a taxi."

"I could come up with some odd jobs you could do for me."

"Heh." Alan smirked and looked down at his food.

"Have you ever been in love?" Richard asked.

"No," Alan said. But after he ate some of his food he said, "Well. Not really. There was one girl. Years ago. She was sweet and all. I liked her, but I don't think I ever fell in love with her. I missed her an awful lot when I was put away, but that's just because I missed women. I don't know whatever happened to her."

Richard smirked. "Do you have any particularly good memories of her?"

"Yeah I do." Alan took a moment to recall it. "There was one time when we were at a party. It was a big party. Lots of people were there. Lots of guys were hitting on her. It made me angry, to tell you the truth, seeing all those guys do that as if she was there for anyone's taking, and I was angry because I thought she was letting them do this too. I thought she was being a little too interested, you know? It was like every single man in the world wanted the girl I was with. So, but towards the end of the night she came to me, and I told her how I was feeling, and she told me that it was silly for me to be jealous because I was the only one she ever wanted. I don't think that at the time I thought much about it, but when I was in prison it really affected me. Because here she was, the whole world wanted her, and at the end of the day she chose me out of the whole world. She was still there with me. I mean, it's not like I could doubt her, because she was there; she was right there."

"I understand that," Richard said.

When the two of them finished their meal Richard gave Alan his business card and encouraged him to keep in contact. "Sure, okay," was all Alan could muster before parting with a shrug. Richard for his part returned to his home and waited for Mark's return. Mark did not come back until late in the afternoon, and when he did he had none of his belongings with him.

"I got into a fight with them," Mark said. "I yelled at them for abandoning me with Roger, and Sam yelled at me for not sleeping with him. I got angry with him. I told them that I was going to move out, and Sam said that they weren't going to let me take my stuff. Sam said that all of it was theirs because they bought it all for me, which isn't true. I'm so angry. And I feel so betrayed by Joe. I thought he was a good guy, but the whole time I was there he didn't say anything. He didn't protect me at all." Mark began to cry, so Richard held him.

"Well we should get you some new clothes, then," Richard said. "Come on." He helped Mark compose himself, and with that they took a trip to the men's clothing department at Macy's. Mark browsed through the racks of clothing, picking up a bundle of shirts, pants, socks, and underwear. The two of them went into a changing room together, where Richard commented on how sexy the clothing looked on Mark as Mark tried it on. Richard wore a big smile the entire time. "I will save him," Richard thought privately to himself.

Chapter XVI

Every uniformed student had his copy of Virgil's Aeneid, written in the original Latin, lying on his desk along with a pen and a notebook. The class looked like a little scholastic army prepared to do battle with ancient literature. And there James stood, in his tweed jacket and vest, lecturing. He discussed what had happened in their assigned passages, asked the students questions, and lectured on Latin grammar.

But James' mind was not focused on his work. Sometimes he could distract himself by writing on the chalkboard, constructing some sentence to analyze, but when he looked at the boys he reminded himself, "There they are, the same age every year, and I keep getting older." He felt mild consolation in knowing that many of them would grow up to be far less attractive to him. Many would grow obese, many would lose their hair, many would simply fail to equal his fastidiousness. But James knew that in the long run he was headed for a slow defeat against these youths for beauty.

Did he really even care about being beautiful? He convinced himself that he did not. He wanted a boyfriend. He needed to be beautiful so that he could be noticed, so that someone would eventually love him and want to be with him for the rest of their lives. Beauty itself was a chore. He did not care one lick about working out at the gym, but he did it six days a week for an hour each day. He did not particularly enjoy dying his hair, or putting creams on his face every night, or plucking his eyebrows.

Yet, in spite of all this work, James had failed, year after year, in having a fulfilling relationship. Sure, there was that relationship with the Hispanic theology grad student from Austin who decided he wanted to be straight; funny how he could not get a woman to marry him, in spite of all his efforts. And then there was that Evangelical, the one who graduated from Bob Jones University. James liked him because they both despised themselves equally when they had sex; they had that in common. But at least James wanted to stay with him when they finished fornicating; the guy did not want to have anything to do with him.

"These boys, these children I'm teaching – they will get married," James knew. They would marry, if for no other reason, simply because most of them were straight. It is so easy for straight people to fall in love, James thought, because there are so many of them. He had to deal with straight people all the time, sometimes to his annoyance. It made him feel all that much more alienated. James felt himself cursed by God for being a homosexual. He did not question God's existence, but he did question God's benevolence. Because he was gay, James felt doomed to die alone, and because he could find no one to love, he chose to love God. As James stood there, talking about the Aeneid for the third time in as many years, he thought to himself, "I'm going to die alone."

But what would God have in store for these boys? They might marry, James thought, but most would have their hearts broken at some time or other. Every once in a while he got to see the drama unfold before him. A student would fall in love, gushing and talking about his wonderful girl and how perfect she was, and then three months later, dumped, he would behave as if the whole world betrayed him. James saw it happen so often he surmised that it must be a rite of passage. At some point a person has to have his dreams destroyed, to see that the world is harsh and cruel, to get to grips with his small place in it.

Richard never accepted life's harsh realities, and James disliked him for it. Richard was stuck as that little boy, railing against every perceived injustice. Would it make any difference if James railed against every injustice he saw? No. And he could feel Richard quietly judging, accusing him of not doing enough to make things better when James really just wanted to cope with how things were.

The bell rang. Class ended. Students scurried out of the room. James erased the blackboard and collected his belongings. He had plans to see Richard later that night. They had tickets to see the Metropolitan Opera perform Korngold's Die tote Stadt. In spite of all of their differences, James and Richard enjoyed music equally and often went to concerts together. James had never heard of any of Korngold's operas before, and he looked forward to the evening as a potential feast of sonorities.

James reached the Opera House and found Richard standing alone, lost in his thoughts, among the other patrons in the lobby. As James came up to him Richard noticed and acknowledged him as if he had awaken from a dream. "Hey Richard, are you ready to go in?"

"I guess."

"Is there something wrong?"

"I received a phone call from Mark. He says that he thinks Roger might be stalking him. He isn't sure, though. He thought he saw him when he was walking home. Part of me feels like I should just go and stay with him tonight."

A flash of anger struck James, but he controlled himself. "Where is he?"

"He's staying at my place."

"Is he there right now?"

"Yeah."

"Well he should be fine, then, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then don't worry about it. He'll be okay."

"I know. I just want to be there for him."

"Well you're here with me tonight."

Chapter XVII

One renovator wheeled the broken refrigerator out of the kitchen. Another renovator tore pieces of warped wood out of the floor in the living room. A third stripped the old shingles off the roof. Richard presided over the activity all morning, and when noon passed he made himself a sandwich and sat in a chair he placed in a sunny spot between the oak tree and the pine tree in the garden. He munched on his lunch as he contemplated the house in front of him. As he finished eating Michael burst out of the front door and marched up to Richard, where, looking down on him with a wild, crazed stare, he said, "Get out of my house!"

"I am out of your house," Richard said.

"I mean, leave!"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I need to renovate your house."

"You don't own this house. I'm calling the police. You're trespassing. I'll have you arrested, and I'll get you disbarred."

"You don't have a phone."

"I'll walk to the police station." Michael stormed down the street in the direction of the town square. When he turned a corner down another street Richard lost sight of him, so he contemplated the sun, the flowers, the trees, and the air. Richard wondered when the renovators would be back from their own break, which he speculated would last another half hour, but with that thought dispensed he began to dream up various musical tunes, orchestrating them in his head with lots of brass and percussion, a noisy, vigorous, syncopated overture. He played this tune over and over in his mind until Michael came back fifteen minutes after he left, tears streaming down his face.

Michael stormed up to Richard again, "I don't want this! You're ruining my life! How can I live here when you're changing everything! You're making me a prisoner in my own home!"

"You know, while you were hiding one of the renovators found a piss jar with a dead mouse in it. There are so many things wrong with that I don't even know where to begin, but the least we can do is get you a functioning bathroom again."

Michael screamed. "I'm humiliated! How could you! No one is supposed to see that. That's only for me to know. What a creep!"

"You'll get over it."

"No I won't!"

Richard rolled his eyes.

"You think I'm some kind of loser just because I don't fix the toilet. That's what you care about. All you care about are toilets. But let me tell you: when you were conceived your mother didn't want to have you. I was the one who begged and pleaded to keep you. If it weren't for me, you would've been aborted!"

"Well thank you. I appreciate that."

"Jesus. Maybe I should have let your mother have an abortion."

"Well it's a little late for that."

"How can you be so heartless?"

"Umm, I'm not?"

"Bullshit! You're just doing this because you want a valuable house to inherit when I die. This is your little investment. Well let me tell you, I'll will away this house to someone else! I'll give it to a church, a charity – anyone but you!"

"By the time you're dead you'll probably have ruined the house all over again."

"And don't you realize those renovators are cheating you? They're charging you twice as much as it should cost to fix the place. They're saying the refrigerator needs to be replaced when it just needs to be fixed. They're tell you to replace the shingles when they're fine. They're gyping you!"

"I'm not concerned about it."

Michael collapsed to his knees and prostrated himself before Richard. "Please! Please leave me alone! Please stop this! I don't want this! I want to be left alone. For the love of God, just stop this and go away. This is the worst thing in the world anyone could ever do to me. I can't live with this. It'll ruin me. It is the worst thing in the world. It is awful. Please, please, please stop."

"Michael," Richard sighed, "You can't live without it."

Chapter XVIII

When Richard first entered the front door of his apartment the first thing he noticed was all of the papers strewn across the floor. He looked about and saw that books had been thrown out of the bookcases, that his desk had been ransacked, that everything had been thrown out of the kitchen cupboards, that the pillows on his couch had been tossed, and that a pile of kitty litter sat in the corner of the room. He walked to the bedroom to find it in a similar mess, with Mark lying on the bed, crying into a pillow.

"What on earth happened?" Richard asked.

"I'm so sorry!" Mark replied.

"Sorry? Why are you sorry?"

"Roger followed me here."

"How? How did he get in?"

"I was walking back home, and just as I was getting to the door to the building he came up. He grabbed a hold of me and got my key and forced his way in."

"So he did all this?"

"Uh huh."

"Did he do anything to you?"

"He hit me a little."

"A little? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"Did he rape you?"

"No."

"Where's Ulysses?"

"Who?"

"The kitten."

"I don't know."

"Well, we're going to have to call the police."

"No!" Mark screamed.

"Why not?"

"I don't want to deal with the police."

"Why?"

"They'll know I'm a prostitute. They'll arrest me. They'll give me trouble, and I just want to be left alone."

"Dude, Roger trashed my place and assaulted you. Even if I didn't call them for your sake, I need to call them because of what he did to me."

"No, don't do it. I'll clean your apartment. Don't worry about that. Don't call the police."

Richard looked at Mark and looked at the floor, not sure what to do. On the one hand he felt obligated as an attorney to call the police and report the crime as the proper protocol, but on the other hand he did not want to upset Mark further. "You realize as an attorney it would be better for me if I called the police," Richard told him.

"Please don't call them," Mark pleaded. "It won't make things better. It'll just get worse. He'll kill me."

"Come now. Use your sense of reason. They could arrest him."

"But he could get out. He could get his friends to get me."

"There's nothing to say he won't do something to you again as it is."

"No. He's done with me. He just wanted to get revenge."

Richard sighed and thought about the matter some more. "All right. We'll clean the apartment, and I'll try to find Ulysses. But if he killed Ulysses, or if Ulysses is missing, I'm going to call the police right away. Is that a deal?"

Mark only whimpered into the pillow.

"Mark, Ulysses is my cat! If Roger killed my cat I can't let that slide!"

"Fine, okay. We'll look for Ulysses."

Richard approached Mark and put a hand on his back. "Are you all right?" Mark sighed and finally looked at Richard, revealing a face beaten all over to a dark blue, with streaks of blood smeared over a couple wounds. Richard could also see dried blood smeared into the pillow. "Jesus Christ!" Richard said. "We need to get you to a hospital!"

"No no no."

"There's no question about this. You're a mess! We're going."

Richard dragged Mark up from the bed and held his hand out of the apartment and to a taxi to go to a hospital. They arrived in the hospital emergency room and waited until a doctor could attend to Mark. The doctor stitched the wounds, gave Mark ice packs to apply to the bruises, and gave him some painkillers. By the time the two of them left the hospital the tops of the skyscrapers shined with the early morning glow of the dawning sun.

When they reached the apartment Richard sent Mark to bed and stayed up to search for Ulysses. He picked up his books, papers, and pillows, hoping that Ulysses might be hiding under them. He looked behind the desk and in the closet and behind the couch, but he did not find anything. He looked around the toilet in the bathroom, around his desk in his office space, and even in the cupboards of his kitchen. Nothing.

Chapter XIX

As Richard ate breakfast at his hotel restaurant he recalled how productive the previous day had been. The renovators had removed the broken furnace, had ordered replacements for the broken windows, had bleached the walls, had pulled up the shit-stained carpeting, and had begun tearing up the portions of the floor that had begun to collapse. Michael hid during all of this, but he at least did not pose an obstacle. If the renovation kept going this well, Richard hoped he could finish it in as soon as two or three weeks.

When he finished his meal he walked from the hotel toward his father's house, basking in the bright sunlight as a slight breeze ruffled the trees. Two squirrels scampered near him, chasing each other up a tree. A hummingbird dipped its beak into some nearby flowers. A kid passed by on a bicycle.

However, as Richard turned a corner to walk the last block he saw what looked like a giant mound of black ash instead of the house. Almost the entire building had disappeared, with only the cement portions of the porch and foundation still left intact. A fire truck, a police car, and an ambulance surrounded the property. As Richard approached the house he saw an officer in the car and came up to him.

"Hello, my name is Richard Kepler. I'm the son of the owner of this house. What happened?"

The police officer sighed and stepped out of his car. "Richard, I'm afraid I have some bad news. Your father passed away. It looks like your father may have been asleep in bed when a fire started in the house. He may have caught the bed sheets on fire with a cigarette – may have forgotten to put the cigarette out before he fell asleep. The first station got a phone call from a neighbor at around 3am. She said that there was a fire coming out of the windows of your father's bedroom, but by the time the trucks got to your father's house the whole place was in flames. I'm very sorry for your loss."

"Oh that's all right. Thanks." The officer asked for Richard for his contact information, so he gave it. With that over, Richard turned around and walked right back to his hotel. If he had known that Michael was going to burn the house down, he wouldn't have woken up so early. This certainly put a damper on his plans to renovate the house. Richard grumbled to himself about all that money and time that he wasted yesterday. When he returned to the hotel he went onto his laptop and wrote a long e-mail to his mother, venting about what had just happened.

Richard wondered if the fire was intentional. Michael had once tried to commit suicide before. Richard remembered how once as a small child he heard from his bed how his mothered screamed at Michael in the kitchen downstairs. Richard's mother rarely screamed. Richard feared what could be happening, but his morbid curiosity gripped him into tip-toeing down the stairs and peering around the corner to see what happened in the kitchen. He saw Michael on the tiled floor bleeding from his wrists, and his mother on the telephone calling for an ambulance at the other side of the room. As she talked on the phone she rushed for a couple kitchen towels, which she wrapped around Michael's wrists. Richard did not know it at the time, but according to his mother Michael had slit his wrists over the kitchen sink. Michael went to a mental institution for several weeks after the incident, and when he got out he insisted to everyone that he "just had an accident washing the dishes."

It would be like his father to kill himself in such a way that it would not look like a suicide, Richard thought, because it would be fittingly passive-aggressive. And by setting the house on fire he could punish his son by making it impossible for him to renovate the building. Michael's revenge on Richard was perhaps to destroy himself so utterly that he could highlight Richard's own helplessness, his inability to control his father and accomplish what he wanted.

And now Richard had to sell the property and bury his father. He skipped the funeral. He bought the cheapest coffin available, a plain black wooden box not totally unlike what one would sometimes see in a campy vampire movie. Richard had his father buried in that, and he had a very plain, rectangular stone gravestone made for the plot. Richard refused to even watch the casket be lowered into the grave and covered with dirt. He just wanted to forget about it.

Richard spent a couple more weeks in Indiana before heading back to New York. He cleaned up the affairs regarding the estate and worked alone in his hotel room, making business calls, doing online research, faxing legal materials, and doing correspondence back and forth with his paralegal in New York. He refused to spend any of his free time in the town, lest he run into someone he knew. He worked harder there than he normally did living in Manhattan.

Before Richard had buried his father the county coroner's office called. "I just wanted to let you know that I found a ring on your father -- it looks like it could be holding a ruby -- when I examined him today," the coroner said, "and I was wondering if you wanted the ring."

"Sure," Richard said. He went to the coroner's office and picked up the ring. The fire left the ring unscathed, and Richard mused on how it now belonged to him. Michael had at times called it "the ring of eternal return," but Richard was not sure if that was an apt name. Does it return eternally if it is passes along to different people? Richard did not think so. At most, it returned to the family, but at this point Richard loathed associating himself with his father. Richard for a moment imagined it as being like the cursed ring of the Nibelungens from Wagner's opera cycle, the ring dooming anyone who owned it; and although not a superstitious person, he could not help but hope that he would not come to the same fate as the ring's two previous owners.

Chapter XX

Roger had a productive day at his antique store. The glorious weather must have inspired people to go shopping, because from the moment his store opened to the moment it closed he met a wealth of customers eager to see what he offered. He attended customers well past closing time, and when he finally sent his last customer out with one of his 17th century wooden Baroque desks he locked the front door and walked toward the back room to do some end-of-the-day accounting.

The cluttered store, packed to the ceiling with desks, chairs, sofas, lamps, and every other imaginable artifact, served as an easy place to hide, and as Roger walked Richard came out from behind a mass of wood and textiles and approached him. "Hey Roger," Richard said, beckoning the entrepreneur to turn around.

"Richard?" Roger asked.

"Roger, you trashed my apartment."

"Uh, who told you that?"

"Mark."

"Mark is a liar and a shit. Don't listen to him."

"So you didn't trash my apartment?"

"No."

"Mark said you stalked him."

"He's being ridiculous. He's dead to me."

"I wanted to call the police."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Mark didn't want me to."

"That's because he's a liar."

"Hmm. So what were you doing last night?"

"What's it to you? I don't have to tell you that."

"I just want to make sure you weren't the one who trashed my apartment."

"Look, what I did last night is for me to know. You have no right."

"I'm not in the mood for that kind of answer."

"Uh, it doesn't matter what mood you are in. That's how it is."

"Look," Richard sighed, "just tell me, all right?"

"No!" Roger ran to the back of the store. Richard panicked, looked around, found a desk lamp made out of steal, grabbed it, ran to the back of the store, and hit Roger in the back with it as Roger tried reached for his landline telephone. Roger groaned and fell to the floor. "Shit!" he groaned.

"You didn't have to run away like that," Richard said.

"Fuck you!"

"So, since we're here, I was wondering if you could tell me what happened to my cat."

"What?" Roger asked.

"My cat. I can't find it. When I came home it was missing."

"As if I gave a fuck about your cat! Why don't you go fuck yourself," Roger said. He started to pull himself up from the floor, but Richard hit him in the stomach with the lamp, sending him back down. "Fuck!" he said, curling into the fetal position.

Richard watched Roger ache on the floor and then looked about the room. He wondered where his cat went, and he even considered looking around the store. He thought about waiting for Roger to calm, but he got impatient and said, "What I guess I'd like you to do is, first, apologize for tearing up my apartment and, second, promise that you won't do anything to Mark. I won't bother you with the cat since I believe you didn't care about it. Could you do that?"

"No," Roger said.

"Why not?"

Roger heaved. "Because when I get back up I'm going to fucking kill the both of you."

"That is the wrong answer," Richard said. He put the lamp down on the desk, walked up to Roger, and kicked him in the balls. Roger screamed and curled into the fetal position again, whimpering and crying. Richard disappeared to the front of the store but soon returned with a light, wooden chair, which he smashed against Roger's side. The chair shattered into several pieces strewn about the floor.

"Look, I'm just asking you to be a good person. Can't you even pretend to do that? All you have to do is apologize and promise. I'll go home this second."

Roger said nothing, instead looking at Richard with eyes that spoke with all the unrepentant fury he could muster. Richard read his eyes and went back out. This time he did not return to deliver Roger more violence, and when, after many minutes, Roger began to regain his breath and recollect his mind he looked out with his sideways gaze to the front of the store, where, he realized, Richard was tearing down the mountains of antiques, destroying them, sending them crashing to the floor, cluttering them about so that they blocked pathways, and breaking them with his bare hands. Richard kicked the antiques, smashed them against each other, and threw them against the wall. Roger had spent his entire life collecting all of these items – in fact, they were his raison d'être – and within a space of an hour he watched as Richard transformed all these valuables into a heap of garbage.

Richard returned to Roger wiping sweat off his forehead. "Roger, I'll make you a deal. Since I've trashed your store the way you trashed my apartment, I won't ask you to apologize to me for what you've done. However, I still want you to promise that you won't hurt Mark. Do you think you could do that?" Roger looked back at him, quiet and tired. "Will you promise not to bother Mark ever again?" Roger looked at the floor, looked away from Richard, and gulped his silence.

"I'm going to die," Roger thought.

Richard picked up the lamp again.

Chapter XXI

Sam did not usually go to the grocery store alone, but on this night he went into the humid night air without Joe and with hardly anyone else on the sidewalk. The calm sounds of cars driving by, of the occasional patter of a pedestrian, and of the monotone hums of air conditioners did not ease him. He walked and reached the store and went inside. The cashier nodded. No one else was in the store. Sam grabbed a shopping basket and walked through the aisles, picking up groceries, trying not to forget anything now that he did not have Joe there to help remind him.

The refrigerators' hummed.

Finished collecting his groceries, Sam walked up to the cashier and put his shopping basket on the table. The cashier nodded, taking the groceries out of the basket one at a time, to ring them up on the cashier and put in plastic bags. When he finished Sam paid him about $30 and picked up the three full plastic bags to go home. He went outside finding it unchanged.

As Sam walked he listened to the patter of his own feet, sensing its casual but consistent rhythm. His shoes did not make a loud clicking against the ground like dress shoes but rather produced a soft patting sound. After a moment it seemed that the patter produced an echo, perhaps because of the way the surrounding buildings captured the sound waves, but then Sam realized that it was not an echo at all but someone else's footsteps. He turned around and saw another man walking behind him, but he could not make out the visage of this man with the similar gait. The man looked in Sam's direction and seemed to walk faster, so Sam walked faster as well. Sam in fact made a point not to look back again so he could focus on getting to his apartment as quickly as possible, but as Sam approached the front door of his apartment building the stranger called out, "Hey Sam!"

Sam startled and turned around to see the man approach him. As he got closer Sam saw the man's face and recognized him. "Hey Sam, it's Richard," the stranger said. "I'm Mark's friend."

"I remember," Sam said.

"Hey, I was hoping to run into you."

"You were?"

"Oh yeah." Richard studied Sam's nervous face. "Did you know that Mark disappeared?"

"Yeah. Joe disappeared, too."

"Do you know where they went?"

"I have no idea," Sam said. "I wish I did."

"Joe didn't tell you anything?"

"No. He told me he was having dinner with Mark, and that was the last I heard of him. Haven't heard anything since."

"Hmm."

"It's really annoying, you know, because I rely on him for the income. We pay for this apartment together and stuff, so if he doesn't come back I don't know what I'm going to do."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Richard nodded. "That's fine."

"I should put these groceries away," Sam said.

"Oh, one thing. If Joe were to run away, do you have any idea where he'd go?"

Sam thought about that for a moment. "I don't know. Maybe Los Angeles? He has friends there. I think he sometimes misses it. I wouldn't know where else he'd go."

"All right. Well I'm sorry to bother you. Take care." Richard walked away.

Sam went into his apartment and turned on the light to the main room, strewn with dirty clothing, empty potato chip bags, and plastic bags, and walked over to the kitchen area, where he put his food away. The refrigerator hummed. A television in a neighboring apartment roared with music and dialogue. A car horn roared outside. Sam looked outside one of his windows and saw someone standing in a dark niche of a building on the other side of the street. Was it Richard? Sam looked at the person for a while, but at no point did the person move, and Sam could not make the person out in the darkness.

"Jesus, when is he coming back?" Sam whispered to himself. "Fucking bastard." He thought about calling Joe on his cell phone, but he decided against it. He had already called him twice and left a voice message. If Joe had not called him by now, Sam's calling him again was not going to make it any more. He did not know what to do with himself. He thought about calling someone else. He thought about going out to a bar. He decided against both.

Sam turned on his television, sat on the couch, and watched a reality program about several people who live together in the same house in Washington, DC. One of the house residents complained that one of the other residents did not do her job in keeping the place clean. "If the girl is going to bake a cake, she should have the decency to clean the kitchen afterwards! I can't take this anymore!" The resident subsequently confronted the messy co-resident, a fight ensued, the neat freak resident broke down in tears, and the two of them ignored each other for the rest of the show.

"What a stupid show," Sam said to himself as he watched it through. What was the point? His own life was at least as interesting. Why wasn't anyone making a show about him? He had all sorts of ideas he could share with the world – ideas about sex, drugs, and money – ideas about the harsh cruelty that is life, stuff that viewers could actually use. What the hell was with this baking, with these fights about cleaning a home? These reality shows were bullshit, he knew that, but he envied the people because they could at least make money from just doing their bullshit.

The entrance door to Sam's apartment shuddered with a loud thud. Sam jumped in his seat and then stood up, unlocked the door, and swung it open. He saw the apartment door across from his and then peered down the hallway to notice that someone – he could not tell who – was running away. Annoyed, Sam closed the door and locked it. He turned the light off, undressed, slipped into bed, and went to sleep. The air conditioning hummed.

Chapter XXII

Returning from Roger's antique store, Richard opened the door to his apartment to find little Ulysses right there standing on the floor. Ulysses looked up at Richard and meowed. Richard twitched. He looked behind him, wondering what he should do, but then went inside, closed the door, and picked up Ulysses to hold close to his face. "Where were you?" Richard asked. He shed a tear.

But as Richard walked around the apartment with Ulysses he realized that Mark had disappeared. Richard could not find Mark's clothes, toothbrush, or anything else that he used. Richard picked up his cell phone and called Steve. "Hey," Richard said, "have you seen Mark?"

"No. Why?"

"I just came back to the apartment, and all of his stuff is gone."

"That's strange. I don't know what to tell you."

Richard hung up and tried to call James, but James did not pick up his phone. Richard looked around the apartment, trying to spot a note, but he could not find one. His belongings still lay disheveled all over the furniture and floor. His breathing quickened. "No!" he said. "No! This can't happen! He can't leave! He can't leave! He can't leave!" He started to cry. "He can't leave! I have to save him. I have to save him. I have to save him." He paced back and forth in the apartment like a caged animal. He did not know what to do.

Wild thoughts ran through Richard's mind all through the night, and when day came he decided not to go to work. He stayed at home, a mess, until James called him. "Hey Richard," James said, "I noticed you tried calling me last night."

"I did. I'm trying to find Mark. I came back to the apartment last night and all of his stuff was gone."

"It's funny that you mention that. I actually ran into Mark last night."

"You did?"

"Yes, I was walking around the block and I ran into him and Joe. I said hello and asked them what they were up to, and they said they were flying to Los Angeles."

"When?"

"They said they were going today. I asked Mark if he had said goodbye to you, and he said that he hadn't. I told him that he should, and he said that he'd try, but I guess he didn't get back to you."

"No, he didn't. But thank you for letting me know."

Chapter XXIII

Alan walked into a grungy hair salon find his ex-girlfriend ironing an old woman's hair. She saw him out of the corner of her eye but pretended not to notice him, until finally Alan started moving towards her. She muttered, "What are you doing here?"

"I just thought I'd see how you're doing."

"Uh huh."

"Would you be willing to have dinner with me? I just want to catch up with people, see where they've gone since I've left and all. I won't hit on you. I have a girlfriend and all. I promise."

"All right," she said. "There's a diner around the corner. We can meet there when I'm done." Alan agreed to her suggestion and sat in awkward silence in the guest chair, waiting for her to finish work. An hour later the two of them went to the diner, picking a dingy booth composed of rotten cushioning that exposed some springs. Their waitress ran by, slammed a couple of glasses of water on their table, and just as abruptly left. When she eventually came back Alan ordered a steak with mashed potatoes and a cup of coffee. The woman ordered a ham and cheese sandwich with a glass of soda.

"So," she said.

"So," he said.

"What have you been up to?"

"Mostly re-thinking things. The other day I got into some trouble and this kid came and got me out of it. When I thought about it I realized that I don't really know anyone, don't really have any friends, and that I was just lucky that this kid was there. I'm thinking that I need to get out of this and get a real job. I can't keep doing this."

"So that's why you're here?"

"Kind of. When I thought back, I remembered you being one of the few good people I knew. I don't know. So what have you been up to?"

"Well, after we broke up I floated around and got into a relationship with another guy. It went all right, but I didn't feel like there was any magic. And then my mom died from colon cancer, and I had a hard time dealing with that. My boyfriend didn't help me out, so I dumped him and went to school to get a job as a hair stylist. I found another man at work, and we hit it off. Got married, and just a few months ago I had my first child."

"What's your child's name?"

"Isaias."

Alan beamed. "I'd like to have children someday," he said.

"Why?"

"I want to make little people that I can love!"

"Uh huh."

"What? What's wrong?'

"Nothing." She looked at the clock on the wall at the end of the restaurant. It was 7:32 PM. She sighed. "I have to do all this stuff for Isaias and my husband, taking care of them and going to work, and sometimes I'd rather just be watching television or hanging out with my girlfriends or \-- I don't know, just not be doing anything, you know? I'd like to think that I don't have someone depending on me every second."

"Really? I'd think that would be great," Alan said.

"Well take if from someone who does: it sucks sometimes." She chewed on her silence. "You know, when two people first get into a good relationship, there's that spark and that magic, you know? I think that's what keeps it going -- the romance and all that. But it doesn't last when you've been together for three years, when you know all the shit there is to know about your husband, and you don't do anything special for each other anymore. And you see your son shit all over himself and your husband piss all over the toilet. It becomes like a routine. Nothing magical. I think it was a huge mistake to rely on the magic to make the relationship work, because now that it's gone I don't see what the point is."

Alan frowned. If anything, the one thing in the world that he wanted was someone to be loyal and dependable. Everyone he knew looked out only for themselves and were friendly with him only as long as he was a convenience. And here she complained about how much she hated being relied upon, when Alan viewed it as the best thing a person could do. He did not say anything, though. How could he? He knew she was doing a favor for him just being there having dinner. So he sat in silence.

After a long moment of awkward silence the two of them tried to recover their conversation by talking about whatever they could think up -- the weather, stories about the woman's work at the hair salon, and so on. When they finally parted ways he knew that he would never see her again.

Chapter XXIV

They could not figure out what they wanted to do. Every time one of them thought up an idea, they quickly lost sight of where they could take it. John played with the software on his laptop. Frank occasionally played with a rhythm on the drum set. Steve puttered out a few ideas on his guitar. Sometimes they would mutter to each other some thing or other about what they were doing, but they spent most of their time there in Steve's music room lost in their own worlds.

"What's the point?" Steve thought. "What am I trying to say?" That was the problem. If he could figure that out, the construction of the songs themselves would be easy. But he struggled. "Even if people listen to my music," he thought, "anything I have to say won't be important to them anyway. They wouldn't listen to me if they didn't already want to hear what I had to say. I'm not going to change anyone's mind." He sighed. "So what's the point?"

"I'm getting some Stoli," Frank said. "You want some?"

Steve and John shook their heads, so Frank went to the other side of the room and pour himself a glass. He gulped it and poured himself another glass. "This is fucking ridiculous. We're in a dead end. What do you say we do some LSD and see if can get some inspiration?"

"No thanks," Steve said. His mind drifted. He wondered where Richard went. The guy never seemed content to leave people alone. Couldn't he see that people just need to work things out on their own? Steve could never tell Richard this, of course, because what would be the point? Richard would just get angry at him, and Steve would lose his trust. Richard could be so childish like that, sometimes. "He's so stubborn," Steve thought. Richard thought the whole world should revolve around him and how he thought it should work, but it doesn't work that way. People are destroyed and ruined all the time. He should just be glad he can survive.

Steve wished Richard would get over Brock. Brock clearly did not want to be together with him anymore, and Richard's stubbornness about it did not do anyone favors. "I've been so good to him," Steve thought, "and he hasn't taken the slightest interest in me. I've done everything I can to try to get him to want me, and there he is chasing a fantasy." Steve strummed a chord, scarcely paying attention to what it even sounded like.

"What the fuck are you doing?" Frank said.

"Hmm?"

"I said, 'What are you doing?'"

"Oh, just thinking," Steve said.

"Well it sounds awful!"

Steve sighed. Frank could be such a fucking annoying little retard. Maybe if he overdosed someday Steve could hire a new band member to replace him. He imagined Frank as one of those people who, when they became famous, would have a sordid television biography made about him depicting his descent into a drug-addicted hysteria that would ruin his career and family – assuming that he would have a family – and send him to several rehabilitation clinics until he would be saved by Disney, which would star him in a family-friendly movie about talking puppies who discover the meaning of Christmas.

"I could just go home," John said, "if we're just going to be working like this today." He looked at Steve. "There's not much I can do if you don't have any lyrics ready. I have no idea where to take these songs otherwise."

"Could you wait just a little longer?" Steve said. "I'm just thinking. If we don't have anything in a little bit we can break up."

"Fine."

Steve toyed with the idea of writing some sort of love song for Richard, something that could be generalized for a larger audience but that he would recognize as directed at him. What a stupid idea. It wouldn't work. Richard is so impervious when it comes to anyone other than Brock. Steve sighed again. What is it about Brock that is so special, anyway? Steve did not see anything. He wondered whether Richard cared more about proving to himself the endurance of his love than the person he actually claimed to love. If that were the case, Richard could give it a break, because no one else would doubt his endurance. Four years after the break-up Richard still obsessed over him. It would be a better use of his energy to love someone who would actually appreciate it.

And yet, Steve admitted to himself that one of the reasons he was so attracted to Richard was because Richard took love so seriously. Steve did not know anyone who prioritized love so much. So many of the people he knew cared more about their jobs. Their jobs dictated everything they did. There was John, tinkering with his music programs. He was like that. One would think that with that sort of attitude he would at least love music more, but he was not like that. He barely thought of it as an art at all, let alone the religion that Steve considered it. "And that's why John will die alone," Steve thought. But why should love matter so much? Why should it be more important than work? It occurred to Steve that he had never talked to Richard about it.

"I wonder where Richard is," Steve said aloud.

"Maybe he's dead," Frank said.

Chapter XXV

James opened and walked through the front door of his church. The sun had set hours ago, so no light flowed through the stained glass windows into the interior. Only a few, scattered candles lit the room such that it took James' eyes a minute to adjust to the darkness. When he did he saw his priest sitting in one of the pews, praying.

James sat beside the priest. "I'm here, Father," he whispered.

"Good. Come with me," the priest whispered in return. He stood up and walked to the end of the pew and turned to go to back of the church. James followed. They walked through a door and went down a hallway. At each turn they entered a perceptively darker space, reaching to a point of almost total darkness until they came to a little bedroom just large enough to fit a single bed and a desk. One white sheet and one thin, wool blanket covered the bed. A few books sat on the desk, along with a few papers, pens, and a candle. A small, wooden cross hung on the wall over the bed.

The priest closed the bedroom door and lit the candle, illuminating their faces with a rosy glow. James sat on the bed. He did not move or say anything, but he watched the priest, with his quivering, wrinkled skin moistening with sweat. The priest touched James' right hand with his left and touched James' chest with his right. James could feel those two hands shaking, and it made him sweat, but he barely had time to think before the priest gave a quivering, moist kiss. Indeed, with the flickering of the candle everything in that tiny room seemed to quiver.

James reclined on the bed. The priest climbed on top of him, compressing James with his rolls of hairy fat, and kissed James again, holding James' face in his hands. He kissed him again and again. He wrapped his arms around James and squeezed him. And then, he unbuttoned James' shirt, revealing his light, toned skin. The priest saw one of James' nipples and pulled the shirt open to see it clearly. The hard nipple glistened with sweat under the candlelight, and within a moment the priest began sucking on it. He sucked and sucked and grabbed James' heaving pectoral muscle. James lay there looking up to heaven.

The priest undid James' shirt and pulled it off. He unbuckled James' belt, unzipped his pants, and reached into them to pull out James' somewhat hard penis. The priest went down and put his wet mouth on the head of the penis, gliding his tongue and lips up and down it, arousing sensations for James that made him harder. The priest loved it, worshipping James' penis with his mouth. His head bobbed up and down, consuming as much of the penis as he could handle, although at a couple of points he gagged somewhat.

The room turned into a furnace burning sexual passion. The priest threw off his collar and cassock, the rolls of fat fully present in that rosy, flickering light, as well as his small, throbbing hard penis, wet with pre-cum. The priest pulled down James' pants, rolled him over so that he could see James' bare buttocks, and descended upon his anus. The priest heaved against James, but as James gazed into the candlelight he considered that the priest's small penis and lack of experience meant that he would not actually be penetrated. That did not stop the priest, however, as he heaved and grunted and groaned. The bed squeaked and a river of cum poured out of the priest's penis onto the crack of James' buttocks. The priest rolled off of James, lying on his side on the small bed, catching his breath as James looked into the candlelight.

"You better go," the priest said.

"Okay." James pulled up his pants and put on his shirt. When he finished he looked at the priest, who had buried his sweaty face into the bed, and walked himself out of the parish. On the street he walked towards home, avoiding the glances of passersby, his arms crossed and his hands tucked inside his armpits, but then he heard the voice of a familiar friend call him by name. He turned to see who it was and saw Richard walking toward him.

"Hey James! How are you?"

James gasped and did not say anything, frozen in his steps as Richard scurried to come up to him. "I haven't seen you in over a month!" Richard said, patting James on the shoulder. "What have you been up to?"

"Oh, not much," James said, looking here and there about the street. "Just the usual."

"Well that's good."

"What about you? Where have you been all these weeks?"

"Oh, just trying to finish up some personal business. I'll tell you about it sometime, but are you going to be available sometime soon? I'd like to catch up with you"

"I should be. I don't know if you've seen Steve yet, but he's been talking about having a dinner party. Of course you'd be invited."

"No, I haven't seen him yet. That's a great idea."

"We've just been wondering when you'd come back."

"Yeah, I know. I'm sorry about that. I just needed to sort some things out. But anyway, are you doing anything right now? Would you like to get a cup of coffee or a bite to eat?"

"Oh," James wavered, "Now's not really a good time. I have to go home and do some work and prepare for class tomorrow."

"Oh okay. Well I'll talk to Steve about that party."

"Good."

"Have a good night."

Chapter XXVI

Richard and Alan greeted each other as Alan exited the front doors of the church. Service had just ended and a steady stream of people flowed into the street. "Hey Alan," Richard said, "I'm glad you could meet up with me to go to the dinner party. I'm still a little scared."

"There are worse things in the world than seeing an ex," Alan said.

"I know. It's just been so long. I don't know if I'll behave myself."

"Did you want to walk there?"

"We could. We have some time before it's supposed to begin."

They made their way through the crowded afternoon sidewalk.

"So our preacher gave a sermon today about love," Alan said. "I don't know what you'd think about it, though."

"Oh, why's that?"

"Well, he talked about the sinfulness of this world. Our world is a world of pain, suffering, lies, and illusions. God, Heaven, and Truth exist in a separate world, in a place far away from our senses, but when we fall in love with someone we are reminded of that other world. Since we're sinful, our instinct is to use our lover to pleasure ourselves sexually. But sex is just a distraction that keeps our thoughts on our worldly sins. Instead, we should dwell in our friendship with our lover to pursue Divinity and Truth."

"Oh, I think that's a wonderful argument."

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. I'll get right on finding myself a non-sexual love affair so I can think about God more easily."

"Now you're being sarcastic. So what do you think?"

"It's hard to know where to begin. One thing I would possibly agree with is that sometimes people do use their lovers just to pleasure themselves. Sometimes both of the guys in a relationship will basically agree that that is what they want, but if that's all they want they're eventually going to get bored with each other and seek other guys to pleasure them. But I wouldn't consider the celibate contemplation of another world as the alternative."

"Why not?"

"Because, if anything, when you're in a relationship you are creating a new world, not contemplating one. You and your lover create something beautiful, the loving relationship, not thinking about something beautiful. The truth of the matter is that when your preacher talks about an alternative world he's really creating that world, anyway, not describing it."

"Woah, wait a minute. He's not making stuff up. He's talking about God."

"So? The god that he talks about is a god he creates with his imagination."

"So you're saying God isn't real?"

"I'm not saying that. I'm saying that your preacher creates God with his imagination."

"But that's basically saying the same thing."

"No it isn't. Just because you create something doesn't make it not real. People create their own ideas all the time. If anything, a big problem is that they pretend to discover the ideas rather than owning up the to the fact that they created the ideas themselves."

"How so?"

"Well, look at how so many religious fundamentalists will use the Bible however it suits them. Some of them read various passages of the Bible to mean that homosexuality is an abomination while they conveniently ignore all the other things the Bible condemns, such as cursing one's parents or eating shrimp. But they prance around and say, 'Oh, I'm not saying that gays are evil. That's just what it says in the Bible! Don't look at me! I'm just the messenger.'"

"I see."

"That's the problem with any writing. Writing can't make a person wise, and it can't put the Truth in a person's head. Writings can be used out of context, they can't correct their readers when those readers misunderstand, they can't answer readers' questions, and they can't defend themselves when readers interrogate them."

"So you think the Bible is useless?"

"No. I didn't say that. Am I making you upset?" Richard saw the tightened wrinkles on Alan's forehead.

"Whatever. Let's change the subject. Are we there yet?"

Chapter XXVII

"What do you think?" Mark built a sand castle a few yards from the edge of the beach, where the ocean met the sand. The castle stood over the land with elaborate spires, towers, and an outer wall that lined a moat.

Joe looked at it from where he laid on the blanket a few feet away. "Jesus. You're crazy. It is nice, though."

The two of them wore matching, skimpy blue swim shorts which matched their dark tans well. The beach was full: sunbathing, volley ball games, and sight seeing. As the ocean lapped the sand with its waves, unclouded serenity prevailed. A person could easily imagine that the blue sky was the domed roof of the center of the universe. The beaming sun reigned unchallenged in the center of the heavens, scattering emanations, which were dispersed skipping and dancing upon the gentle bob of the waters. The darker blue of the sea butted against the horizon in a kissing contingency far from shore, offering reaffirmation to the viewer that perhaps there only was what one saw. Everything seemed at once ancient and new: the undying, unchanging earth. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Here was eternity; time was no more. A person could lose himself in it.

Mark, apparently satisfied with the work that he did, went on to the white beach blanket, kissed Joe, and rested on the blanket. He propped up his head and the upper half of his torso with his arms by digging his elbows into the ground; this allowed him to admire his castle and to watch the other people.

This was the happiest Mark had been in years. For once he felt completely free to be who he wanted, and there he was with a person he could easily see himself loving for the rest of his life. Everything seemed to be in harmony -- even the strangers' play on the beach; their gay movements and relaxed chatter provided the melodies and counterpoint to the ocean's soft and steady rhythm.

A child not too far away was making her own sand castle a few feet from her parents. Her movements were clumsy but lighthearted, concentrated on the project with the absurd seriousness that only someone without any other cares in the world could have. Every once in a while she would land quite squarely on her buttocks to take a break from her great efforts, and when she did she would emit a puff of a puritanical industry.

A brief but spontaneous shiver, and an unexpected reminiscence hit Mark. He found himself thinking back to the night when he met Richard at Roxy. He thought about everything Richard had said to him then. If only he could have taken a picture of that moment, Mark thought, to somehow capture it all so he could have it with him forever. As the sun shined warmly on him, Mark thought of its rays and how they traveled out into space. He imagined the rays shining outward infinitely, gliding through the empty space forever, long after the sun had died. In the same way, Mark tried to think of the joy he felt right now, indeliberate and undisturbed as it was, radiating out from his being and traveling outward forever.

Chapter XXVIII

"Your question doesn't surprise me at all," said Frank between sips of beer. He and a journalist sat across from each other on wooden booths, under a Tiffany style lamp hanging from the ceiling. "Everyone who cares about the album seems to know about the dinner party. The other day our manager asked me about the dinner and how some of the songs from the album were inspired by it. I wasn't at the party myself, but John was there and he told me all about it."

"So, how did it go?" asked the journalist.

"Well, let me try to tell it from the beginning, the way John told it. But, you know, John didn't remember every detail from the dinner, and I probably don't remember every detail John told me. So, keep that in mind. Anyway, Steve threw the dinner party partly for Richard's sake because he had been threw a lot of problems. His father had died, and he tried to take care of a runaway and that didn't go well. Steve knew Richard wanted to see his ex-boyfriend Brock, so Steve got Brock to come to the party. But anyway, at the party Richard didn't come until really late. There was this guy Alan, whom Steve barely knew, who came and said that he was with Richard but that Richard was lagging behind because he was lost in thought. Steve almost went out to get Richard himself, but Alan told him not to worry. About half an hour after Alan came Richard arrived. When Richard first came in he went straight to the kitchen and disappeared for quite some time. I think it was Charles who went in there to retrieve him.

"Some of the people there wanted to drink, but I think some of them were also a bit nervous and drank a lot to calm their nerves. Someone said something like, 'Jesus, let's hold our horses here! If we keep drinking like this we're all going to be puking all over the place.' So they put the alcohol away and just tried to talk.

"Richard mentioned on the way to the party he talked to Alan about the church service Alan attended. Apparently, the preacher had given a sermon about love and sex, and Richard didn't care much for the pastor's ideas. But at the party, rather than say what he thought, Richard asked Alan in front of everyone what he thought love is."

"I don't know if Alan much appreciated being put on the spot, but he gave a little speech. He said something like, "The way I think of it, love existed at the very start of Creation. It was out of love that God made the universe, after all. I think love is a way to motivate people to guide each other through life. There's nothing better than for a person to have someone to love. If a man does something shameful, nothing would make him feel worse for him than being seen by the woman he loves. It's the same way for the woman, too; she always feels awful when her lover catches her doing something bad. And nothing could make a lover braver than to be with his girlfriend; a lover would do anything in the world for her, even die for her. I think there's something virtuous in that, something that God values, and to love someone is to be a like a god because he's inspired by God.'

"Well, if you knew John, you'd know that he didn't care much about Alan's ideas. He basically told Alan that he didn't think God had anything to do with love. He basically said, 'Look, love is something that is created by our hormones to get us to have sex and make babies. It's a byproduct of our having evolved over millions of years. If we make up stories about where love comes from, we're only going to deceive ourselves and set ourselves up for disappointment. Instead, if anything, we should be studying the hormonal basis for love so that we can manipulate to maximum use.'

"Charles, a book publisher friend of Steve's, was there and pretty much agreed with John's criticisms of Alan but felt that it would be better to get rid of the whole concept of love altogether. 'Love is a trivial thing used to keep the masses busy,' he argued. 'It's the thing that makes us work so that we can support our spouses and raise a family. It's the thing that makes us buy flowers and cards for each other and spend money on big weddings and vacations. It's part of the scheme of petty bourgeois living.'

"I think it was at that point that Steve turned to Brock and asked him what he thought. He said that he pretty much had a very different take on it. He believed in soul mates. He thought that God made each of us two halves of a whole and that part of our destiny in life is to find our other half. By finding our halves we can have a complete life and live more fully and meaningfully. This elicited a lot of criticism from John and Charles, who asked him questions like, 'But what if your soul mate is in Madagascar?' and so on.

"I think Steve was more sympathetic to Brock's beliefs. He said that he didn't necessarily believe in soul mates but thought the idea was beautiful. He said something like, 'In general, I think love is the most beautiful thing in the world and that it is almost an aesthetic obligation to be in love so that we can have that beauty.'

"Steve asked Richard what he thought, and he said that he was reminded of a conversation with a woman named Diane. 'Some of you know her,' he said. 'She's a musician – one of my clients – and she's done a lot of humanitarian work and such. Anyway, we had a conversation about love – I was depressed – and one of the things she said right off the bat is that it is absolutely not about being the most beautiful in the world. "Why not?" I asked. And she said it was because if it was just about that, love would be nothing but desire to possess the most of beautiful thing as it is for eternity, and if that thing ever changed – if it ever became less than the most beautiful – we would abandon it for something that did. "Many people do just that," I said.

"'"And that's not love." She was very firm about that. She went on to say that what many people want is some end-point in which we don't have to do anything, and that many people think that if they can just get a beautiful man or woman they can stop their pursuits and just spend their time captivated by each other. But unfortunately for them that's not how the world works. Things happen, people change, and at some point these kinds of people are bound to become disillusioned. And at any rate, this kind of affection is not love for someone as a person so much as a fetish for an object.

"'"So what is love?" I asked her. She had a hard time putting it into words at first. Finally, she said, "Love is the origin of creation, not the endpoint. Love can't be of the most beautiful because love is what drives beauty to be made. It also isn't knowledge of such things as soul mates because love is what drives wisdom to be made. Love creates the bonds rather than be driven by them. In love two people decide to recreate their worldviews and each other through their interactions. Because they remain biologically two separate individuals they will never be able to have the exact same worldview, they will never be able to unite themselves into one whole – they will not be inseparable, but to the extent that they constantly remake each other each person will feel as if the other is the origin of his values. And since we're always moving – always changing – we can't desire individuals who we think of as perfect, because individuals always change, and our perception of individuals changes. Beauty itself," she said, "is a drug. It can be a stimulant that inspires a person to create and engage in a loving relationship, but it can also be a poison that immobilizes a person."'

"Anyway," Frank said, "That's what inspired many of the band's songs. Steve in particular wanted to explore different perspectives on love and see how they would mesh."

"So all those love songs aren't in there because Steve is in love with someone?" asked the journalist.

"Well, if you were to ask me, I think Steve is in love with Richard, but we haven't talked about it and I don't know how Richard would feel about that."

Chapter XXIX

At some point after the dinner party Steve telephoned Charles to thank him for coming to the party. "I also wanted to ask you," Steve said, "what all went on in the kitchen when you followed Richard in there?"

"Yes, I've been meaning to tell you," Charles said. "When I first went in there I found him collapsed on the floor, curled up in the fetus position. He was quivering and crying like a baby. I told him to put himself together and show some good form. I dragged him up from the floor and gave him a handkerchief and tried to get him to straighten his shoulders.

"He kept crying and crying, which was a bit awkward for me because I'm not exactly one to show sensitivity or a tender touch in such situations. But I asked him if he was upset to see his ex again. And he said that it wasn't so much that he was upset to see his ex, so much as that he felt ashamed. 'Why?' I asked. 'Because I did something so terrible and hideous and it was for nothing,' Richard said. 'What did you do?' I asked.

"All he told me was that he was trying to take care of Mark, but that Mark ran away from him. And that he was so worried and upset that he ran off looking for him. He knew that Mark's friend Joe used to do porn in Los Angeles, so he took a plane out there and looked around for weeks. He knew the businesses that Joe worked for, so he looked them up and plugged them for connections and tips. He found the two of them on a beach. Mark was apparently building a sand castle and looked happy.

"As Richard told me this he cried more and more, so I told him to stop rambling about all this nonsense and put himself together. I said, 'Look, just focus on doing this dinner. I'm sure you've been through a lot lately. Just take it one step at a time. Right now no one is ashamed of you. No one cares what you've done. But if you keep acting this way they will be embarrassed for you.'"

"So did you ever find out what Richard did when he saw them at the beach?" Steve asked.

"No, I never found out."

Chapter XXX

"How late is it?" Brock asked.

"It's about midnight." They walked down a street, inebriated, late after Steve's dinner party. The city lights had lit the clouds to a bright orange that contrasted with the black sky, and the cool air prickled their skin.

"You know I haven't talked to you in years," Richard said. "I send you e-mails all the time about what I do but I often feel like I'm just giving monologues."

"Well that's how you wanted it. But you know I do read them."

"I have so much fun writing them."

Brock sighed. "Well, you don't know this, but I have a --"

"You have a boyfriend. You two have been together for a couple years now. Yeah. I've seen you two together around town."

"Heh."

"Not that I've been stalking you or anything like that. It's just that you know how it can be when you live in the same part of town."

"Yeah, I know."

They came upon Union Square and sat at one of the benches near Broadway. Hundreds of people stilled walked about at that time of night. Richard gazed over at the Empire State Building to the north, lit green and red. "You remember the line about this park?" Richard asked.

"What line?"

"The line from your favorite poem. 'Who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square.'"

"What?"

"Come on. 'I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.'"

"Oh Jesus. It was from Ginsburg's 'Howl.' I haven't read that poem in years. Did you memorize it?"

"Yes. I memorized the whole thing. I wanted to recite it to you. It was my way of coping back then." Brock sat in silence. Richard looked about at the various passing pedestrians. He fidgeted. He looked at Brock and then looked at the pedestrians again. His leg shook. He turned to Brock again and told him, "You know I love you. I wish I could do something to win you back, and I wish you could tell me what I could do."

Brock sighed. "Our relationship ended years ago! I just had to move on."

"And what am I supposed to do with that?"

"You should move on, too!"

"I can't! You're the most beautiful person in the world!" Richard burst into tears, first as quickly scattering droplets and then as full rivers that gushed down both sides of his cheeks, his comment thrusting him over the edge of his barely controlled sanity. He could not have been more enthralled by Brock at that moment if his heart had been hit by a thousand of Cupid's arrows.

"I can't fall out of love with you. I have to love you. I know you don't want me, and that's why I've been staying clear from you, but –"

"But what?" Brock nearly jumped out of his seat and walked away.

"I have to do this. You're the most beautiful person in the world, and I'd do anything for you. You don't have to take me back, but at least indulge me just for these few moments. Let me be insane for just a few minutes and I won't bother you; it'll be just like before tonight."

Brock sighed again. "So go ahead."

Richard kneeled down, buried his face briefly in Brock's lap, sobbed and cried out, and then brought up his face, still flooded with tears. "You're so beautiful! Sometimes I hate myself for not being able to give you the kind of feeling that I've had for so long. Ever since we broke up everything that I have ever done has been with you in mind. I only wish I could tell you everything and give you some sense of what it all has meant to me.

"If I could give you my feelings through osmosis or radiation I would. The feeling it gives is so terrible and wonderful. It burns. It burns! It burns like a fire, like a whole star is being born in my belly and is burning right through me. Why there isn't a rosy-fingered dawn erupting out of the chaos of my mind, I don't know why. The dawn of my love is gigantic, but it is small for what it can become in future years if it isn't starved to death! I want my love for you to be a fuel for the growth of an amazing thing, and yet I fear it will instead lay me to waste.

"Recently I've had so many negative feelings. So many terrible things seem to happen, and so many of them get to me. I want to make the world as beautiful a place as my love for you, and so far I haven't been as successful as I'd like. Sometimes I feel so stupid and worthless for my failures. And I end up hating myself for hating myself. That's why I need to have this moment here, right now. Because if I can at least have this moment – to create this moment – so that I can say that I created at least something beautiful, of merit. I don't know what will happen to it. I don't know if anyone will remember it. But I'm so happy that I have this now.

"The feelings I have for you are like kittens and tulips! When I see children building snowmen in Central Park I think of you. When I see the happiness in my kitten Ulysses I think of you. My view of the whole world – the whole universe! – is colored by the love I have for you. All those good things I see I associate with you. Everything is pregnant with meaning – pregnant with so much joy – because of my love."

"I'm sorry," Brock said.

"Why are you sorry?"

"I'm sorry for causing you so much pain. I never wanted to hurt you."

"Don't apologize! Please don't apologize! You're so beautiful! I want to re-create the whole world with you! I want to go on so many adventures with you. We could solve crime mysteries wherever we went, or go to Africa to save elephants from poachers, or start a bakery here in Manhattan. I don't care! Whatever you want! I just want to be alive with you.

"We could raise two strong boys, a little Hafner and Fafner. I'd love them so much! They'd shit in their pants and I'd hate them for it, but I'd change their little pants and wash them and tell them to know better. I'd teach them math when they went to school and help them with their homework. We'd raise them to be smart and talented enough to take over the world after we finished with it.

"There are so many stories that I want to tell you. And we could create stories together. Our lives could be an endless series of wonderful stories – adventures of a sweet gay couple. And there would be happy endings! We would have the strength to make happiness in a world that has so little of it.

"I wish I had known your parents better, or known you when you were a child, so I would know what made you so wonderful. And then maybe I would have learned what you loved and tried to give that to you. I would have tried to find what you found beautiful.

"That was one thing I wish you would just tell me. Why can't you just tell me what to do? I'd do anything to help you love me. I want to give you so much joy, but I don't know how! It's all a mystery! I'm lost in a cloud of unknowing. I don't know what to do but to reach out to darkness and hope that I can grab on to something.

"You're the most beautiful person in the world. You are so beautiful. When I see you I know that there's a God, because you're too beautiful not to have been made one. It's insane. They shouldn't make someone so beautiful. It hurts. It hurts my feelings. Life would be so much easier if nothing was beautiful, but here you are and it's all explosive.

"I don't know what to do. I want you to live forever. You have to. I don't know how the universe can exist if you don't. The whole universe depends on you. Your goodness touches everything. You have to live forever. You have to." Richard grew so exhausted with his frenzied anxiety that his head sank weakly into Brock's lap, his eyes heavy. "I don't know what I would do if you didn't. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what to do. What kind of revenge would I have to do to correct such an error? What revenge could be profound enough? I don't know."

Brock sighed.

