“Fuck you, man. You bragged that you fucked and fucked—your words, man.”
“The fucken bitch was a liar. She told me I was the only man who could ‘tame her heat.’ So she possessed me with desire, and, yes, we fucked and fucked, and she trembled and groaned. Then one time after hundreds—she fell back, exhausted, crying. She formed a fist and she struck her cunt with it, over and over. ‘A piece of dead meat! Cold, frigid!’ she screamed between sobs.”
I felt pity for the woman I had never met. He, too, must have felt her sadness, her pain—I waited to hear him say how he had pacified her. I waited.
He lit a cigarette. He inhaled, exhaled, three puffs this time, studying the wisp of smoke that drifted into the shaded heat. “With the revelation of her lie, I knew that if I was to acquire her wealth when I divorced her, I would have to thaw—to crack—the locked, frozen cunt. Nothing else would guarantee my success.”
The harsh vulgarity of his delivery about the woman he had married jarred me. It was as if his sexual relations required a different language, a degrading language of their own. That, and the indifference with which he described his selfish motives, at times repelled me. And yet my desire to hear more—my fascination—was growing, as it did now with an awareness of his body next to mine.
“You didn’t feel anything for her?” I asked.
“Oh?” He lay back, leaning forward to assess his body, stretching, tensing; and he glanced over at me, a long glance, up and down. I was sure I had seen him do that. I stretched my own body to outmatch his exhibition.
“Of course, my alimony, which I earned, was guaranteed,” he went on; “the art I had coached her to buy, the best. I had helped her triple her wealth, beyond what the old titan gave her—he kept her a stupid child.” As if this would be an inconsequential occurrence, he said, “She may come to the island this season; I never know where she is. I think in Brazil.”
Heat rained down on us. It burst through the thickness of the trees—the sun had pursued us even when we had moved from the sundeck to the lawn, lying down in a shaded patch already invaded by the sun.
“If you ever choose to write about any of this, how will you present it?” he shifted. He had asked that casually as if not committing himself to a suggestion, as if the question was not allowed by his vanity. But he had exposed himself to this:
“If I did, ever, choose to do so—and, really, I doubt it”—I was aiming at his compromised vanity—“do you mean how would I depict you?”
“Of course that’s what I meant,” he said, smiling at being caught in an unexpected evasion.
What an opportunity I had to aim at him, to bring him down. “I think I might cast you as a kind of ‘Daemon’ who invites guests into his lair.”
“As asserted by the old horror movies you must have seen and admired, right?—at the Texas Grand Movie Theater in El Paso?” he taunted me. “And the guests accept—”
“Yes.” And I knew what was coming.
“—willingly?”
The son of a bitch had cornered me.
“And here you are.”
“Yeah, here I am, but in the horror movies that I learned everything from, there was always at least one person who comes to—”
“Confront?”
“Yeah, that. You must have seen the same horror movies I did, man.” It was a draw. But his words had stung. I regretted this incursion, regretted his easy rebuttals, his challenging, ironic remarks.
“The subject of evil—does it fascinate you?”
“Yes, and it does you,” I said. “I saw the book you left open in the library, and quoted from.”
He frowned. “The book—?”
“The Origin of Evil. On the library table—with passages marked—the first day you showed me the library.”
“I didn’t leave any book open. That breaks the spine.”
Darkness had thickened. Nebulous forms twisted on the lake, jagged misty silhouettes as we sat on the deck drinking wine, having returned from the lawn to shower and eat a hasty dinner.
He continued where we had left off: “The guest who accepts an invitation in order to confront, would that be you?” he asked. “Or Sonya?” he added when he saw her approaching us.
“Confront what?” Sonya asked. She had walked onto the deck. She was wearing the lightest purple caftan. Occasional gusts of humid wind pasted the material to her body so that she was a nude apparition in the twilight.
“To confront evil,” Paul said. “Isn’t that what you meant, John?”
“What else … man? I learned that from the movies that taught me all I know about writing.”
“If you ever write about us”—Sonya joined us, echoing Paul’s question—”please, John”—drinking from a glass of wine she had been sipping—”if you do”—until Paul reached up and took it from her, exchanging his for hers, toasting toward the lake—”please don’t make me a victim.”
“But you are a victim, beauty,” Paul said, reaching out to her, drawing her roughly to him.
“I am not. How would you make me that, Paul? How?” She didn’t wrest herself away from him, as I had hoped she would.
“Oh, beauty, aren’t you, really, that already?” he persisted.
“No.” She still did not pull away from him. He drew her face against his, to kiss—no, to—
“Don’t!” Sonya protested. He did not release her, until she turned her face away from him sharply. She touched her neck, looked at her hand, licked a finger. “You bit me,” she said angrily.
He let her go. “I was in the thrall of my earlier conversation with John—and of course always in the thrall of your glorious beauty.”
She moved toward me.
“And, beauty, have you forgotten that you told me that on that runway when I first saw you—and felt the pull of your power”—he pretended to shiver at the memory—”you said, you told me, beauty, that you felt that I had bought you at an auction?”
“I do remember, Paul. My dear beautiful, cruel man, I remember everything.” Mimicking his emphatic tone, she added, “Yes, I remember everything.”
“And me? Me!” Stanty shouted, running in from the dark edge of the deck. He took the glass of wine from Paul and tipped it, but it was now empty. “What about me, John Rechy, what would you write about me?”
“I’d have to wait and see. Maybe you’ll do something exceptional that I can write about.”
“He will,” said Paul.