Chapter Twelve

It had been a heavy-duty workout, a real ballbuster. Mark had spent the entire afternoon at Bally’s at Century City Center on North Clark, starting off with forty-five minutes on the StairMaster, moving on to an hour of free-weight work, making his muscles burn with bench presses, curls, flies, and presses, and then followed it all up with thirty laps in the pool.

Now as he sat back, his head resting on the side of the hot tub, letting the bubbling water flow around him, loosening tightened muscles, he still couldn’t relax.

The guy had paid him a visit three nights ago. Three nights ago was stamped indelibly in his mind, like something burned on the soft pink tissue of his brain with a brand. It was like there was a movie running in his mind, and Mark was unable to find the switch to turn off the projector. He saw the guy coming out of his bathroom over and over again, the knife flashing now with a surrealistic glint, like something out of a TV ad. It made Mark queasy, his stomach roiling and churning, just to think of it.

And if he didn’t have to think of it, wasn’t compelled by some very unwelcome force, he wouldn’t. He had called in sick the next day after spending a sleepless night lying awake on the couch, all the lights on, listening for the sound of breaking glass, the metallic click of someone picking his lock. Someone coming back to finish the job.

He had thought for quite a while of calling the police. After all, what had happened was attempted murder, and the guy should be found and punished. Who knew what he had gotten up to since, especially when the urge to kill was not satisfied with Mark? And of course, there were those stories floating around now about a gay serial killer.

But that little twerp couldn’t be the culprit. Mark shuddered to think that, if he was, he had been far too close for comfort. And then the guilt rose up. What if the guy was the killer? By not coming forward, Mark feared he was an accomplice. By not telling someone, Mark was allowing him to go free, free to kill other guys.

But Mark thought of the inevitable questions that would follow. Why did he let this character into his house? How did he know him? How long had he known him? Why were there no signs of forcible entry?

The story was news. And if Mark came forward as the “one that got away,” he knew the media would be all over him.

And what terrified him almost as much as the attempt on his life was the reality of his homosexuality being made public. He flashed on his mother in Deerfield, picking up the Chicago Tribune and seeing his picture on page one, tied up in the tawdry mess. “Mark Dietrich, an avowed homosexual, a flaming faggot, a queer.” He could see the look of distaste crossing her kind features, and then watched her collapse onto the family room sofa, head in hands, asking where she had gone wrong.

The picture hurt. He could never do that to his family. They had a certain standing in the community, and the Dietrich boys, with their superior athletic prowess and winning ways with girls, would become laughingstocks. How could his mother ever go into Macy’s without hearing whispers behind her back? How could his father ever shoot eighteen holes at his club again without being subject to cruel jokes about his pansy son? And his brothers would automatically beat his ass to a bloody pulp if they knew their youngest sibling was a fag.

No one, other than a few close friends, knew he was gay. Mark dated girls, traveled in straight circles. On Saturday night, you would not find him on Halsted Street at one of the several gay bars there, but at the Cubby Bear or any of the dozen other straight bars that dotted the neighborhood around Wrigley Field. These were the places where Mark felt comfortable.

If he needed a guy, he had always been able to log on to Men4HookUpNow. But no more! Not ever, ever again. On a few risky occasions, Mark had visited Man Universe, the bathhouse on North Halsted. Lights were low there, and it was relatively simple to get in and out with a quick sexual encounter. As long as no one saw him coming out of the smoked glass doors…

The water bubbled, and Mark returned to reality. It seemed that for a while everything had stopped, and he had left the health club completely. He glanced down at his watch and saw that twenty minutes had passed. Mark had no idea what had transpired during that time.

He looked down at his chest, which had become reddened from the hot water. He stood and reached for his towel.

He would call Peter when he got home. Peter was the only person with whom he could talk about his “dark side,” as he called it, and Mark needed to muse over what had happened to him once more. It didn’t seem like it, but he knew talking through it would probably be the only way he could return his life to some semblance of normalcy. As long as Peter didn’t get on his case again about going to the cops.

That was just out of the question.

As Mark headed for the showers, a question Peter had asked nagged at him, causing him to feel cold and a queasy nausea to rise up in him.

“What if he’s not done with you yet, man? What if he has no intention of letting you live to tell?”

Mark drove north along Clark Street. Everything looked different now, the buildings rising up in an almost threatening stance. All the people moving along the sidewalks suddenly had blackened hearts, minds filled with malicious intent.

Mark’s muscles ached. He could not wait to get home. There he could lock his doors and feel safe in his little one bedroom. There he could pick up a book—he was almost through with Insomnia—and try to lose himself among the characters’ lives. Lives that were threatened indeed, but not in any real sense, not like Mark’s. Besides, reading lately had been an exercise in futility. He would read a line or two of type, and then the images would appear once more to torment him.

He considered, waiting at a stoplight where Clark and Halsted merged, finding a liquor store. He could down half a bottle of something—Captain Morgan? Jack Daniel’s?—and maybe that would make the images go away.

Near his house, there was a little corner liquor store. Mark had never known its name; the neon sign outside read only Liquor. Mark didn’t drink much. Even when he went out, he stuck to beer, and often not even that. A bottle of Evian usually suited him just fine.

But he couldn’t stand seeing that little guy coming out of the bathroom with the knife again. Couldn’t stand the way it made him feel, how he had even at times trembled, palms sweaty, heart pounding out a tribal beat.

As Mark locked his car and crossed the street, he thought again of the knife. It was a hunting knife. He and his brothers had used a similar one to gut the deer they bagged when they went hunting in northern Wisconsin. That was when he was a teenager; it had been years since he had innocently enjoyed the outdoors with his brothers and father. Now his memories of hunting were clouded with the scent of blood and the terrified look in the eyes of the buck or doe they were tracking. He felt a kindred spirit with deer now, knew their fear. Images of deer entrails emerged from memory, and with them a vision of his own, the little guy a mad, tiny troll, pulling them from his gut while he laughed with glee, whispering the word “faggot” over and over.

Enough. If this liquor knocked him out and made him sleep through the night for once, he would be happy. Damn the resulting hangover that was certain to appear the next day.

In the liquor store, Mark bought a fifth of Jack Daniel’s and a bottle of Canada Dry ginger ale. He intended to drink until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

He was lucky. As he pulled up to his building, someone was just pulling out, and he claimed the spot only steps from his door. He treasured such spots now more than ever. Walking along outside, unprotected, was a new terror. He recalled the other night, returning home from a game of racquetball, how he had to park two blocks away.

He had sprinted the entire distance to his door, casting nervous glances over his shoulder.

Later, much later, Mark awakened in the dark. He was sprawled across the couch in the living room, Stephen King’s book lying on the floor facedown, several pages bent. His face felt shiny with sweat, and his mouth seemed as if it had been lined with gauze. The room was gently spinning, around and around.

Mark hopped from the couch and ran to the bathroom, where he splattered the toilet bowl, inside and out, with brownish bile, tears flowing down his cheeks. Afterward the tears continued to flow, and Mark crouched on the floor, sobbing, feeling as if nothing would ever return to normal.

Why did he, he wondered, have to be gay? This never would have happened if he had simply resisted his impulses. He had resisted them all his life and had done a damn good job for the most part. He blamed himself as much as he blamed the mad little troll who wanted to kill him.

The darkness had swallowed him once more. As Mark came to, his face against the cold tile of the bathroom floor, he groaned. His stomach felt as if it had taken on a life of its own, moving restlessly back and forth, churning and gurgling.

He managed to get to a kneeling position in front of the sink, where he cupped his hands full of cold water and splashed his face, then drank and drank.

He stood on legs that felt like liquid and walked to the window. He didn’t know what time it was, but it had to be in the wee hours of the morning. Traffic outside was sparse, and a quiet hung in the air, totally foreign to most of the day. The darkness outside matched exactly how Mark felt, dark and alone. A caul of mist lay along the ground, waiting to be burned off by the morning’s sun.

He longed to go outside and breathe the cold air. His head badly needed clearing, and he knew the air would be just the thing.

But he couldn’t! Step out there? When the little guy might be lurking, lying in wait to finish the job?

Mark pressed his head against the cold glass.

The sound of the intercom buzzer made him give out a small cry of alarm. The cry was totally out of character.

He stared at the buzzing intercom box as if it were an invader, as if he didn’t know what to do with it.

A line of sweat started at his hairline and trickled down his forehead. “Help me,” he whimpered, moving toward the little box on the wall. He pressed the Talk button. “Who’s there?”

There was no reply.

“Who’s there, goddamn it!” Mark shouted, pushing so hard against the buzzer the tip of his finger turned white.

Nothing.

Mark swallowed painfully, forcing all the moisture in his mouth, which amounted to a small drop of spit, down his throat. He sat on the couch, head slumped low.

The buzzer sounded again. Mark wished he had held onto the hunting knife, but the thing had filled him with such horror that he had tossed it in a dumpster the next day.

The loud, insistent buzz came again. Mark didn’t know what to do; he felt like a prisoner in his own home.

He pressed the Talk button once more. “Leave me alone!”

And just for the hell of it, he pressed the Listen button. “Let me in,” a voice said. The voice was obviously being deepened, speaking in measured tones, trying to be commanding.

Mark turned from the intercom just as the buzzer sounded again.

“What do you want?” Mark was ashamed because tears were starting.

“I want you to buzz me in. I need to talk to you.”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Ray. From online, you remember me.”

Mark’s breathing was coming faster now. “Go away.”

“Listen, there’s something I have to tell you. You didn’t understand, man. That was just a game, a little rape fantasy. I’ve done it before. I’m sorry you freaked out.”

Mark leaned against the wall, unsure if his legs would continue to support him.

The buzzer shrieked again.

“Go away.”

“Listen, I just want to talk to you. I feel just terrible.”

It would be such a relief to believe that what had happened was just the result of a misguided game. So wonderful to believe that no one really meant to stab him.

“Okay, you made your point. Now get the hell out of my building.” Mark’s words came out hoarse. He turned from the buzzer. He was suddenly very tired; his bones felt heavy, made of concrete. His eyes burned. He was not looking forward to the morning.

Just as he reached his bedroom, the buzzer sounded again, a long, loud cry in the dark, alarming, unsettling. Mark closed his eyes and winced. “God, what have I done to myself?” he wondered.

Moving rapidly to the kitchen, Mark went into the pantry, where his bright red Sears toolbox lay at the back, on the floor. He opened it and got out a hammer.

The buzzer was still going as he approached it; the guy must have just been leaning on it down there.

Mark smashed the intercom, the plastic breaking into shards and falling to the floor. Wires spilled out, red, green, and yellow, hanging there like the entrails of a gutted animal.

“I should come down there and do the same to you,” he whispered to the ruined intercom.

He went to the window after a moment or two and gazed down at the street below.

There, in the dull predawn light, he saw him. The small frame, the blond head bent low against the wind. There was no doubt.

The guy had returned, and Mark wondered if he would ever go away.