I finished my sandwich on the way to the car, and was only moderately drunk as I climbed into the Mustang for the drive home.
I was still intoxicated enough to kill someone, but we managed to glide through the near-empty streets without mishap or arrest.
Jin sat silently beside me, sipping from the Crown Royal bottle and listening to a succession of innocuous love songs he’d found on the radio, dedicated to girlfriends and boyfriends by heartsick teenage callers.
When we were inside the apartment, and the door was locked behind us, I reached for the light switch.
Jin covered my hand with his.
“No lights.”
The dirty window provided shadowy illumination from a half-moon and a distant streetlight, and I could make out the shape of the Crown Royal bottle as he tilted it to his lips.
He handed it to me and I drained the last few ounces, before setting it on the night table, wishing we had another one and thankful we didn’t.
Jin tossed his shoulder bag on the bed.
“Fuck me,” he said.
I stood there looking at the bag.
“You know you want it,” he said.
He unbuttoned his shirt, slipped it off, and laid it over the chair. Then he removed his shoes and peeled off his socks.
“You want pictures, yes?”
“Yes. I want the pictures.”
“So you get both.”
He stepped out of his trousers, pleated them carefully, and placed them with his shirt.
“You get everything you want from Jin.”
He stepped out of his shorts, placed them on the chair, and faced me naked.
“Just give me the photos,” I said. “That’s all I want.”
But it was a lie. Under my clothes, my cock was as swollen and hard as his was soft and unaroused.
He stepped over to me, grabbed my shirt, and ripped it away, popping buttons.
“Stop, Jin!”
I grabbed his wrist.
He reached down with his free hand and pressed it against my erection.
“You ready. You got hard dick. So do it.”
I grabbed his head and kissed him forcefully enough to bruise his tender mouth.
He pulled away, went to the bed, and lay facedown, his dead eyes turned to the dim window light.
“No kiss. Just fuck.”
I pulled off my clothes, found a condom, rolled it on. I straddled him and lubricated him quickly, feeling him constrict inside.
He reached back and grabbed me by the balls, pulling me toward him so violently it hurt.
I lowered myself over him like a spider and found the opening I wanted. It tightened again as I entered, like a fist closing, and I felt a jolt of pleasure. I moved slowly, and had barely penetrated him when he cried out and tried to push me off.
“No more games, Jin.”
I shoved him back down, my big hands on his narrow shoulders. He fought me, but I outweighed him by fifty pounds and was twice as strong.
He cried out again as I pushed deeper, and I almost lost him once as he thrashed wildly to get free, screaming Korean words I didn’t understand. I encircled his upper body with my arms, clamped my legs around his, and pressed forward until I was all the way in.
I started slowly, but each stroke came faster than the last until the rhythm was furious and beyond control. I had no sense of myself now, or of him, of where or who I was, only of sensation and rage and the wild narcotic of power. The more he struggled against me, the more he cursed me, the harder I felt driven. I became lost in him, blind to everything but the sweet feeling building uncontrollably where our bodies joined. Then I was consumed by the hot explosion, riding on perfect waves of dark, terrifying sensation, and it was over.
I lay on top of him, panting heavily, growing sick with what I’d done.
I’d never been more aware of how much of my father I carried within me. Of how difficult it was to escape him, no matter how much I tried.
I felt Jin trembling beneath me and realized he was crying. I slipped out of him as gently as I could. Inside, he was slick with his own blood.
“I guess this mean I really gay,” he said.
“It doesn’t mean you’re not a man, any more than when you fucked me.”
I laid a hand on his shoulder but he pushed it off and crawled away from me on the bed.
“Korean man not permitted be gay. Only be with woman.”
He pulled himself up to his hands and knees, sobbing.
“I want you fuck me so I must be gay.”
His body shook convulsively, and when his words came, they were choked with tears.
“I tell you where I go the night when they kill Billy. You want to know, yes?”
“Yes.”
“I go to see my little girl. She live with my dad and my mom, because my wife…”
Sobs heaved up out of him in waves.
“They take care my little girl. I no allowed to see her. So after my dad sleep, my mom, she call me. I go their house. I watch my little girl when she sleep. So she not know I there.”
“Why?”
“If she know I there, she might tell my wife parents. And then they try to take her live with them. And I never see her no more.”
“Where’s your wife?”
He crawled off the bed, stood, and pressed his face against the wall. He began to cry again, so hard it turned into a wail.
“My wife and I have problem between us. The sex. I finally tell her I like mens, that I am gay man. She try to kill herself and our baby. But only she die. Our daughter OK.”
A scream tore out of him, followed by more tears than I thought a man could have inside.
“I put so much shame on my family. Very bad shame.”
“I wish you’d told me this before.”
“You American. American different. Korean not talk about self, not talk about private thing. We swallow our pain. That our way. That always be our way.”
“You and I might not be as different as you think.”
I went to him, but he slipped away from me and into the bathroom. Then I heard the shower running. The door was ajar.
I went in, got rid of the condom, and stepped into the shower beside him.
I took the soap from his hands, turned him around, and washed his back and legs. Then I pried him apart and washed the place where I’d hurt him so wrongly.
I turned him back around to face me and washed his front. When I lathered and stroked the part of him that was hard, he clutched me fiercely, and cried out as he erupted.
I rinsed him off, and he let me hold him, our faces touching and our wet bellies pressed together, until the water finally grew cold.
He separated from me to find a towel.
“Please stay,” I said.
“No. I go.”
“We can sleep late. Get some breakfast.”
He resolutely shook his head. I reached out and touched his face.
“Will you be all right?”
He took my hand away.
“Korean mens, they always all right.”
He went out. I finished washing and toweled off, then stared into the mirror awhile, trying to figure out who I’d become.
*
When I went back out, Jin Jai-Sik was gone. I wasn’t surprised, or all that disappointed. It made everything easier.
He’d turned on the light, neatly made up the bed, and set the box of photos at the foot.
I went to the window and looked out. To the east, dawn was turning the sky pink.
Jin Jai-Sik strode down the driveway to the street, stopping to look back for a moment. I started to wave, but he’d already turned, angling across Norma Place and out of sight.
I sat on the bed and opened the box.
Atop the pile of snapshots was a note: Good-bye. I not see you again. Please have good luck. Jin.
I put the note on the night table, anchoring it with the empty Crown Royal bottle.
I knew that I had to be busy now, to fill the rest of the morning with work and duty, and then the day, and then the night, until I put some distance between myself and the whiskey I’d shared with Jin Jai-Sik. If I didn’t, I’d be comfortably drunk again before noon, and probably stay that way for the rest of my short, miserable life.
I dumped several years of Billy Lusk’s sexual history onto the blanket and glanced through the Polaroids one by one, counting as I went.
When I reached number 203, I recognized a familiar face. He slept peacefully on Billy’s bed, an arm thrown back on the pillow, his naked body fully exposed to Billy’s spying camera.
I studied the photo awhile, reached for the phone, and called Alexandra Templeton at home.
“Sorry for the early call, Templeton.”
“Justice?’’
A yawn worked its way out of her.
“Look,” I said, “I know who murdered Billy Lusk.”