JUKE STOOD UNDER THE Chinese lantern, fingering the cord and looking for a switch. He seemed to have gone to it only to prove his indifference to the tension in the room.
Hank had to blurt out the proposition, just to get the boy away from the microphone: “This man wants to watch. Us.”
There. As soon as Hank said it, humiliating himself and Juke, he wanted to kill the man. Ever since he saw him tonight and remembered the man’s contempt, Hank had been hating him, disguising his hatred with all the friendliness he could fake. Now he wanted to break the man’s neck. But there were the men in the cellar to think of, listening to every word, and his country. The man should die for being a traitor, and not because of something personal.
Juke stood as still as an eight-ball, eyeing Hank. He had to be insulted. He was already angry with Hank and the idea that Hank and the man wanted to use him should make Juke furious, Hank thought.
The boy slowly turned to the well-dressed man already sitting in the chair. “Did I hear right? Not me watching you and him, but you watching him and me?”
“That is correct,” said the man, narrowing his eyes and smiling at Hank, holding the seat of his chair with both hands.
“I told him you’d say no,” said Hank.
“Yeah? You told him that?”
The boy’s surprise sounded sarcastic. Hank hoped Juke would spit spiders at both of them, even if it meant driving the spy away.
Instead, the boy said, “How much you paying?”
“I’m paying your friend enough to make it worth his while,” said the man. “It’s up to him what kind of arrangement he wants to make with you.”
“So, Blondie. What’s a man have to pay to make you lay with me?”
“You don’t have to do it, Juke. We don’t need his money,” Hank insisted.
“Fifty dollars,” the man announced, relishing his ability to make trouble. “And if you don’t do it, I’m leaving and neither of you will see a cent.” He lowered his voice and snidely added, “Offer the boy a dollar. That should be enough.”
And Juke began to grin at Hank, first with the right side of his mouth, then the left, the grin growing more shark-like as it stretched to its limit. “Okay. I’ll give you a dollar. Boy.”
“That ain’t what he meant,” said Hank.
“I know what he meant. And I’m offering you a buck. Or are you worth that?”
“Beautiful,” said the man. “Perfect.”
Juke and Hank stared into each other’s eyes, Juke viciously grinning, Hank stunned by the boy’s craziness. Juke flared his nostrils as he took a deep breath.
“I don’t want to put you through this,” Hank whispered.
“Baby, I want to,” Juke whispered back. “I’m gonna flush you down the toilet and out the sewer. And you’re gonna be the cheapest piece of ass I ever had.”
“No whispering,” said the man. “I pay to hear everything. What’re you saying?”
“Nothing,” said Hank, staring differently at the boy.
Juke answered the look by thrusting his chin up and yanking his yellow necktie open. Then he stepped back and began to unbutton his fancy red shirt.
“You, too, sailor. Off with your clothes.”
Hank glanced at the man—he sat there smiling bitterly, his jaw clenched—then at the paper lantern. The men downstairs were going to think him an idiot for letting this happen, and sick for doing it, but Hank didn’t know what else could keep the man here long enough to start talking. He drew his blouse up over his head, wondering what he had done to make Juke hate him so much.
Juke was quickly undressing, coolly at first, with a steely look at Hank as he shook his shirt off his shoulders. But he stopped looking when he jerked his two-tone shoes off and threw them at the floor, then pulled at his belt as if he wanted to cinch himself in two. Undressing angered him and his anger confused Hank. If Juke wanted sex, if he was horny for Hank, Hank could understand that, queer as it was having a colored hot for you. Coloreds preferred coloreds, and found whites lousy lays. Juke said so himself. But Juke seemed to be doing this out of hatred.
Juke dropped his striped cotton trousers and kicked his feet out of them. He wore white boxer shorts that made him look blacker than ever. Then he bent over, yanked the shorts down and stepped out of them. When he stood straight again, he was a dark skinny kid with slicked hair, squashed nose and a prick that stuck out like a spike.
“Ah,” went the man. “They’re right about coloreds being…born ready.”
Juke looked at Hank, but with less fight in his eyes. He looked almost resentful, or hurt, lips parted as if to tell Hank this was his fault.
Hank turned away to take off his pants. It embarrassed him to see Juke like this. Juke naked and hard wasn’t quite Juke anymore. But seeing any hard cock was enough to work Hank up. Looking down at himself, he turned back to Juke, his cock becoming more like Juke’s. Neither of them were cut. Two country boys, they stood there looking at their own and each other’s bones.
“But it must be a myth about size.”
The man’s voice broke the trance. Juke glared at him, turned and shook his hips at the man, wagging his stick at him as if it were up for his benefit. And shook his black bottom at Hank.
“No! Get that thing away from me, nigger! Get on the bed. I don’t want either of you closer to me than the bed.” The man shooed Juke away with the back of one hand, his other hand still gripping the seat of the chair.
“I sure the hell don’t want to touch you,” said Juke, backing up to the bed, then stretching out on it.
“Now you. Get on the bed,” the man ordered Hank. “Touch him. Touch the nigger.”
If they were alone, Hank could forget who and what Juke was, forget everything but the sex, just as he always did, no matter how old or fat or ugly they were. But with the man insisting how vile this was, with Juke watching Hank and waiting to see what he could do, with the men somewhere inside the paper lantern, like God looking over your shoulder, Hank remained painfully conscious of everything.
He sat on the bed. He was naked but he still felt dressed, he was of so many minds. Touching another cock usually erased everything. He took hold of the cock in front of him. It felt like any boy’s bone, a roundness with something square about it, like an end splice in a piece of half-inch rope, more slender and tense than a man’s bone, as springy as a jew’s harp. It was the best thing about sex with boys, although Hank preferred men. He drew the skin back and there was a sweet moan.
Juke was watching him. His pinched smile looked like a sneer, but there was still a pinch of hurt or something personal to his eyes. Then he reached out and grabbed Hank’s cock.
Eyes and fingers—it was suddenly too intimate. Hank lowered his head so he wouldn’t see Juke. His reflex to what was happening in his cock and hand brought his head down further and he took the boy’s cock in his mouth.
“Yes. That’s what I wanted to see you do. You’re not so manly after all.”
“What’re they doing? You’re not writing anything down,” said Sullivan.
The pad lay on Erich’s lap. His pencil was tapping a page that was blank except for the date and time of the suspect’s arrival.
“He seems…I think…He’s ordering Fayette to have sex with the houseboy.”
“The nigger? And he’s doing it?”
“Apparently.” But why should that be any worse than a man doing it with a man? “Maybe he has no choice.”
“Or he’s doing it to make us sick. Stop listening. I’m turning this off until they finish. We didn’t come here to listen to that.”
“No. Something might get said. We have to listen.” And afraid of what Sullivan might think of him, Erich added, “I can hardly hear anything, anyway.” Which was true. Only when the suspect spoke was there any suggestion of what might be happening. The rest of it was sighs and static and Erich’s imagination. All he could picture were their faces, Fayette’s sharper than the houseboy’s. Their bodies were abstract, the action imprecise, a covertly sexual dream where nothing was specific. Erich found himself falling into what he heard. It was all so disturbingly vague, general and sexless. Then the man spoke again—“You look like you’re eating tar, sailor”—and it became obscene again. It was the presence of the spy that made the act upstairs specific and obscene. Consciousness was obscene. And Erich realized his listening made him part of the obscenity. He was a Jew of consciousness here.
Hank was aware of the room in his mouth. He had room to move his tongue up and down the skinny bone, feel it and taste it, brush his lips against the skin and kinked hair at its base. The fingers on his cock seemed to open his mouth and mind to anything. Then the fingers let go of him, joined the other hand in his hair, and Hank’s mind closed up with thoughts. Such as the bad thing about boys being that they finished so quickly. Remembering that, Hank remembered Juke and thought about having a nigger come in his mouth. Then a voice said something about tar. Hank’s tongue worked harder, against the voice, while his mind told him he was only finishing the boy as quickly as possible so he could get the man to talk and prove he was a spy.
“Kiss him. I want to see you kiss him.”
Hands yanking his hair pulled Hank off the prick, pulled him up to Juke.
It was like Juke and the spy had done it together. But the spy sat five feet away, looking on in proud disgust, his hands still gripping the chair. Juke’s hands held Hank’s face over his face for a moment, as if he were afraid to kiss.
The boy’s eyes were yellowish brown and his brown lips were rimmed inside with pink. But the body beneath Hank’s was smooth and warm. Hank’s mouth suddenly felt terribly empty. All right, he thought, I’ll go to hell, and he was kissing Juke.
Full of tongues, Juke covered Hank with his hands. What he had intended wasn’t happening. Juke had expected it to be quick and thoughtless, a hurried fuck by Blondie that would get the cracker out of his head for good. A fuck like a dump. The only pleasure was going to be the bit of humiliation. But it felt painfully good to be with Hank like this for a few minutes, even if it was for someone else. Juke could finish anytime he wanted, but not yet, not even when Hank went down on him and it was like a mouthful of angels. He wanted another minute. He wasn’t going to give two whites the satisfaction of seeing him come first. He wanted to feel contemptuous of Hank for being such a mouth artist.
Hank kissed good, too, like he didn’t know kissing wasn’t manly. Touching the bulky shoulders, the broad back and tight white ass, Juke wondered if looks were deceiving and the man was just another queen. Proving that might cure him. Juke preferred men, for all their hypocrisy. He reached around from below and laid his hand behind Hank’s balls. The man’s legs parted, as if he wanted it. The circus queen watching them wanted to see a white man shame himself with dinge, and Juke was loath to give her an added thrill. But he wanted this for himself, and the muscular weight on top of him grew disturbingly attractive. His dick was good and slippery from the sucking. It bent like a spring when he pressed it against the hole, then popped right in, and Juke forgot his planned contempt.
The kissing went straight to Hank’s cock and anus. He had to use one of them. When he felt a hand and then a cock between his legs, his body responded. He let the cock in. He settled into it. It felt like only a thick, deep finger, until it began to move and touched all the right places. He dug his fingers into the pomaded hair and kissed the boy deeper. The conked hair beneath the pomade felt coarse and Hank knew again the boy was colored. There were the men downstairs, but they wouldn’t know this was happening. There was the spy five feet away, but Hank hated him and didn’t care what he thought. None of it mattered now, because the boy sure knew how to fuck.
It’s only making it worse, thought Juke, closing his eyes, moving with the body that now moved with his. But the man sure knew how to fuck.
It was remarkable what fifty dollars could do. The sailor lay on a picaninny and kissed him. Blair sat and watched, gloriously uninvolved and powerful. It was as satisfying as ordering an enemy to eat garbage. His mind was racing and he decided he was drunk after all, with strength if not with alcohol. Not even his proximity to the bed bothered him now. The sailor’s twisted masculinity did not intimidate him tonight as it had when Blair was alone with him. Tonight the sailor was fully involved with someone else, a nigger at that, proving that his sexuality had absolutely nothing in common with Blair’s. Blair disdainfully watched, as if at a barnyard.
Sitting this close, he did not have to see them whole. He hadn’t liked it when the sailor and houseboy stood on the other side of the room and undressed. There was nothing uglier than a naked male with an erection, like a statue with a nail driven into it, and a colored male was almost as grotesque. But sitting close and seeing them in parts made them less male, less human. When the sailor fellated the boy, it was like the unsettling gibberish that passed for modern painting: a cross-section of a machine covered with hair. But Blair knew what it meant and was satisfied by the idea. Kissing was familiar enough for him to enjoy seeing it: the white face profaned itself with a black one, a man with a man. He imagined colored spit to have the consistency of dog saliva.
The sailor grimaced, broke the kiss and gripped the boy’s skull. Blair thought he was going to kill the boy. Then the sailor regained control and resumed kissing, almost angrily it seemed. He had to be disgusted with himself for what he was doing. Blair felt it was only his money and watching that kept the sailor at it.
“Yes. Is that so bad? No worse than kissing your dog.”
From the corner of his eye, he caught a new movement to their bodies. The sailor’s bare buttocks still disturbed Blair. He thought about ordering the houseboy on top. Pictures of natives were so common there’d be nothing suggestive about him. Then Blair noticed the way the black hips and white buttocks rolled against each other, as if linked. He had to lean to the left to see if what he thought was happening was actually happening. The houseboy seemed to have his penis in the sailor’s rectum. Perfect. Disgusting, but perfect. And yet the sailor continued to kiss the boy, oblivious to this new humiliation.
“He has his dick in your asshole, sailor.” It was only Blair’s contempt that enabled him to use such words. “Did you know that? Did you know this nigger is fucking you like a woman?”
Erich heard the man through the headset and shifted in his seat, flexing his buttocks together.
“What’s happened now?” said Sullivan.
“Uh, an act of sodomy.”
“What! Isn’t that what they’ve been doing all along? What else is there for queers to do?”
Erich nervously shook his head. He wouldn’t tell Sullivan who was doing it to whom. Sullivan might renounce the whole enterprise if he knew their man was the pedicant. Without knowing why, Erich was disturbed to learn that himself, as if he expected something better from Fayette. As if he thought a man’s honor was in his ass. He didn’t like remembering that part of his body.
Their bodies were sweating and as slippery as tongues. Hank’s balls and cock rode against the warm, wet stomach like they were part of the cock that rode inside him. He was so deep into fucking that a moment passed before he realized the spy had said something. It was of no matter. The men in the cellar would catch it if it were anything important. And remembering the men, Hank had to choke back his urge to start moaning.
Juke kept going. It was a long, slow fuck, the kind he liked but rarely got. If only Hank could admit his pleasure with a little noise, then Juke could admit his. Their heavy breathing made it sound like work, but Juke wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence. Whores, they were both experts, he told himself. That’s all this was, and he raised his knees so he could use his legs to push deeper.
“Just like a woman,” Blair repeated, annoyed the insult was getting no response. “Is the Navy full of women? There are no women in Hitler’s navy.”
The blond queer—he was no longer a sailor or even a man—lifted his mouth from the houseboy’s mouth and looked at Blair. His eyes were half closed, his lips thick and dark. And he just looked at Blair while his body continued its slow, obscene squirm. The houseboy rolled his head over and looked at Blair through his heavy eyelids, shining black body rocking away.
It was suddenly disgusting, all of it. If one of them were hating it, if there were the suggestion one was violating the other, then Blair might be able to watch. But to have both of them shamelessly look out at him from their shared pleasure was sickening. They made him feel like the pervert.
“All right,” he said. “That’s enough. You can stop now.”
Erich drew a deep breath, relieved.
Juke went at it harder, to stop Hank from listening to the man.
Hank closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Stop it! I told you to stop!”
But Hank gritted his teeth and kept going. It wasn’t just the sex. It was his anger with the spy, with the men listening, even with Juke for being part of this that made Hank hold tight to the fucking. To hell with the others. This was his body, his pleasure. And he let loose with a deep, loud groan.
Juke responded with his own high, sweet sounds.
Erich heard two people killing each other.
Blair jumped up from his chair. “Stop or you won’t see that fifty bucks!” They made vile noises at him and he stepped forward, burning to slap the white’s face and bring him to his senses. Then he saw the white ass with black testicles. “You’re being fucked by a nigger! Good white hillbilly. What would your pappy say?”
Hank threw his hand out and grabbed the man’s necktie. With a flip of his arm, he whipped the tie twice around his hand and yanked the man’s face in. Gripping the tie, he turned back to Juke and violently kissed the boy.
Blair tried to pull back and his tie choked him. He tried to use both hands to undo the sailor’s grip, but the fingers were like a knot. The sailor’s other hand gripped the back of the boy’s neck. Blair was so close to their faces he felt their humid breaths and smelled their hot skin, saw the black tongue and was horrified the sailor would force Blair to kiss the boy.
Juke saw the red face straining at its necktie and was afraid Hank would kiss the man, pull him on the bed and make him part of this. Juke fucked harder, so they could finish alone. But Hank went at it harder, too, kissing, then biting, holding the man’s face a foot from theirs.
“Okay, mister.” Hank broke the kiss and spoke in gasps. “You wanna sneer? Sneer at this!” And he threw his head back and came, yanking at the tie and thrusting into Juke. He crowed like he was raping the spy, or raping Hitler and ending the war. It felt so strong it had to accomplish something.
Seeing Hank go, feeling the squeeze around his cock, Juke let go, loudly, closing his eyes and giving in, like it was a busted artery that could bleed him white of Hank.
They heaved and groaned like epileptics, faces clenched around their open mouths. Blair panicked. “Let go, you damn—” He pulled back so hard his necktie choked him and he couldn’t speak. He thought he would pass out. He squeezed his eyes shut and heard the accelerating breaths and moans of two animals being tortured to death. He wanted them to die.
Erich closed his eyes. He opened his mouth a little, as if that could help him picture what was happening. He knew they weren’t killing each other. The women in brothels in Vienna groaned like that. So did the barmaid he saw for a time in Cambridge. But one voice dropped out, then the other, and Erich remembered these were two men. Women went on much longer, although Erich had suspected they were pretending sometimes. He wondered if Fayette and the houseboy had been pretending. He hoped so, because it was difficult to condemn such passionate pleasure, no matter how unseemly or unnatural it was.
“They’ve finished,” he calmly announced.
“About time,” said Sullivan. “I hope for your sake the creep says something. Or you would’ve had to hear all that for nothing.”
Erich remembered the spy and wondered what Fayette had been doing to the man to upset him. He thought he should feel sorry for the spy—the two of them had something in common here—but, spy or not, he despised the man.
Blair opened his eyes. It had seemed to go on forever, like an instant when you think you’re drowning. The hand suddenly dropped from his tie. Blair stumbled back. The sailor lay on the boy like a corpse. The boy lay very still, breathing through his bared teeth. There was a harsh smell in the room like the stink of the ailanthus trees that were budding all over the city.
He could kill them both, if he had a gun or knife in his hand. He was humiliated. He had been a fool for thinking he could humiliate a degenerate, when such people were beneath shame or human feeling. He refused to let them know how ashamed he was of his helplessness. And there was his purpose in being here to consider. Blair had not forgotten that. He backed into the chair and sat down again.
“Yes. Very good. That’s what I wanted to see,” he claimed.
The sailor slowly lifted his head and looked at him.
“Quite a show. You can get dressed now.”
The sailor rolled off the boy, but lay on the bed, facing Blair. His penis was a vile shade of red, the hairs on his stomach matted and gluey.
“You can get dressed, I said. Please.”
“You don’t want to talk? About the war and stuff.”
“Of course. You know I enjoy talking with our servicemen, getting ‘the real skinny,’ as you call it.” He was pleased to have the sailor suggest it, despite their battle of wills. This was going to be easier than he thought. “But wouldn’t you feel more comfortable if you had some clothes on?”
“No. I feel comfortable like this.” He propped his head up with his arm and elbow. There was a look of defiance in his eyes.
Blair refused to acknowledge the look. “Very well. But what about your…colored friend. I can’t imagine he’d have much of interest to contribute.”
“Juke?” The sailor whispered to the boy and lightly jostled him, without taking his eyes off Blair.
The boy seemed to have fallen asleep. He murmured something, then rolled against the sailor, covering the white nakedness with a black one.
“Never mind. Let him sleep,” said Blair. He wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible, while his cleverness was still intact. “So. Any new scuttlebutt?”
The sailor’s eyes roamed the room. “What do you want to know?”
“Nothing in particular. Just some more inside information with which I can impress my drinking companions. Such as, oh, something more about Sledgehammer.”
“That Africa thing? Wahl,” he drawled, “I know about that only because of the charts they sent us. They tell us nothing, you know.”
Erich’s pencil raced over the pad, getting as much of it down as possible. He knew no shorthand. The man’s questions were certainly dangerous, but he didn’t talk like a spy. His conversation was so transparent, even direct, that Erich thought he might be what he said he was, a prying civilian who wanted to be let inside. The man wasn’t even suspicious when Fayette suggested they talk, despite all that had happened before. If the man were a spy, he must think Fayette a complete idiot. But Erich had once thought that himself.
“Oh, before I forget,” said Blair, reaching into his pocket and extracting his money clip. A book of matches fell to the floor. Blair noticed them, then forgot about them while he concentrated on keeping the sailor talking. “Your fifty dollars.” He peeled off two twenties and a ten and returned the clip to his pocket. “But you said it was going to be Dakar. French West Africa. I presume they’ll drive north and attack Rommel from the rear, after they beat the French.”
The sailor reached across the sleeping boy and accepted the money. He just held it in his hand, as if fifty dollars didn’t interest him. Blair wondered if he’d made a mistake flashing the rest of his money.
“There hasn’t been any word about when this invasion might be?”
“Hell, no. That’s the last thing they tell us. But there’ve been rumors,” said the sailor. “Like January.”
“Next year?” Blair couldn’t believe that.
“Or August.”
“That’s only next month.” Blair felt the sailor was toying with him, teasing him with something he really knew. Or mocking him for watching them copulate. “What makes people think it’ll be so soon?”
“War’s been going on for six months now. Time we invaded somebody.”
“But has there been anything to substantiate the rumors? Back them up?”
“Wahl, we been doing landing drills every day now, like it was gonna be sometime soon. That’s why I think it’s gonna be August. And the ack-ack guys just got an issue of those big-brimmed helmets like you see in Tarzan movies.”
“Hmmm.”
“Also, and this is why I don’t think it’s gonna be any earlier, everybody in my section who had leave scheduled for August or after has had their leave cancelled. But not the July guys.”
“Really?” Now that suggested something.
“And, best of all, the officers’ wives and families are starting to trickle into town for visits, no matter what part of the country they live in. Like they know they’re not going to see their honeys for a long time.”
When the sailor started, he sounded almost as though he was making it up as he went along. But that was only the hillbilly’s slow-witted way of speaking, Blair decided. Because it certainly sounded convincing. “Can you think of anything else that points to August? What makes people say January?”
“Nothing really. Except that they don’t want to think they’re going overseas anytime soon.”
“I see. But if you were a betting man, you’d bet your money on August?”
“At two-to-one odds, mister.”
There. He was finished with the degenerate. He did not have to pretend to be friendly anymore. “So. Africa in August. You should love Africa, sailor.” Blair smirked and nodded at the sleeping boy. “If you live to set foot on it.”
But neither the insult nor threat disturbed the sailor. He coolly looked straight at Blair and said, “You’re real smart, mister. And tough. But I scared the shit out of you a minute ago, just by fucking.”
“Nonsense. I was worried you were going to get my suit dirty.” But there was no need now for Blair to defend himself politely. “Anyway, you weren’t fucking.” He spat the word out. “You were the one being fucked. By a nigger.”
“Better him than you up my ass, mister.”
“I’m no pervert, you degenerate.” He kept his voice as low as the sailor’s, manfully refusing to lose his temper.
“Yeah? I hear your buddy Hitler’s got a streak of pansy in him too.”
“Hitler—!” He was sick of hearing that about Hitler, and to hear it now from a pervert? “Adolf Hitler knew how to deal with sickness like yours. When he found Roehm in bed with a catamite, he pulled out his pistol and shot both of them himself. Which is what you deserve. Only this country is soft on perversion. I’d go to prison if I killed you and your friend, and you’re not worth it!”
The colored boy just lay there, but he couldn’t be sleeping through this. Sex probably blew away the little intelligence coloreds had.
The sailor just smiled, as cool as ice. “So why do you come here, mister? Why did you pay to watch us? You envious?” And he began to whistle, then sing:
Goering has two, but they’re both small.
Himmler has something similar.
And Goebbels has no balls at all.
Blair despised that low song, which reduced everything to sex. “I come here just to see how bad things are in this country. Your kind of behavior wasn’t tolerated before Roosevelt. And it wouldn’t happen under Hitler.”
“So you and your friends’ll take care of me.”
“My friends and I will see to it that your kind is wiped from this country. Look at this city. It’s worse than Weimar Berlin. You’d think war would put an end to such filth, but no, it’s made it worse than ever. Girls sleeping with servicemen. Pansies picking up sailors. Sailors sleeping with niggers. War has proved how depraved this country really is. We deserve to lose!”
“I don’t see you doing anything, mister. You just like to watch, huh? That’s all you’re good for.”
“What do you know?” Blair sneered. “For all you know, I could be a Nazi spy.” He finally said it. He’d been dying to say it, just to put the fear of God into the pervert, to shake his arrogance. “What if I am? What if everything you told me tonight will go straight to Berlin, and a fleet of U-boats will be waiting for you at Dakar? Won’t you feel like a fool, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths because you were so busy satisfying your animal lusts?”
That startled the sailor. He glanced at the ceiling, then shook his head and said, “Naw. You’re not a spy. Right?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” But Blair would only go so far. This fool might believe him. “Of course not. I’m an American. A better American than you. But a city as rotten as this one is full of spies. The way you talk, you’ve probably already cut your throat.” Blair stood up. “For all you know, I’m with the FBI. Maybe I came here just to test you, to see if you knew how to keep your mouth shut. But you’ll never know that for certain, until they come to arrest you.”
“You leaving, mister?” The vague threat must have unnerved the sailor, because he spoke much louder than before.
“He’s leaving,” said Erich, although Sullivan had been reading all of it over his shoulder and was already putting his coat back on. “You ready?”
Sullivan patted his pockets and holster. “Dumbest spy I ever heard of. Or the craziest. I bet I trail this clown right back to a ward at Bellevue.” But he hurried up the steps and out the cellar door.
Blair fixed the knot against his throat and smoothed the crumpled necktie flat against his shirt. “Yes. This has been most interesting. Most entertaining. The depths we’ve sunk to.” He opened the door.
“Good riddance,” said the sailor. “See you in hell.”
For that, Blair left the door wide open. Let anyone who walked by get a glimpse of them in there. He wanted to be able to tell someone, “I just watched a nigger screw a sailor. Most amusing.” But there was nobody in the hall or on the stairs. What Blair really wanted to do was kill both of them. Going down the stairs, he felt ashamed again for seeing such indecency and not being able to punish it.
The front hall was empty. He opened the front door and stepped outside. His feelings of shame and helplessness suddenly lifted. He never had to come here again. He breathed the thick night air and wondered where he could catch a taxi. He wanted to get home and telephone Anna. She had promised to come see him the very night he learned what he had learned. He couldn’t wait to tell her what he knew, in his apartment, among his things, in his bed.
The street was dark and wide open. Stars were visible overhead. The silence was wonderful, freeing him to think about Anna, love and his success as a spy. His footsteps lightly echoed in the bay of blacked-out buildings, like a second pair of shoes.
Juke heard the man leave, then felt Hank’s warm weight get up from the bed when Hank went to shut the door.
“It’s over. He’s gone,” Hank said loudly, as if to wake Juke. But he looked down at the bed and said, “I knew you was playing possum.”
Juke rolled over and faced Hank, smirking. “Oh, but I wasn’t,” he sang. “You loved me silly, Blondie.” He watched for Hank’s response to his taunting, not wanting to show any real feelings until he had some idea what Hank felt.
Hank only bent down and picked a book of matches off the floor.
“And I fucked the bejeezus outa you,” Juke announced. “You ain’t telling me that’s the first time you got fucked.”
“That’s for sure,” Hank muttered, opening and closing the matches, reading what was printed on them. “What’s an El Morocco?”
“Huh? Just a place. A clip joint for whites with too much money. That circus queen forget her matches?” He knew Hank was stalling, ashamed to admit he’d been fucked and enjoyed it. But a guy who was truly ashamed would have pulled his clothes on fast, and Hank just stood there, bulky and naked, like they’d done nothing more than had a nice swim together.
“I guess it’s where that creep hangs out.” Hank carefully set the matchbook and the folded money on his dresser. “You want some of this?” he asked, tapping the money. It was as if he wanted to hide what had happened with a few bills.
“Ain’t you forgetting?” said Juke. “I was paying you. One dollar. You want it now? You think I might stiff you? Again?”
Hank looked at him, turned away and said, “Screw you.” But he said it without anger. He stood at the dresser, then gingerly picked up the pitcher there, poured some water into the knicked bedpan, wetted the stiff washcloth that hung from a nail on the wall and began to dab at his front.
Juke hesitated. He knew he had gotten himself where he wanted to be: under Hank’s skin. But it was a dangerous place to be. There was no telling what the man might do to shake him out. Juke had to be very careful, or he was going to get hurt. And, despite all his wishful thinking, the sex had only gotten Hank deeper under Juke’s skin.
“You might not like admitting it,” said Juke, “but your body sure had one hell of a party here.”
“Yeah,” said Hank. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say part of me enjoyed that.” He mopped himself with the washcloth, as if to get rid of the evidence.
“And I’d be lying if I didn’t say part of me enjoyed it, too. You sure know how to have a good time, Blondie.” Juke didn’t want to go too far, so he went at it from another angle. “That circus queen was sure one sick woman. What was all that shit about spies and FBI? Sounded to me like she was out to screw your head up.”
Hank slowly, absently nodded. Then he shyly turned around, holding the washcloth over his genitals. “I’m sorry I did that to you, Juke.”
“Did what? I did it to you,” Juke said with a laugh.
But Hank stayed serious. “Did it with you. For that creep.”
“Would you have done it without the creep?”
“No.” But Hank said it softly, as if he was sorry. “Only I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. Everything’s so topsy-turvy right now.” He looked down at himself while he rubbed himself clean, then stopped rubbing. “I just never thought of you that way, Juke.”
“What way?” Did he know? Had Juke given himself away during the sex? If Hank knew Juke was in love with him, then that would give Hank the upper hand. The possibility frightened Juke, and yet he found he was hoping Hank knew.
“For sex. As someone good for a lay.”
“Whadja think I was? Potatoes and gravy?”
“No. Just that you people have your sex with each other, and we have ours. I’m sure dogs never think about sex when they think about cats.”
Meow, thought Juke, but kept it to himself. No, it was better this way. The cracker was confused enough by lust. Talking to him about love would be like talking about Santa Claus. “Well, you know what they say,” said Juke. “It’s all pink on the inside.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
“But you do know how to enjoy yourself. For a white boy.”
“Yeah. Well…” Hank hung up the washcloth and quickly rubbed his front with the hand towel. He walked around the foot of the bed to where his clothes lay on the floor. He wouldn’t look at Juke while he pulled things on.
“You know,” said Juke. “I wouldn’t mind doing that again someday. Next time that john comes back wanting another show.”
“No. I don’t think we’ll see him again.”
“Some other creep then. The woodwork’s full of them.”
Hank buttoned up his white bellbottoms and could then look back at the bed. “Juke. I plain don’t know. That was real good, only…I don’t know if we should do it again.”
Juke sat up with his knees against his chest, so Hank wouldn’t see he was getting hard again. The man hadn’t said no. And after sex, even good sex, many people talked like they were never going to need sex again. Hank’s confusion was as good as a yes.
“No sweat, Blondie. It’s not like you’re the best I’ve ever had. But it’s good keeping in practice while we’re waiting for the real thing.”
Hank wiggled into his blouse. He was dressed again, but Juke would always see him naked whenever he looked at him now, for better or for worse.
“Hey,” said Juke. “You wanna go to a party? Night after tomorrow night.”
“You mean…a party party?”
Juke laughed. “You think I plan the other kind of party that far in advance? Just some of the girls. And boys. Be fun. Get you out of this hole for a night. You never go anywhere, Blondie. No wonder you feel crazy all the time.”
“Yeah. Maybe. I should do something to celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?”
“Nothing. Not celebrate. Just have a good time.” Hank looked like he’d said too much. About them? “Uh, this party all your people?”
“All our people, honey. And all flavors. Neapolitan. But mostly vanilla, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“All right. Let me think about it.” He nodded, tried to smile, then said, almost apologetically, “I better get down the hall now. To the head.”
“Sure thing, baby. You have a good douche. But think about that party.”
Hank opened the door, checked the hallway and stepped out.
Juke waited a moment, listening. Then he threw his back against the mattress and groaned, “Alpheus! You stupid little queen!”
Erich flicked off the amplifier. He peeled the headset from his head. He had no business listening to any of that. It had nothing to do with spies. Fayette and the houseboy seemed to be in love with each other, although neither wanted to admit it. At least that’s what it meant when a man and a woman danced around each other in that manner. Maybe it meant something different when it was two men. Erich no longer attempted to argue with himself that these were degenerates, creatures with utterly foreign emotions and thoughts. They were men and human. Distressingly human.
He packed everything into the suitcase with the amplifier. Someone would have to come back tomorrow for the microphone upstairs and the outside line. Erich carried the heavy suitcase out to the street. The Ford was gone. Sullivan’s assistant would be following Sullivan in the car, moving in to pick up his boss only if their prey caught a taxi or had his own automobile parked nearby. Erich felt very alone walking through the dark streets to the subway.
In his narrow room at the Sloane House, he slid the suitcase under the bed, changed his clothes and combed his hair. He immediately went out again, walking uptown towards Times Square. He wanted to meet a woman tonight, a soft body with long hair, breasts and a womb. He needed to direct all his raw turbulence at someone who could give him back his moorings.