Absolute Fiction

In the middle of the darkened room, at the center of a raised dais, a single object stands: a boudoir chaise lounge in delicate mauve. Upon it are thrown overstuffed pillows in pastel satin covers, edged with heavy tassels. A circle of ornate, wrought iron candelabra surrounds the dais, each one bearing a dozen red candles burning with tall, guttering flames.

Into the circle of flickering light walks a single figure. Black leather boots cover his legs to the hips. Shirtless, he wears a black hood from which a black ostrich feather flutters lightly in the stillness. He carries in his arms a motionless form dressed in a gown of diaphanous white. Thrown back as though dead, the yellowed ivory keys of a dusty piano, the arms bounce lightly as the man walks. Approaching the divan, he gently settles the figure into the soft plush, taking care to arrange the pillows, to lay the long skirts of the chemise so that they drape gracefully to the floor. He smooths back the long blonde hair from the deathly white face.

From beyond the ring of torchieres, low noises are heard. A sigh. A murmur of approval. Breathless, the word ‘lovely.’ Softly into the darkness, like the calls of someone lost, break the first violin notes of Liszt’s third symphonic poem. The slow violin and flute cadence scents the tableau until the brass trumpets crack the melancholy.

His ministrations complete, the executioner quickly steps to the divan’s head. Lifting high the wasted arms, he removes a length of silver surgical tubing from a hidden boot pocket, then tightly binds the wrists together. Bending down, he reaches underneath the divan to retrieve a large round-bottomed bowl of polished silver. With one more motion, a short chain is unclipped from the leather cartridge belt X-ing the man’s muscular chest. First, he hooks the snaffle to the tubing; then, stretching the arms to their full length, he clips the other end to a metal eyelet in the floor. The supine figure’s torso arches upward, the swells of its rib cage suddenly pressing through the sheer white satin. From the audience, a startled cry: “Mon Dieu! Elle est vraiment la plus belle que nous l’avons vu!”

The victim so arranged, the hooded man steps away. With a gloved hand, he strokes at the beads of sweat that have trickled from underneath the hood, trailing palely across his chest. For a moment, he seems uncertain what to do; but then he reaches to his harness, and, with a muted flourish, retracts from an unseen sheath a silver-handled knife. A single loud gasp from the audience fades in the air, as he raises it above his head, flashing the straight silver blade in the yellow light. For several long seconds, he stands still, holding the knife horizontal, its pointed tip pincered between two black fingers, the sheath grasped firmly in a black fist.

The excitement no longer can be restrained. Hungrily, faces from the dark come closer to the edge of light, their eyes and teeth and lips licked into wet shininess by the dancing flames.

“Yes,” says one voice. “The knife!”

“Her arms,” says another. “So thin! So tragic!”

The ring tightens upon the divan. The symphonic poem modulates the heavy chords of its processional. Candlelight reflects in a pair of eyeglasses framed in pink rhinestone-flecked plastic. It catches upon the gold and silver threads in a dozen scarves and turbans, flashes in retreat from shining black leather, from dangling chromium chains and metal studs. As the light dances madly, the breathy expostulations settle into a steady rhythm, a lurching chant that calls for one thing.

“Her blood!” they cry. “Le sang précieux!”

As though in response, in an arc almost languorous, the glittering blade descends. It pauses only for an instant at each wrist, like a schoolboy’s first awkward kisses, but as it ascends again, the blood already flows in a strong, healthy stream, cascading down the hands, washing over the down-stretched fingers, dripping like hard spring rain into the bowl below.

Blood shines against silver. Amber light flows from golden thread to silver link to red glass. An exhalation of relief sighs through the darkness. And in the center of the room, on the divan on the dais, through the white-clad slender form, pulses a long, convulsing shiver of unknown sensations.

A long pause elapsed before the man in the charcoal silk suit answered the last question. The battered wall clock looked like a relic from public high schools in the age of the atomic café. The red second hand moved in jumps. A silk tie in a loud splash pattern of lime and purple offset the man’s dark suit. A tall bald man on the other side of the glass made a hand gesture.

“It was … ” Another weighty interval. Several jumps from the clock. The man’s voice was deep and low, a rasp pulling at its timbre like a small bone in the throat. “a work of art,” he finished.

From the other side of the desk, a snort, surrounded by a lungful of cheap cigar smoke.

“So you off this guy and you call it a work of art? Could I be missing something here, or does this sound like the Marquis de Sade’s aesthetic code?”

The carefully dressed man pulled himself up in his plastic chair. The voice remained low, but the scaly catch disappeared. A few more jumps from the wall. The two men stared at each other across the formica-topped paper that sat in the room’s center, underneath an overhead apparatus holding several long microphones that to Stephen looked somehow old-fashioned. Their snubbed ends annoyingly poked into the periphery of his vision as he talked to the man across the table.

“Like everything else,” he finally said, “aesthetic standards are adaptable to changes in context.”

“Yeah?” said the other man, in a tone of exaggerated detachment. “And what the hell is that supposed to mean?” He darted a glance at a technician who was motioning at him from the booth, then pointed at the microphone sitting on the table in front of Stephen.

“Don’t get too far away from the mike,” he hissed, leaning forward. “You’ll fade in and out.”

Abruptly, he shoved himself away from the table, stretched back in his swivel chair, and stared up at the ceiling. “What kind of ‘aesthetics’ are you talking about here?” he asked.

“What I mean,” Stephen replied, pulling the table-top mike closer to his mouth “is that people who know they are doomed have the right to develop their own cultural practices. Their own sense of beauty and life. That’s what I help them do. To develop a new aesthetic. A new interpretation of the romantic sublime.”

A second loud snort and a puffy cloud of smoke. The opposing man swiveled about rapidly in his chair, jerked himself toward the desk, and pulled down a microphone suspended above his head so that his lips nearly grazed the metal head. He spoke directly into it, gaining in volume as he snapped out his words.

“Okay, Beeeeantown,” he began, “I’ve got Stephen Pallas with me here, self-admitted aider and abettor of suicides for people suffering from you-know-what, the Disease-of-the-Century, the Great Heterosexual Hope, yes, you’ve got it, AIDS! What do you think, Boston, about Mr. Pallas’s self-appointed role as Grim Reaper? Is this a new opportunity for an outré drag act, or is the man a saint? Let me hear from you, Beeeantown, because I’m starting to feel sort of edgy sitting here alone with this guy, if you know what I mean. This is your early morning know-it-all on the grrrreat W-WAM, F. Trout Dracut.”

He shoved the microphone away as though with distaste, then leaned over the desk. He wore a rumpled white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, exposing thick lower arms.

“Okay, Stephen, so what can you tell us about your service? How do you do it? How do you avoid arrest? How many poor infected souls have you ushered into that great bath-house in the sky? And are you listed in the yellow pages?”

Trout took a long pull on the cigar as once again silence spread through the room, diffusing through the air waves as dead air that mixed and thickened Boston’s grey early morning fog, filling the cold front seats of commuter vehicles hurtling down Route 93, wrapping around tired housewives facing last night’s dishes.

“I was hoping to be surprised,” said the man in the suit. “But you are a bastard, after all.”

“Come on now, Steve,” retorted Trout, staring evenly at him across the table. “Let’s not get ugly. This is your chance to raise some sympathy for your cause. Tug at the heartstrings. Appeal to the bleeding heart liberals. Heaven knows there’s plenty of them in Boston, of all places. Go for it.”

Stephen opened his mouth, but abruptly realized that Trout’s words had a twisted sort of wisdom. Starting again, he spoke slowly, in a clear, calm voice.

“To answer your question about why I haven’t been arrested, I can only give you my guesses. For one thing, assuming that the district attorney has heard about my services, I suppose she doesn’t think she has enough hard evidence to indict me. My friends who have committed suicide because of AIDS all have been lucid and physically strong enough to accomplish the act themselves. That makes it a lot harder to charge anyone who happens to be present at the time of death with complicity. Most of the people who have been charged with murder for euthanizing friends or relatives have killed people who were totally brain dead and living through life-support machines. There have been a lot of cases, most of them not even involving AIDS, as I’m sure you know. Another thing that probably keeps me out of prison,” Stephen finished, “is that I haven’t actually admitted to being present when someone has died.”

“So do you care to tell us now?” Trout asked, leaning forward. “Have you seen your friends swallow the pills or hang themselves or whatever? Have you seen them die?”

Stephen noted that the ironic edge in the broadcaster’s voice had disappeared. Brushing it off as the result of morbid curiosity, he continued. “I can’t really answer the first question, except to say that what I try to do is show these people how to turn their willful deaths into a positive, cathartic experience, a dignified experience. Something that might do some good for others who are involved in the AIDS holocaust.” He sat back in his chair and swallowed, knowing that his voice already sounded raspy with emotion. He didn’t want this jerk interviewer to think he couldn’t talk about AIDS without sobbing like a girl.

“In regard to your second question,” he started slowly, “I sure as hell have seen them die. Dozens of them. But I don’t mean that I’ve necessarily seen them draw their last breaths. I only mean that dying from AIDS is a long, painful process. Death comes from parasitic illnesses, like pneumonia. And I’ve seen that happen over and over, so many times I sometimes feel like I might die from it myself, just through despair.”

He instantly regretted the final note of melodrama, expecting his last words to provoke another snort and a new cloud of foul smoke. But Trout’s voice remained expressionless, with just a hint of genuine interest. His cigar lay neglected in a plastic ashtray the size of a dinner plate.

“Tell us something about these cathartic experiences. If I remember my class in ancient masterpieces at dear ol’ B. U. correctly, a catharsis is something that an audience goes through, isn’t it? Does that mean that you or others watch these suicides?”

“Your memory is correct,” Stephen began. “A catharsis means to be moved outside of oneself by some spectacle that evokes pity and terror in the spectator. So perhaps I’m saying that I arrange for spectators to witness these deaths. At the least, I’m saying that I show my friends or clients how to use their suicides as a means of wish-fulfillment. They get to create a special moment, something memorable and beautiful and unique. In short, it’s a type of fantasizing that wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for the tragic inevitability of dying from AIDS.

“I think I see what you mean,” Trout broke in. “You tell them ‘If you’ve gotta go, do it in style.’ Or, in other words, ‘Death is a banquet and most poor sons of bitches are starving to death.’”

Stephen laughed, simultaneously stunned that this raving homophobe could draw any amusement from him.

“Well,” he said, putting a hand to his loud tie, “I guess I’d rather be compared to Auntie Mame than to the Grim Reaper.”

Trout laughed a bit, too, for the first time since the two men had sat down in the small booth. After giving Stephen a long, appraising stare, he suddenly reached for the overhead mike and snapped it down into position, preventing Stephen from seeing the expression on his face.

“Okay, Stephen, we’ve got mucho callers waiting.” He hit a button on the small control console fitted into the table. “Boston, you’re on the air at W-WAM with F. Trout Dracut. You’ve heard of the Starlight Foundation, right? The clan of Beverly Hills celebs who fulfill the wishes of doomed prepubescents in exchange for millions in free publicity? Well, my guest today, Stephen Pallas, answers the final requests of the moribund, too. In his own kinky way.”

Trout gave his guest a broad stage-wink, making Stephen eject a quick nervous laugh against his will.

“Go ahead, caller,” Trout said into the mike. “What do you want to ask Mr. Pallas?”

“Hi, Trout.” A deep, booming voice filled the room. “This is Harry, your biggest fan.”

“Harry!” Trout cried, with hyperbolic glee, reaching for his dormant cigar. “How’s the phone company treating you, you ol’ whistle-blower? What have you got to say this AM?”

“Okay, Trout, look. You know I’m no bigot or homophobic or anything like that, but I’ve gotta say that this Pallas guy should be locked up. Helping people commit suicide is still illegal in this country, and I don’t care if they’re dying from AIDS or his friends or boyfriends—or maybe girlfriends I should say—or whatever the hell they are. We’ve got laws here.”

“Do you want to respond to that, Mr. Pallas?” Trout asked, motioning at the headset sitting on the desk near Stephen. He quickly depressed a white console button and whispered: “Get your headset on, Stephen. The voices will come over the loudspeaker as well as the headphones, but you need the mike on your headset to talk to them clearly. Don’t forget to talk directly into the disc. I’ve got our voices squelched right now. Hit it.”

He made a pistol of one hand and pointed at Stephen, lifting his finger of the other hand from the button. “Mr. Pallas, my old buddy Harry here thinks you’re committing a crime.”

“Well,” Stephen started, trying to swivel the tiny microphone closer to his mouth, “I’ve already spoken to that point, actually. But your caller must realize that assisting people to commit suicide is a very grey area in the law right now. Look at the doctor with the suicide machine. It took a long time before he was finally charged with a crime, and what I’ve done hasn’t involved even that much direct involvement.”

“Come on, Stephen,” Trout interrupted, the querulous note back in his voice. “Can’t you stop jerking us around here for two minutes and be honest? Harry doesn’t want to hear your legalistic tap-dancing. “Hey, Boston!” he suddenly cried into the mike, assuming the yuck-yuck tone of a stand-up comic. “Wadda ya call a hundred lawyers in front of a firing squad? Give up? A good start! Ha!”

Imbecile, Stephen thought, watching Trout spin several full circles in his swivel chair. Why did I ever want to do this?

“Now, Steve, give us a break.” Trout settled into position. “Can’t you at least admit that you would approve of someone who assisted AIDS victims in offing themselves?”

“Of course I would,” Stephen said. “Most people these days believe in death with dignity. Why should people dying of AIDS be treated any differently?”

“So long, Harry. We’ve got our next caller on the line,” answered Trout, reaching to adjust a dial on the console. “What’s your comment, pal?”

“Hi, Trout.” This time the voice was a woman’s, sounding firm and self-assured. “I work at a hospice for terminal patients in Brookline, and I want to say that your guest’s actions are totally misconceived. I’ve seen lots of people die from AIDS and I know that even in the worst cases, the people suffering from AIDS-induced dementia and everything else, that they can truly enjoy life right until the end, if they’re treated with love.”

The voice grew harder as the woman proceeded.

“And I want to ask this guy what he means by referring to suicide as some type of audience sport. That sounds really sick to me, Trout. How do we know that he’s not persuading people to kill themselves way before they’re seriously ill, just to provide some kind of cheap thrill for him and his kinky friends? This sounds like sensationalism to me. Everyone knows that lots of gay men are into theater and melodrama and things like that. Mr. Pallas may be exploiting that. Now I’ll hang up and listen to his answer.”

Trout batted at the down-hanging microphone, then fixed Stephen with an even stare.

“Look, Stephen, let’s get down to fundamentals about this suicide-as-audience-sport-thing. If you’re paralyzed by fear of legal charges, could you perhaps explain how a hypothetical suicide of the type you allegedly would organize might theoretically take place?”

Stephen ground his teeth at the sneer in Trout’s voice, cursing himself for letting himself think for even a second that this huckster might have some genuine compassion for people dying of AIDS. But he had to admit that he had come here to talk and that so far he hadn’t done much more than evade the essential questions. He swallowed hard before speaking.

“Well,” he began, “first let me say thanks to that caller. I hope she keeps working with AIDS victims and that she keeps showing them love.”

He stroked his tie for several seconds, staring at the old clock, then began speaking.

“Okay, Trout, let’s say there’s a victim who loves the novel Madame Bovary. He sees it as the last dying breath of romanticism and as the herald of the triumph of consumer capitalism. In that novel, as you may remember from ‘dear old’ Boston U., Trout, a pivotal scene takes place during a ball at the grand château in the provincial city where Emma lives. It’s the crowning moment in Emma’s life. Love, beauty, status. All her dreams have come true.”

The house lights are dead, but from the far end of the empty theater, behind the heavy draperies, you sense life. Coming closer, stepping over rents and snags in the dusty carpeting, avoiding litter and trash strewing the aisle, you hear the first discordant notes of a violin being tuned. With a grand sweep, the drapes pull back, their unfurling edges licking at the smooth boards: hard yellow light pulsates against you like a sudden shower of snow. The first violin hits a piercing note, a last pause momentarily hangs in the auditorium’s heavy silence, and then the strings begin the bright first movement of Chopin’s mazurka in C-sharp minor.

As the quartet reaches the end of the first piece, from both sides of the stage emerge hooped ball gowns of pink and cream and yellow. Above the deeply cut bodices ride narrow shoulders of powdered white. Other costumes follow them to fill the stage with a strange throng: black fishnet stockings below a red bustier edged with black lace and white bows; a nineteenth-century tuxedo with long, full tails; a pair of spurred jackboots with riding crop and shiny-visored SS cap; a flame-orange dashiki above which floats a tall, tightly wound red turban. Each of the costumes shares only one feature: it carries a large window pane in a wooden frame attached to a floor stand. Moving with ceremonial deliberation, the bearers form a semi-circle around the stage, each one placing its window on the shining hardwood floor.

The circle parts to admit one more dancer to the ball. She arrives in a wheelchair, pushed by a tall man. She sits with regal bearing as the attendant brings her to the center of the stage: her hair is black, swept upward from the neck and piled on top of her head, with a mass of ringlets framing the forehead. Her skin is the color of mahogany; the gloves that cover her arms to the biceps are ivory. As the chair silently advances, her blood-red dress sways in front of her like a great burden of roses.

Reaching the stage’s center, the attendant retreats, even as the black tuxedo steps forward to where she waits. The instruments are tuned again as a gloved hand is extended toward her. The hand she reaches forth quavers slightly, but when it reaches the waiting open glove, she rises gravely from the chair in a single smooth motion. Her skirts rustle as the tuxedo’s black sleeves reach around her. The quartet begins the préambule to Ravel’s “Carnaval.” The tuxedo’s shining black boot steps forward. They dance.

Stephen ignored a rolling hand gesture from Trout telling him to hurry up. He knew he was burning up precious call-in time, but this, he knew, was his chance to make people realize that what he did was not cruel or depraved.

“That night,” he said, turning away from Trout and focusing on the lurching second-hand, “Emma dances with the aristocrat who is to become her lover. He will liberate her from her petite-bourgeois life of cheap romances and daydreams, but he will also bring her tragedy.”

“This is very interesting, Stephen,” said Trout witheringly. “But is there a point? My audience doesn’t tune in for refresher courses on the European classics.”

“The point,” said Stephen, “is that my hypothetical client wanted to end his life by living this scene, by being Emma Bovary for a few minutes.”

“So he was a drag queen?” asked Trout. “Or a transvestite?”

“He definitely wasn’t a transvestite. And I don’t know whether or not he did drag once in a while. I suppose he did, since he certainly knew how to make himself up. But whatever the case, he wanted to pose as a woman for this event. As Emma Bovary, to be exact.”

“Didn’t this Emma babe do herself in by eating arsenic?” Trout pursued, deliberately ignoring his director on the other side of the glass, who had been making violent rolling motions with both hands for nearly a full minute.

“Hey!” exclaimed Stephen, feeling some true mirth for the first time since taking his seat opposite Dracut. “You know the meaning of ‘catharsis’ and some Flaubert!”

“I’ll make the jokes around here, Stephen,” Trout replied. His tone was sour, but Stephen noted the smile twisting at the corners of his mouth.

Emma dances, and the other costumes hasten to join her. Soon the stage is swirling with red and orange and Third Reich black and the sweet ingénue pastels. Partners change, Chopin fades into Mozart, and from off-stage a dozen men enter and take their places beside the framed windows. Each carries a small metal hammer with a rubber grip; each wears only a red tuxedo bow-tie and a metallic jockstrap of the same color. Emma turns, and the tuxedo sleeves are replaced by powerful naked arms ending in black gauntlets. She is carried along by them until she turns again, when the gauntlets change to white evening gloves. Once more she is borne away, her feet skimming above the boards, until finally the tuxedo claims her again. The dance goes on and on; the naked men beside the windows stand silently, flexing their grips on the rubber handles, waiting.

Suddenly, for the first time, a word pierces the high-pitched music. The man’s hoarse voice, his pain revealed for the first time in its grainy rasp, halts all motion and sound.

“I am too warm. I must stop,” she protests simply, raising her gloved hand to wipe beads of perspiration from her forehead.

Confusion. Expressions of concern. Vague gestures. At last, the tuxedo regains control. Stepping forward, one black arm waves a broad flourish, calling all to attention.

“Fracassez les fenêtres!” he shouts, his voice deep and steady. “Let Madame Bovary be refreshed! Let the dance continue!”

The first naked attendant draws back his hammer, taking careful aim at the window pane. For several seconds, as the dancers watch, he holds his pose, the small oblong muscles on the tops of his shoulders glinting in the light. Then he strikes, smashing the metal squarely into the center of the glass. Shards of glass shower the stage, pricking the soft amber candlelight into dazzling strands of silver. At the sound of shattering, the dancers shout their approval.

The tuxedo raises an elegant black arm and beckons to Emma. Breathless, she demurely approaches and takes her place within the waiting circle of arms.

The second attendant steps closer to his window. His shoulders draw back. He takes aim, pauses briefly, a sweat-oiled David—murmurs of approbation from the assemblage—and then he recoils. Hammer and genitals swing from right to left, and the window sprays its sharp diamonds into the air.

To the new strains of the “Mephisto Waltz,” Emma and her partner take their first dancing steps. Rocked gently in the arms of the music, Emma throws back her head and laughs. Like the sad notes sliding across the stage, her voice of man’s pain blends and flows with the silver light, catches upon the glassy starbursts, echoes lightly through the maze of ropes and pulleys and electrical cords that reach upward into the dead black areas of the theater. The oranges and pastels and blacks again are swirling. There is another aim, another momentary frame of still, rippled muscle, a fresh bouquet of flying glass. Emma laughs again and again in silvery peals as the tuxedo yields to the naked arms and the naked arms are replaced by the evening gloves.

“Can we cut to the chase, Stephen? How did this dance end in suicide? Or is that asking you to be too crass?”

“Not at all,” Stephen replied. “After my client completed Emma’s dance, he gave himself an overdose of Percodan. That’s all.”

“You’re on, caller,” Trout barked into the mike. “Mr. Pallas, Impresario of Death, is waiting to talk to you.”

“Look, you pervert,” the voice started with a vigorous rush. Stephen steeled himself. “I say more power to you if you help every homo in Boston bite the big one. You know what AIDS stands for to me? It means ‘Adios, infected dick-suck’—”

“Whoa—ho!” shouted Trout gaily. “Sorry, pal, can’t have any of that on a wholesome kids show!” He flipped a switch, muffling the mike with his other hand and leaning over to whisper to Stephen. “There’s a ten second transmission delay. That didn’t get onto the air.”

“Next caller!” he said loudly, removing his hand.

“Mr. Pallas?” The voice was barely audible, as though muffled by cotton. “If you’ve been telling the truth, and if you’re not some stooge set up by the rancid Mr. Dracut”—the host put his hand to his heart, feigning hurt for the amusement of the crew outside the booth—”then I think you deserve a lot of credit. But I know what you’re dealing with from my own experiences, because I’ve helped two friends to end their suffering. One of them was my life partner. I even think I know some people who have … worked with you, if you’d call it that. And I want to tell you something. Even if your intentions are good, what you are doing is dangerous. Something could go wrong.”

“What do you mean, caller?” Trout brayed, sucking on his cigar. “That Stephen here might swallow some mean little pills himself?”

“No.” The word was spat into Stephen’s ears. “You wouldn’t understand what I mean, you moron. But Mr. Pallas might.”

Trout snorted with impatience, then punched a button, switching to another call.

But Stephen was unable to focus on the new voice that filled his ears. He sat frozen, pondering, detached from Trout and the studio and the sharp, accusatory tones that poked at his privacy from automobiles and bedside tables. On the expressways of Boston, morning rush hour was ending. Feeble sunlight was fighting off the early fog. Having survived icy roads yet again, commuters sighed with relief as they coasted down exit ramps, gauging their speed carefully to avoid red lights. In a small broadcasting station near the heart of the city, his fingertips nearly touching F. Trout Dracut’s hairy forearms, Stephen fiddled with the knot of his garish necktie, unwilling to relinquish his sudden need to think.

“Hey! You still with us?”

Stephen jumped, jarred to attention by Trout’s relentlessly raucous voice.

“I think I know what that caller meant,” he said at last, ignoring the questioning look that Trout fixed upon him.

She pivots once more on the satin toe of her evening pump; her brown arms stretch forth for the answering embrace of her next partner. Then she freezes as she turns to face the grand ball’s newest arrival. Bald head, gleaming torso strapped within a leather X bearing a silver death’s head at the center. Emma has time to gasp only once before the knife is drawn and raised with ceremonial flourish. Before she can move, it plunges downward and buries itself to the hilt in her heart. She falls gracefully, sinking into the folds of her gown like a lightning-struck windjammer collapsing into the stormy billows of a red sea. Immediately, several dancers spread a large plastic tarpaulin on the floor while others, their evening gloves and gauntlets now covered with plastic surgical gloves, lift the prone form carefully and lay it upon the waiting white tarp.

The man in the tuxedo bends on one knee beside the body, carefully avoiding the blood that now flows freely from the wound. “Let this be your winding sheet, Emma,” he whispers. And then he stands and exits the stage, not looking back.

Slowly, the others gather around the body, staring downward at the widening red pool spreading from the wound. On their faces is fixed a strange visage of relief and enthrallment. The executioner stands at the body’s head, still holding the knife at the end of this outstretched arms. Three drops of blood drip slowly onto Emma’s oval face, which she seems to acknowledge when a pinkish froth of saliva and blood bubbles up from her mouth.

Finally, one dancer steps forward. After a moment, he removes the glove on his right hand, then, in a quick motion, bends over and touches his index finger at the fountain of blood rhythmically pumping from Emma’s heart. As he withdraws his finger, one of the pastel dancers screams shrilly, and promptly faints into the arms of those nearest.

“The blood,” says the man, raising his hand for all to see his stained finger. “The blood,” he says again.

The dancer next to him repeats the word, then the next, until the word flows around the ring like the blood from the still-beating heart, until the theater echoes with the refrain “The blood, the blood.” From the deserted wings, the tuxedo-clad dancer surveys the crowd, listening to the plaintive anthem. From the darkness behind him another man emerges, who quietly places his hand on his shoulder. The man in the tuxedo turns and eagerly embraces the late arrival, his strong arms tightly wrapping around the other man’s shoulders. When they part, they stand and watch the dancers, who now are choosing partners again, stepping carefully around the blood-soaked figure in the middle of the stage.

The new man puts his lips to the ear of his companion and whispers softly “Are you still sure about this?”

But the man in the antique tuxedo says nothing in reply. Instead, he continues to gaze at the reanimating swirl of silk and leather and hard naked skin.

“Thank you, caller. I’m sure if Mr. Pallas sees the light and wants to join you in restoring the Aryan race to its rightful supremacy, that he’ll manage to find you in whatever rat-infested sewer you happen to be inhabiting at the time.

“And that wraps up today’s show, friends and lovers! Be here tomorrow or be square, Beeeeantown. This is your humble and compassionate servant, F. Trout Dracut, the guy you hate to love, on the grrrrreat W-WAM, signing off.”

With one hand, Trout knocked away the microphone; with the other, he tore off his headset and threw it clattering down the length of the formica-top table.

“Go ahead and strip down, Stephen,” he said. “The light’s off.”

Repeating Trout’s zeal, Stephen ripped off the combination mike and headphones and let them fall onto the table. Suddenly, an hour’s worth of pent-up anger, of repressed hatred, flooded into every extremity of his body, making his fingertips tremble like fine wires as he reached for his topcoat and briefcase. He wanted out of the studio, to be outside in the autumn chill, free, anywhere but in the same room as Trout Dracut.

“Not a bad show, Stephen,” Trout commented, stretching back in his reclining swivel chair and stretching his arms at full length. You fielded the nut-cases really well, for a rookie.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Stephen growled, standing up.

“What’s your hurry? Sit down. Look.” Trout jabbed at a glowing red button on the console before him, changing it to green. “The crew outside can’t hear us now.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Stephen exploded. “You think we’re going to make small talk now? You’re a creep, a scumbag! The show’s over, and I’m leaving.”

“A show on which I personally booked you, pal,” Trout laconically observed. “After you wrote me five letters pestering me with charges of discrimination against homosexuals. And over the protests, I might add, of my producer and the station’s lawyers.”

As he talked, he re-rolled his shirt sleeves, not looking at Stephen. “Lighten up. You got your share of supportive calls. You got your message out. If you feel angry, remember that the people who want to see you boiled in oil are ten times more likely to call in than the people who approve of what you’re doing.”

“If you had it your way,” Stephen shot back, “no one would approve of what I do. Or of what I am.”

Trout patted one sleeve into place above the elbow, then reached his arms above his head, joined hands, and began shifting his shoulders from one side to another. “Shit,” he said. “I always have a mother tension knot in the small of my back after a show.”

Watching Trout indulging in stress-control, Stephen became acutely conscious of the several people on the other side of the glass panel, a couple of whom were idly watching the tableau he and Trout were making. “Look,” he blurted out, trying to keep the shake in his voice under control. “What you say is probably true. It means a lot to me that some of the people expressed sympathy. And I do appreciate your putting me on the show, even if you only did it to provoke your faithful ‘nut-cases,’ as you call them. But I did my honest best on your show and now I just want to leave. I’ve known enough fag-hating pigs like you to know that we have nothing to say to each other.”

Trout straightened up in his chair, staring levelly at Stephen. Something in his eyes prevented Stephen from turning on his heel and leaving, as he wanted to do: a hint of some emotion that Stephen had not sensed throughout the preceding hour.

“Stephen,” Trout finally said, “I think I may be disappointed in you, after all.”

“In me?” Stephen asked, incredulous. “Why? You’ve known what I am all along.”

“That’s right,” Trout said. “And I thought you were the type of man who appreciates a good act.”

Perplexed, Stephen nervously put his hand to his necktie, watching a smile slowly lift the corners of Trout’s mouth.

“Stephen,” Trout said, “there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you all morning.”

“What?” Stephen asked dumbly, realizing as his front teeth clicked shut that his mouth had actually been hanging open.

“I love that tie.”

When Trout suggested a restaurant for dinner, Stephen knew he had chosen it for its privacy. And for its straight patrons. It had been years since he had gone out with a man who kept his sexual orientation secret, but he remembered well the semiotics of passing for straight.

“Shit,” he murmured under his breath as he gave Trout’s name to the maître d’. “I must be out of my mind. I wonder how long it will be before he says in a firm, no-nonsense voice that he’s bisexual, but not gay.”

Trout was already waiting at the table, seated comfortably and gazing out a window on his left. Approaching him, Stephen reluctantly admitted that Trout hardly looked like an uptight closet case, or a purveyor of shock radio. He was dressed in quiet style, looking somewhat professorial in a non-nerdy way. His clean profile showed high cheekbones and a sharp nose that was just a shade too long.

He needs a shave, Stephen thought, as the waiter handed him a menu. And I like that.

Trout turned to face him squarely and said, “There’s one thing I want to tell you right up front, Stephen.”

For Pete’s sake! Stephen shouted to himself. At least wait until the appetizers!

“What’s that, Mr. Dracut?” he asked calmly, picking up his water glass.

“I’m not bisexual. I’m just as gay as you are and damn proud of it.”

After the waiter and a disgruntled busboy had cleared away the dishes and replaced the soaked table linen, Stephen discovered that Trout had several more secrets.

“Look,” Trout expounded over baked crab, occasionally pointing his fork at Stephen for emphasis. “I fully understand if you have no respect for what I do. But try to look at it this way. I got my start out west, working in real shock radio. You think I pander to the screwballs now? You should have heard me when I worked in Las Vegas. The calls I get here in Boston are like scolding from Mother Therese, compared to what I got in Vegas. Almost every caller wanted to see at least one minority group escorted to the death camps immediately. Vegas is full of vacationing white supremacists from Utah, you know; not to mention boozed-up rednecks from every corner of the country. People like that get mean when they lose the nest egg at the blackjack table, Stephen. You’ve never heard anything like the bile those guys—I mean women, too—spew forth. That was when I was coming out of the closet.”

Stephen’s mouth twisted in a wry smile at Trout’s last words, which prompted Trout to toss down his fork. He swallowed a mouthful of crab, regarding Stephen warily before he spoke again.

“Okay, okay. I know what you’re thinking. Maybe I’m still in the closet, according to your definition. But after my show started to catch on in Vegas, I felt trapped. For two years I felt like a total hypocrite, taking calls from every kind of racist you can imagine. Sure, I thought about telling the truth. I had fantasies about doing it right on the air, right in the face of some hate-filled bigot.”

He leaned across the table, lowering his voice, but speaking more urgently.

“You know what that would have gotten me? Fired, that’s what. And nothing else. But I finally realized that I could do my share for the cause by working on the inside, by playing the game their way. I could keep giving the racists and the homophobes and the neo-Nazis and the misogynists their own custom-made forum and at the same time give exposure to people like you. And someday, when the time’s right, I’ll tell the full truth.”

“What’s wrong with now?” Stephen asked.

“You know damn well what would happen if I went public now. The station would tear up my contract before I could attend my first ACTUP meeting. There are damn good reasons, you know, why not one single celebrity has ever come out of the closet. Not a fucking one.”

“That’s not strictly true,” Stephen remarked, “but I’ll admit they’re scarcer than hen’s teeth. And I think a sea change may be coming soon on that issue. Even if I’m wrong, maybe the scarcity of gay celebs is a good reason for you to take the plunge. Even good for your career.” He lifted his wine to his lips with exaggerated caution. “See what happens.”

“Don’t get noble on me,” Trout replied. Stephen was surprised to see the color rising in Trout’s cheeks, and to hear his voice trembling slightly. “You think you’re on safe moral ground and I’m a coward, don’t you? But if you really want to know, I do my share of suffering, too. You have a whole community you feel safe in. Imagine how you would feel if you had no gay friends, or if you couldn’t ever go to a bar and just hang out, much less hope to meet someone.”

Stephen shrugged, feeling that Trout had his defenses too well worked out to be shown any other perspectives, but he admitted to himself that this guy he had called a scumbag a few hours earlier probably deserved a reconsideration. He had heard stories like Trout’s before. Some of them had even come from men who later turned out to be his friends. He didn’t want to condemn Trout unfairly, as many of the people in his circle of friends would do. After all, when he had worked as a counselor on a gay hotline, he had always made a point of telling his co-workers, most of them politically active, not to be judgmental with callers who were still too frightened to open up.

Trout opened his mouth to say more, then seemed to think better of it, and through the appetizers and most of the main course, they ate in silence. Chewing mouthfuls of scallops and pasta, Stephen consciously restrained himself from looking too frequently at Trout, for the fine lines he had noticed around the man’s dark eyes seemed more and more attractive as the wine glasses were replenished. As the coffee arrived, Trout finally spoke again, his voice deep and low.

“When I finally got you booked for the show, I hoped you’d turn out to be someone likeable. Someone I could talk to. Not a saint or a fanatic.”

“And not too femme?” Stephen queried, watching the wet snowflakes of an unscheduled storm through the curtained window on his right. “Someone who can pass for straight? A guy you can take to the gym with you, maybe go skiing with for the weekend?”

“You just can’t look at it any way but your own, can you?” Trout asked. A note of sudden weariness was in his voice, and the tremble had spread to his hands. He abruptly let his cup clatter into the saucer. “Does your compassion extend only to your friends who take the politically safe course and dedicate their whole lives to the right causes? Some of those people are scumbags too, you know. I’ve interviewed dozens of them. Ever heard of HWA, Homosexuals for a White America? Ever heard of the Man/Boy Love Association? Those are the outright lunatics, but plenty of the more respectable types are just as bad. You’re different, Stephen … or at least I thought you were.”

He resolutely turned his head to watch the snow, sighing heavily. “Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, after all,” he muttered. Then, gruffly: “Can’t even have a fucking cigarette in this chi-chi place.”

Stephen sat still, thinking that maybe, right at the end of Trout’s rationalizing, he had detected a note of something genuine in the man’s voice: misery. Intrigued, Stephen allowed himself to appraise the man unabashedly as he watched the snow, which now was being driven against the window by howling gusts of wind. He guessed that Trout was about thirty-five, although he looked no older than his late twenties. His dark brown hair—lighter than the hair on his arms, Stephen now noted—was still thick on top, but brushed straight back from the temples, as though to flaunt the slight but certain sign of middle-aged retreat. Above the ears, grey filaments generously mixed with the chestnut. His eyes, Stephen marked in surprise for the first time, were cold blue. He pondered the enigma Trout presented. Stephen had known his share of self-deluded men who called themselves bisexual, but not too many grown men who called themselves gay and saw themselves as fulfilling a purpose by remaining in the closet. He recalled that during the radio show Trout had actually said very little—maybe nothing—that was homophobic. And he had pulled the plug on a few of the more aggressive calls. Undoubtedly, Trout was partly just another scared closet case. A self-deluded shirker. But maybe he really could change. Perhaps he deserved the benefit of a doubt.

A violent blast of wind rattled the window in its frame, breaking Stephen’s reverie.

“Cheer up,” he said in a bright voice, reaching out his hand, making a fist, and tapping Trout on the knuckles, as though knocking on a door.

“What for?” Trout asked gravely, not turning his head.

“Come on, Trout. Look at me,” Stephen answered. “Don’t be so miserable, even though you can’t smoke at my place, either.”

Stephen read the eight words one more time: “Can’t see you again. Will explain later. Sorry.” He crumpled the single sheet of yellow legal paper into a ball, hurled it at the empty air, then kicked an ottoman. It screeched across the floor until it collided with a small table holding a lead crystal lamp given to him by the man he had lived with for seven years. Stephen watched, paralyzed, as the lamp teetered in ludicrous slow motion until it stopped, momentarily defied gravity, then fell to the hardwood floor and smashed into pieces.

“Shit!” he yelled, knocking his head with the heel of his hand. “Shit! You bastard, F. Trout Dracut!”

He ran into the bathroom, weirdly alien to all the familiar objects and doorways he passed. Slapping the water on, he plunged his head beneath the stream. Into the water cascading from his mouth, he burbled “What a jerk I am!”

When the phone rang, he let the machine pick up, not caring who it was. But as he toweled off his face and shoulders, the excited voice of his best friend caught his attention.

“Stephen?” The filtered voice sounded strangely small and distant. “It’s Randall. I know you’re there. Pick up.”

There was a long waiting moment before the voice spoke again. Stephen stood perfectly still in the bathroom, dumbly gazing at his reflection, feeling again that even his own image was new and strange.

“Okay, just listen. I’ve known for days who your new ‘friend’ is, Steve, even though you wouldn’t tell me his name. I’ll tell you later how I found out. But if you’re not listening to his show now, turn it on. He’s talking to Jeffrey. And call me as soon as you can about tonight. There’s still a lot for us to do before we get started.”

Without thinking, Stephen left the bathroom and awkwardly walked down the hall, his legs and arms refusing to move in their ordinary ways. Reaching the stereo, he lifted a shaking hand and clumsily switched it on.

“So exactly how many ‘relationships’ did you have altogether, caller?”

Stephen abruptly crumpled onto the sofa, felled by the sudden cut of Trout’s taunting voice.

“I don’t know,” the caller replied in a choke. “Maybe twenty who really meant something to me. But there were lots of others that I only spent one night with. Or even only a few minutes. Denver can be a crazy place when you’re just coming out.”

“Twenty?” Trout’s voiced boomed. “You had twenty boyfriends and a slew of one-nighters? Just out of prurient interest, Jeffrey, where would you place your total for sexual encounters of all types?”

“Shit,” Jeffrey balked. “What difference does it make? I called because I wanted—”

“I don’t care what you wanted!” Trout nearly shrieked. “It makes a difference! That’s the problem with you people. You think there’s no difference between normality and screwing everything with a pulse. There is a difference, Jeff, so tell me how many or I’ll kill this call!”

“A couple hundred, anyway,” the miserable voice answered. “At least that many. But over three years.”

“Three whole years!” Trout shouted in mock relief. Stephen could picture him hamming it up for the derision of his technicians. At the thought, his stomach heavily turned over.

“What slowed you down, Jeff? Was that the time of Denver’s infamous lubricant shortage?”

Stephen heard an enormous sniffle over the radio; when the caller spoke again, his barely audible voice had a syrupy sound.

“You’re really crazy today, Trout. I only called because you sounded half-way sympathetic a couple weeks ago when you interviewed that guy who helps AIDS victims commit suicide.”

“‘Victims,’” Trout returned, fondling the word in a new, contemplative tone. “Let’s talk about the politics of victimhood, Jeffie. Just what the hell makes you a ‘victim,’ anyhow?” Intensity grew as Trout continued. Stephen clutched a pillow and writhed on his sofa.

“You’re no victim,” Trout said with infinite disgust. “You knew AIDS was out there, but that didn’t stop you from hopping in the sack with half the western world for a few minutes of thrills. The victims of this disease, Jeffie, are the babies who get born to women who are just as corrupt as you are and the poor bastards in Africa who don’t have enough education to know how to avoid the virus and the patients who get infected from their doctors who perform operations but who are really hiding in the damned closet.”

Trout’s last word crackled through the air as he reached a crescendo, jerking at Stephen’s body like the strings on a marionette. But his tirade was not over. He drew an audible gulp and continued.

“You know what you are, Jeff? What you are is a plain old slut. Just another greedy jerk who chose to screw his way into the grave and who now wants good, honest people to cry for him because his mom and dad kicked him out. You know what I say? Good for your parents!”

“No!” Stephen yelled, thrashing so hard with his arms and legs that he fell off the sofa. One elbow cracked hard on the floor, making him gasp in pain.

“I didn’t get it because I was a slut, even if that’s what I was,” Jeffrey shot back, baited. “AIDS kills people who have sex once a year. It strikes arbitrarily. And if you weren’t such an idiot, you’d—”

“Oh it’s arbitrary, huh?” Trout yelled back, his voice like a slap in the face. “Where did you hear that slogan? Same place where you heard that we heterosexuals should love you gays who got us all into this mess? What I should have the guts to say here is ‘you faggots,’ because that’s the right word.”

“You bastard!” Stephen howled, scrambling to his hands and knees.

“You’re wrong!” Jeffrey choked out.

But nothing stopped Trout’s diatribe.

“Not all you guys are faggots, but some of you are. The ones who throw their self-respect and morals to hell when they ‘come out’; the ones who think that acknowledging that they’re gay is like discovering they’ve got stigmata; the ones who think that desecrating the eucharist is brave and righteous and politically correct. The ones like you, in short, Jeff my pal. And I for one don’t feel one little bit of remorse at seeing you guys go to your well-deserved deaths. In your case, AIDS is killing the right people.”

Stephen leapt to his feet and lurched toward the voice. Trying to focus through a blinding watery haze, he reached for the component and jerked it off the shelf, sending bric-a-brac and tape cassettes flying in all directions. But as he raised it above his head, Jeffrey spoke again. This time, the voice was dry and even. Stephen froze.

“You smug pig,” Jeffrey started. “You think you’re safe and that you’ve got all your racist supporters on their side, don’t you? But I’ve got your number, Dracut. I know what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with. I know that—”

“You know nothing, faggot!” Trout bellowed, but Stephen thought he heard, for the first time, a note of uneasiness. “You’re gone! You’re history! I’m pulling your plug right now. Pray that someone does the same for you when you’re lying in a puddle of your own waste!”

Wailing an incomprehensible curse, Stephen let his missile fly. It hit the wall just above the sofa, wiping out three small framed paintings. He gasped a high-pitched, jittery laugh at the sight, but as the room filled with new silence, the hysterical laughter and the shaking in his muscles slowly stopped. Light was beginning to flood into the windows facing him, making him think about the coming day. And the night that would follow.

The phone rang again, and this time he snatched up the receiver without pausing.

“Stephen?” It was Randall again. “Man, I’m glad you answered. What the hell is going on? Dracut sounded like a maniac and—”

“Skip it,” Stephen said. As he talked, he reached for a bottle of brandy, then clamped the cap between his teeth and wrenched the bottle hard. “I’ll tell you about Dracut later. We need to talk about the celebration tonight.”

“Yeah, I know. Alex and Tom have been rounding up all the props on your list, but they’re having trouble—”

Stephen impatiently cut him off again. “Don’t worry about that stuff now. I’ll meet you at the usual place in an hour and we can talk it over. I need to think for a few minutes.”

“Think about what? Isn’t everything set?”

Stephen scarcely heard the question as he took a long pull on the brandy, swallowing slowly so that the burn reached all the way from his mouth to the pit of his stomach. As he drank, he regarded the smashed receiver, sitting lopsidedly on the couch.

“About tonight,” he finally said, speaking carefully into the phone. “I want to make some last-minute changes in the scenario.

As the drapes recede, you first see a full yellow moon suspended at the back of the stage: the moon’s wan light spreads a comforter across a four-poster bed seated at stage center, gently illuminating the face of a sleeping boy. His red lips are pursed in an expression of sweet, sleepy fulfillment; his black hair falls in damp curls across his high forehead. The fleecy counterpane is pulled close to his chin, making his youthful face seem to float on the white pillow like a paper ship on a friendly sea. In the profound silence, you can almost hear his peaceful breathing. Despite the dark, you can see the rhythmic swelling of his breast against the quilt.

Behind the bed, double French windows reach to the ceiling, beyond which rides the moon. As you watch, plumes of smoke begin to drift lazily across the panes, caressing the glass in silent, searching streamers. Your eyes adjust to the dark and you see more: each poster of the bed is crowned with a wreath of burgeoning white flowers; another is thrown across the bed at the feet of the sleeping boy. The coils of fog continue licking restlessly at the glass, just as the slight, musty odor of garlic reaches where you sit in the theater, transfixed.

“I watched Spartacus again with him last night,” Randall said, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Stephen. “He cried right from the credits.”

“Why Spartacus, of all things?” Stephen asked, stopping at a bench and sweeping away its load of snow with one arm. He motioned for Randall to sit.

“I don’t know. I bitched to him once that the Olivier character is the worst kind of stereotype of a pederast, but he didn’t care. I guess he can’t let go of some need he has for socially-acceptable male bonding. He loves the scene where Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtiss fight to the death, after the slave rebellion has failed, and the victor will be crucified. The Curtiss character refuses to let Spartacus win, because crucifixion was so painful and ignominious. When Spartacus killed Tony Curtiss and they both said ‘I love you’ to each other as Curtiss died, he just lost it altogether. Talked a lot about how he couldn’t bear to leave his son. But I think it helped. After it was over, he said he was ready for tonight, and that he doesn’t have any doubts.”

“I suppose it didn’t hurt,” Stephen said, after a pause, “that Douglas and Curtiss are stripped to the waist in that scene.”

The two men laughed, sitting on a bench on the edge of the Frog Pond in Boston Common. Overnight, another unexpected snow flurry had grown into a near-blizzard, covering the Common with a white shroud of heavy snow in the early morning hours. Now, at noon, the temperature was rising and the snow abating. But Stephen felt a coldness that his heavy wool coat could not protect him from.

The two sat in silence for a while, regarding the flocks of pedestrians walking carefully along the slippery sidewalk in the direction of the State House. With the season’s first cloaking of snow, the world seemed quieter, despite the noise of traffic.

“You want to talk about Dracut?” Randall finally asked, hesitantly.

“No,” Stephen answered flatly. “Not yet.”

“You want to know how I found out?”

Stephen brushed away the snow accumulating on his shoulders. Unwanted, an image of Trout’s face formed in his mind. Stephen saw him saying good-bye after their last night together. Everything had seemed normal, as routine as anything could be after a mere two weeks of knowing someone. Pausing in the doorway, glancing from one side to another to see if anyone were watching them, Trout had winked at him in the comical way that Stephen had come to enjoy, with both eyes at once.

“See you tomorrow” he had said. “Listen to my show.”

With a start, Stephen suddenly realized that Trout must have left the note in his mailbox as he left the apartment house that night. Had he written it standing in the hallway? Or had he gone someplace, maybe a bar, and decided to end the affair? Or perhaps, Stephen thought, the note had already been written when Trout arrived at Stephen’s apartment that night. Was it folded and hidden in the pocket of his trousers as they lay in a heap on the floor in Stephen’s bedroom? The last possibility made Stephen feel a cold dampness in the small of his back.

“See you tomorrow.”

With an effort, Stephen jerked himself back to Randall’s question.

“No,” he said. “No, I don’t want to know right now. Let’s go over tonight’s event one more time.

A shadow crosses the luminescent white face. The steady breathing of sleeping innocence becomes shallow, troubled. His nostrils widen as he struggles for air, pushing in agitation at the heavy covers that enclose him, as though searching for relief from suffocating heat. Behind the window, the mists have receded, leaving the stark moon again in view. For an instant, it hangs cleanly in the sharp black night. Then a form appears: a black cape, the face hidden by a high collar, the towering figure of a man. He is suspended in the window, his feet at the level of the boy’s head, as if he had sprung from his mind. From far in the distance, the lonely howl of a wolf steals upon the scene.

The youth’s distress grows extreme. Both hands flail at the pillows and covers as he twists in outlandish paroxysms, clawing at the loose collar of the white shirt that reaches to his knees. Suddenly, he half-rises and flings back the quilt and sheets, then unleashes all his strength to hurl the festoons of noxious flowers away from the bedstead. In frenzied exhaustion, he then throws himself back upon the pillows, panting as though in fever, the white skin of his limbs shimmering in an envelope of thick sweat.

The high windows open and swing slowly inward. The dark intruder, his face obscured by a tendril of mist, springs gracefully from the casement to the floor. Silently he stands, observing his prey. You cannot see his eyes, but you can feel their cold onyx cold as he appraises the body spread before him in helpless wanting.

The boy slowly turns his head. As his eyes fall upon the sinister guest, a wrenching sigh of relief and longing shudders through his trembling body. He lies back, calmed, in a tremor of expectation, his eyes fixed upon the stranger. He now moves quickly. With a jerk on the tie at his throat, the cape falls to the floor, exposing his naked chest, a solid square of white that rudely gleams in the wavering light. His right hand crosses his heart to the right pectoral. He extends one finger. There is a short, precise gesture, and a thin slant of crimson oozes into the vague darkness.

From the watchers outside the bed chamber, from the vast darkness encircling the stage, a single voice says clearly “The blood.”

The captive boy rises to his knees on the bed, turning to face the man, who now steps closer to the bedside. Without warning, he reaches for the boy with both arms. With one hand, he pulls brutally at the loose shirt, ripping it away from the shaking frame with a loud tearing sound. With the other arm, he encircles the boy’s waist, jerking him forward until the black mass of curls is pressed against his own chest, into the thin slant of blood. The boy clutches with one hand at the dark man’s shoulders, his head moving against the broad white chest.

Close to where you sit, you hear someone shout “Bravo!” You almost speak yourself, but the spectacle on stage, the young boy’s gently curving thigh as he leans into his fearsome lover, holds you speechless. Finally, as though in utter disdain, the man tosses aside his prey. In turn, the boy, sated, stretches back on the sheets in luxury, rolling his head back and forth, heedless of the ragged stain of red that spreads from his face to the spotless white pillowcases.

“The blood!” shouts another voice. At once, the chorus begins, the throaty voices ringing through the theater like a bell’s peals in an empty church. The boy’s eyes flutter shut as sleep suffuses his body. With his last strength, he runs his fingertips his across his body, dragging narrow trails of red from his mouth to his navel. Then the hands fall still and drop at this sides.

The man steps forward and kneels upon the edge of the bed, reaching to his boot as he moves. Quickly, he retracts the silver knife. He raises it high, grasping the hilt in a double-fisted grip. He turns the point downward, poising it directly above the prostrate figure sprawled in the bloodied linen.

“So everything checks out the same as before,” Randall commented. “What are the changes you said you wanted to make?”

“I don’t know what the hell I was thinking about when I said that,” Stephen answered, standing up from the bench and shaking snow from his shoulders. “Forget that. But I did think about the whole thing again, and I made a decision.” He turned to face Randall, his jaw grimly set. “I don’t want to act in our little play tonight,” he said calmly. “You can play my part. And this is the last event I organize. I’m through.”

“What?” Randall protested, jumping to his feet. “You can’t be serious! We need you!”

“I don’t care,” Stephen said, turning away and beginning to walk across the Common, Randall awkwardly dogging his footsteps. “Something’s happened. Something’s changed recently with the suicides. You’ve seen it. There’s something new in the spirit behind our playlets now; something I don’t like. It’s gone too far, or maybe it’s run its course. I don’t know. I still believe in the idea as it was when we started, but now it seems too…”

“Too what?” Randall insisted.

“Too high in potential for something disastrous to happen. For someone to get hurt.”

Randall grabbed him by the shoulder to halt his rapid walk.

“That’s not what your problem is, Stephen,” he said, vainly trying to make Stephen to look at him. “This has something to do with Dracut.”

“Maybe it does,” Stephen replied, twisting away from his friend’s grasp. “But I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and my mind is made up.”

“What about your responsibility to Tim tonight?” Randall persisted. “We can’t ask him to change his mind or delay it! What about all the others who’ve already talked to us?”

“I won’t cop out tonight,” Stephen answered, “but this is my last one. And afterward, I don’t want to hear anything more about them. I mean it, Randall.”

Randall stepped closer, crowding into Stephen’s face. “You can’t be serious, man! You’re the key person here! You started all this and now you just want—”

“I don’t care!” Stephen shouted, roughly shoving Randall away and stepping past him. “It’s over! I’ve done nothing but work for this cause for years, and I can’t take it!”

He suddenly stopped and turned again to face Randall. As he talked, his voice shaking, he walked backward in long, uneven steps, gesturing wildly in the snow-tossed air.

“You see what I mean, Randall? I’m drained! I don’t have anything more to give, not to you or anybody else! You know what Trout did for me? He made me realize something simple: there are people in the world who aren’t dying of AIDS! Can you imagine anyone forgetting that? Well, I did!” With his last words, he lost his footing. Both legs swung forward and he thudded wetly onto the sidewalk. In an instant, he was up again, half-laughing, wiping at his nose with a gloved hand.

“I’m through!” he repeated. “I’ll see you tonight, then it’s over! For good!” He turned and set out at a near-run down a snow-bordered path, slipping to the ground again with his first step. Nearing the Common’s corner at the intersection of Beacon and Park Streets, he paused for a moment to calm his heavy, ragged breathing. Unanticipated, a great surge of well-being began to swell through his body, making his fingertips tingle in the cold air. Feeling as though an enormous change were sweeping through him, he pressed his eyes shut, trying to focus on the unexpected sensation. When he opened them again, he saw that brightness had replaced the glowering clouds of morning. He turned his face up, letting the sunlight confuse his vision.

When he heard Randall’s voice again, he hurriedly stepped forward into the throng of foot traffic, wanting to lose himself in the crowd. But he was too late to escape his friend’s final words, plucking at him from behind like an unwanted street beggar.

“It may not be that easy, Stephen.”

In a final flourish, the heavy, tattered drapes swing shut, blocking your view of the pathetic boy and his strange intruder. Even as the drapes still sway gently, a man steps forward. Addressing the crowd, he says that tonight the tableau vivant has a second scene. And he disappears again.

A pause, then questions are shouted from the darkness: “What do you mean, a second act? Why?” You feel uncertainty, alarm, begin to spread through the audience.

As if in answer, the drapes again swing open, revealing the stage brilliantly illuminated. After the gentle shadows of the dead boy’s bedchamber, you shield your eyes against the barrage. A procession enters from the left. First, the leather-clad executioner, striding in ritual pomp. Next enter two masked men dressed in black tights and jerseys. Before them they push a hospital gurney that bears the dead man, his body covered to the neck with a sheet. One starkly white arm hangs limply beneath the cover, an intravenous tube inserted into the wrist that runs to a small round bottle attached to one leg of the cart. It is filled with dark blood.

Next come two more attendants, also masked, guiding a wheeled platform. Upon it sits an odd structure: a metal cage, tall enough to hold a human, curtained in black on all four sides. As it trundles into position at the center of the stage, it shakes violently. You hear metal rattling against the slender iron bars.

Nervous laughter from the audience. “Is that an ape?” someone shouts. “A lion?” cries another excited voice.

But those on the stage say nothing as the men steering the cage prepare to unveil it. Silence recaptures the audience as both men take one curtain in each hand. Suddenly, they jerk down the curtains, pulling them through the bars with the bravado of cheap magicians, exposing the cage’s contents to the view of the insatiable watchers. A stunned silence falls upon the audience, followed quickly by a loud intake of breath.

The man stands with his hands above his head, crossed at the wrists, handcuffed to a horizontal bar. He is stripped to the waist, his back turned to face the audience. The tan, healthy skin of his broad back, the heavy diagonal muscles in his upstretched arms, are an incongruity against the landscape of white and black. As the curtains fall to the floor, he gives the bars a titanic shake, making the theater clang with iron.

The watchers, momentarily mesmerized, now roar their approval. But as the attendants rotate the cage on its wheels to bring the man’s face within their gaze, the acclaim ceases. They stare, disbelieving, drinking in the helpless terror that floods the man’s gaping eyes as he sees the congregation before him. Then they rise, shouting, leaving their seats, rushing to be closer to the stage. They scramble and push to stand at the edge, beating their hands upon the hard wood, drowning out the banging of the man’s handcuffs as he desperately pulls against them over and over again. One black form on stage opens the cage’s door; another steps upon the platform and deftly removes a rubber gag from the chained man’s mouth. Then they quickly exit, leaving the prisoner alone with the leathered executioner. Stepping softly, he draws closer to the cage, withdrawing from his boot the long-bladed knife. A sigh of excitement passes through the throng of onlookers as it appears. “Yes,” says one voice, in tones almost dreamy, “the knife.”

The executioner lifts the blade slowly, pushing it forward slowly until its tip makes small, precise contact with the shoulder blade. At the cold touch, the man roars for the first time, straining his body forward away from the steel. But with the gentle persistence of a lover, the knife follows him until he crashes to a halt, his chest pressed against the bars in front of him. He breathes in great racking gasps, spent in fury.

The knife withdraws to allow the audience to see the first drop of dark crimson, starting the chant now familiar to them. Their hands beat an accompanying rhythm as it swells in power. “The blood. The blood.”

Without warning, the knife is placed again in the shallow hole, then drawn slowly down the man’s back in a shallow, diagonal slash, leaving a bright unbroken line of red in its silver wake, stopping only when it reaches the man’s waist.

The chant continues as the man’s head droops forward, his forehead banging loudly on a metal bar. He seems dazed, almost unconscious. But when the executioner appears again in front of him, his eyes dilate to enormous size.

“Yes! Let him have the blood!” The expostulations from the frenzied watchers are punctuated by screams and cries. The dull wooden banging becomes arhythmic, chaotic.

The executioner now holds the glass bottle in one hand; in the other, he grasps a large silver funnel by its neck. Leaping onto the platform, standing only inches from the man in the cage, he inserts the stem between two bars. Then he twists off the cap, holding the bottle cautiously by its neck.

The man screams, his mouth torn open. He slams his face against the cage, snapping his teeth like a dog at the executioner who stands so close.

The black glove reaches high into the air, holds the bottle aloft, directly above the funnel’s mouth.

“Yes!” scream the revelers at the stage’s boundary. “Let him know the blood!”

“No!” shouted Stephen at last, struggling against the terror that had numbed him as he opened the heavy door to the auditorium. “Trout!” he shouted again, as the door banged shut behind him. He sprinted down the center aisle, his vision frozen on the small red bottle.

“Are you crazy?” he screamed at the men as he reached them. “Let me through!”

Recognizing a friend’s face, he grabbed the man by his shoulders and twisted him away from the scene on stage.

“Wake up!” he yelled into the startled face. “We have to stop this! Come to your senses!”

But the man only struggled free of his grip, unshaken. And others moved to stop Stephen’s interruption.

“Grab him!” someone yelled. And several men clutched at his arms and shoulders as he punched his way through the crowd and began scrambling upon the stage. As he hooked one knee onto the raised floor, he was brutally pulled back and thrown down.

“Stephen!” Trout’s voice sounded impossibly distant to Stephen, yet booming with a fear Stephen had never heard. “Get these maniacs away from me!”

“Hang on!” he yelled, jumping to his feet and again trying to ascend the stage. As he was jerked away this time, one man pinned his arms securely behind his back, dragging him several yards from the stage.

“Do it!” a voice commanded. Others added their cries. The theater again reverberated with hysterical shouting.

The executioner, stock-still through the fracas, turned to face his audience. His eyes, just visible in the leather hood’s slits, momentarily gazed out at the confused mass of bodies, as though making a judgment. Then they turned back to Dracut. The hand lifted. The bottle upturned. A small flood of red poured into the funnel, making a swirling path around the gleaming silver bowl; then it flowed through the neck and onto Trout Dracut’s heaving back.

Trout’s cry reverberated in Stephen’s ear, so deafening that he shuddered beneath it, helpless. But as the echoes died, he found new strength, savagely thrashing backward with both shoulders to break his captors’ grip. Before anyone could stop him again, he vaulted upon the stage and ran to the cage where Trout hung motionless from the iron bar, his knees buckled, his full weight pulling against the handcuffs. Down his back ran a scarlet stain, the blood from the bottle mingled forever with the blood from his own wound.

Stephen stepped quickly upon the platform, pushing away the executioner, who toppled to the stage floor and landed hard on one shoulder.

“Did you enjoy this?” Stephen cried, his voice breaking. “Are you happy?”

But the man only rose calmly to his feet and regarded Stephen for a moment. He then removed a key from a zippered pocket in his heavy gauntlet, tossed it at Stephen’s feet, and ran off the stage.

“You sick fuck!” Stephen shrieked, spit flying from his lips. Then he turned to Trout. At his first close view of the bizarre sight, a wave of instinctive revulsion swept over him. More than anything else, he wanted to turn and run, leaving Trout to take care of himself. Hadn’t he brought this on himself, after all, through his cowardice and hypocrisy? Stephen pushed away the thought, then shrugged off his topcoat and began wiping away the blood, feeling that he might retch at any minute. He opened his mouth to speak, to say something reassuring to Trout, but he could only choke out two words.

“Wake up,” he said, just as the sound of a slamming door made him leap to his feet. He turned his head, vaguely aware that the men in the audience were silently departing. He strained his eyes to make out the forms moving under the dim house lights. One of the last men to reach the exits turned and called to him across the empty rows of shabby seats.

“Let him be, Stephen,” the voice said. “He’s not worth crying over.”

Then he followed the others out the door, leaving Stephen and Trout an isolated island in the ocean of harsh white light. His hand shaking, Stephen picked up the key from the floor and unlocked the handcuffs, noticing that Trout’s wrists were smeared with bands of blood. When the second bracelet released, Trout fell heavily against him, knocking him to the shaky floor of the platform. At that moment, the house and stage lights suddenly died, making Stephen gasp at the hollow darkness. Feeling that at any moment a hand would extend from that blackness to stop him, he tried to revive Trout, struggling at the same time to rise to his feet. But the dead weight was too heavy for him: he fell again, landing awkwardly on his back with Trout’s head on his chest.

“God damn it!” he shouted. Instinctively, he shoved away Trout’s wet, slippery torso, desperate to be free of the inert, heavy burden. Trout’s head banged heavily against the wood as Stephen wrenched himself away, but he didn’t care. He dragged himself hand-over-hand to the farthest edge of the platform, pounding his fists on the thin plywood.

“Damn you, Trout,” he yelled again, falling onto his back in exhaustion. Above him, the far reaches of the empty theater shouted his own voice back at him. Finally, still shaking so violently that standing was almost impossible, he rose to his feet and turned to where the unconscious man lay. He didn’t know what he would say to Trout when he woke up. But he knew he needed to find the right words.