the eyes of all the boys you sent away

When David finds him, Michael is awash in sweat; he stinks with it, he doesn’t smell dirty but clean. He smells like tanned leather and torn denim and the hot place just below his jaw where the artery still pounds. He doesn’t know what he looks like, walking around like this, staring at the lights — he looks like fresh meat. He smells like fresh meat, and it’s coming off him in waves.

He’s looking off into the glare, through the dark. David bristles.

“Don’t they have neon signs where you’re from?” David calls out — inching forward on the blacktop, scraping up pebbles. The tips of his boots drag.

“Arizona,” Michael says quietly. “I’ve been here before, remember?”

David didn’t remember that. Michael’s hands are thrust into his pockets; his hair is getting longer, trailing against his collar and casting spidery shadows across his cheek. He looks wild, picturesquely feral, and only David knows who he answers to. Only David knows whose leash the kid is on. And he really thought he could run away — he really thought he could escape him. Even the young one — Michael calls him Sammy, David calls him nothing at all — even he hadn’t tried to run. He took being dead as well as you could hope for, and now Laddie has a playmate.

Sam and his brother look nothing alike. Sam makes a great punk-kid vampire, and Michael — he looks like something else. A junkie. Nobody’s going to pick him up like this, not at night. Dark eyes, big suspicious eyes — high cheekbones, pierced ears, cheap sunglasses and sweat in the hollow at the base of his throat. Michael looks like any piece of roadside trash, haunted. Doesn’t he know he’s in danger like this? He knows and doesn’t care. He turns his back on David — which seems like a really stupid idea — and starts walking.

What would happen if he didn’t knuckle down and feed? Would he give up and die, or would he rot away? He’d wither down to a boardwalk zombie. Not living, but not dead, either. Like Max, Max at the bottom of a hole with two tons of concrete and rebar to keep him there. Suspended animation, ha ha ha.

“That’s right, Michael,” David says, “keep running.” The bike’s motor rumbles idle between his legs.

Michael shoulders deeper into his jacket. It’s a hot night, and the sweat is beading along his hairline. “I’m not going back. Why the hell would I ever go back there?”

“Your mother. Your brother. And that’s just for starters.”

“They’re better off without me. Trust me.”

“They’re waiting for you. We’ll take you back, Michael. They need you, Michael.”

“Stop saying my name!” Michael jerks around, with anger in his eyes — that’s the spirit. David wants Michael to throw the first punch, to launch himself at him and knock him flat on the asphalt. He’d let him do it, even. “My mom probably called the cops—”

Right — the nice dead hippie housewife in her smoked John Lennon shades filling out forms and stapling up missing posters. Michael knows this is bullshit as soon as he’s said it.

“So you ran away. You’re old enough. Come back.”

Michael fixes his eyes on him. They’re black, lit up with yellow like a dog’s eyes. “I’m not going back to Santa Carla.”

“I don’t want to make you, but I will.”

“Would you?” Michael grins nastily. “I don’t know if you would, Dave, really.”

David snorts and feels the bones of his fingers prickle as they twist on the grips of his bike — the beds of his teeth wanting to twist and warp into longer, sharper teeth. Michael’s not going to fight him, is he, because that would be a real laugh—

“The sun’ll be up soon.” (Michael snorts.) “Don’t act tough, you won’t like that any more than I will.”

“I’m broke.”

“Yeah, well.” The people at the motor court will have to find it in their hearts somewhere to put up a couple of wayward boys for the night.

*

Sleep all day, play all night. They could stroll on over to one of those cheap roadside superstores, buy a six-pack of beers and a couple Hustlers and some fireworks. In the neon light slotting across the bed in perforated stripes, Michael looks like a rock star, reptilian and wasted. Still alive. Halfway dead, but still alive. What would his blood taste like? It’s still circulating under the skin, but only listlessly — a couple heartbeats every minute.

David wants to be close to him — pathetically, he wants this. This is as close as they’re ever going to get.

He feels the muscles in Michael’s upper arms shift as he rocks back against the pillow — David is astride him, hip against hip, and his body-memory offers up what to do next (the lunge, the skull-crushing bite, the spine-snapping shake from side to side) even as the angry spark in his crotch presents a compelling alternative.

“Michael. Michael, look at me.”

“What else is there to look at?” One of his hands grasps the cheap bedspread, tugging it up in spikes. David pulls him in close, forehead to forehead and eye to eye — there are hectic smudges in Michael’s cheeks, as vivid as his dark circles. He can feel Michael’s breath against his mouth, heated against his lips.

Their bodies press together in one long tangle of muscle — he can reach into Michael’s jeans, between their bodies, and find his hard-on. It would almost make him laugh, if it wasn’t a really shitty idea to laugh at the guy who almost impaled you on a stuffed wildebeest or some shit — happy laughter, pleased laughter, because isn’t this the normal thing for a normal American guy with a little red blood left in his veins, popping a stiffie with zero provocation? David wants to provoke him a little.

“How about a little head?” he breathes, close to Michael’s cheek, grinning — and the look of obvious desire on his face mingled with obvious trepidation does make David laugh, mean resounding laughter.

“How stupid do I look?”

“Relax, I like you.” Moving his hand, sliding his hips. Michael grabs at his back, low down on his spine. His tee shirt hem must have tugged up — David can feel the naked slash of still-warm stomach pressed against his own cold belly.

He really, really likes him. This is stupid; there’s nothing in it. If Michael thinks there’s anything in it, then he’s stupid. David buries his face in Michael’s shoulder, and Michael cries out.

All flesh, the square edge of Michael’s hand pressing in below his ribs, the rasp of his jeans between David’s legs. It should have happened like this, angry-hungry on the bare ground or on a bloodstained blanket in the middle of the rubble, with the smell of pot smoke and the taste of sweat and the sound of laughter in their ears, Dwayne and Paul and Marko’s laughter — not on a hotel bed where people pay by the hour to fuck. Michael’s one of them now, part of the pack, he’ll never have better friends than the ones he made in Santa Carla — the ones that survived will be waiting for him when he gets back. He’ll come back around to the only city where people like them can do whatever they want, and he won’t hold out any more, he’ll be grateful. Sleep all day, run all night, hunt and kill. David jerks him off, and doesn’t look him in the eye.

There’s some memory like this skittering around in his brain, but David can’t remember it. He can’t remember anything before Michael came to Santa Carla, he can’t remember what last name he put in the paper register down the hall. Whatever used to be there in his personal history has been washed out without a stain. No history, no past, and now no future — just David alone, David trying to round up his unruly stepbrothers and stepsisters and not doing a great job at it. Whose boys were they? Who made them, anyway? He can’t remember.

Michael breaks away from him, breathless. “Let’s go to Vegas.”

They aren’t too young to gamble, are they?

*

Max won’t stay buried forever. When he gets out, he’s going to be pissed. But they have long enough — long enough to gather up mom and Sam and all the kiddies and hit the road, find someplace else where the cops don’t give a shit, someplace cheap and cloudy, maybe Washington state, or Maine. They ride for a while, Michael riding bitch with his arms tight around David’s waist, and the sunrise finds them in the middle of nowhere.

They’re sleeping in the deep shadow of an abandoned refrigerator unit when the sound of the rubbery seal breaking and the bent hinge grinding apart shakes David awake. His fangs are out before he realizes it, his hands are claws, his eyes are red gashes anticipating the first scalding splash of sunlight — but it’s twilight already, blue dark, and it’s not the fat gas station attendant with his cheek full of Skol bending over them, it’s her.

Star is wearing cut-off jeans and a big junky shawl with trailing fringes and a boy’s undershirt with blue bands at the cuffs and the throat; her nipples are showing through in points. She looks like road trash. David is happy to see her.

“I always know where to find you guys.” Star hefts her hair in her hands, running the lacquered points of her fingernails through the curls to rake them out. David sits up, frankly astonished. Michael is rigid with fear beside him, barely able to open his sleep-cruddy eyes. Suddenly claustrophobic.

You can see it on her face: she did it without him. She’s not like Michael anymore, she’s the same as David is — she’s a killer. Somewhere between Santa Carla and here, she killed. The softness is gone; Star has destroyed it, and David wasn’t even there to watch.

“Boy, is it nice to see you.” David presses his hands to his eyes, grimace-smiling. Michael disentangles his arms from around his waist, and pulls himself upright. You could get vertigo, sleeping like this. All the blood sinks down to your feet.

“Isn’t this gross?”

“It was this or the dumpster next door.” You hardly notice the smell — melted ice cream and old pickles. And it smells a hell of a lot better than crispy-fried creatures of the night.

The first word out of Michael’s mouth is Star’s name.

“I was scared for you, Michael,” she says almost apologetically — ha ha, isn’t that stupid, not look what you put me through.

“I thought he hurt you.”

“It didn’t hurt. Do you need money? I have money,” Star says, not without anxiety. The look of worry sits wrong on her face. She hugs herself.

“We’re fine,” David says, levering himself out like Bela Lugosi. “Is that Honda still chained up out there?”

Star came on a pale green Kawasaki still propped up and guttering against the concrete — Michael slips in behind her as she climbs astride, and David tries not to stare.

*

“Why didn’t you kill him?”

“Fuck you,” David says.

Because he didn’t want it to be real — to die and really be dead, that would be a raw fucking deal. Because Max made him everything he was. Because in some black corner of himself, he was afraid of him still.

Star doesn’t want Michael to see her hunt. She doesn’t want him to see her as a monster, but David can see it beneath her skin even without the change coming over her — new bones, new sharp teeth. That’s the difference between her and David — David’s too old to be shy. David wants Michael to watch him work. Watching the drivers of those cars as they go by, and sort of envying them — there’s something absurd about the thought of flying over long distances, like the thought of tripping for a straight week. Every so often one of the cars slows down, and it’s only a matter of time until one of them stops, some really stupid fuck—

David’s hungry, and Michael’s getting on his nerves.

“Right, I’m not fucking around. I’m going to kill one of those guys. Come on. Come and watch.”

Michael shakes his head, rigidly.

“Why, are you scared you’d like it?”

“I told you. I’m not going to be like you are.”

“What the fuck do you care about these guys? They’d kill you if you let them. They’re psychos.”

“You don’t own me. I got rid of Max, and you left me alone. We’re square.”

Michael’s too good to be a killer. Michael wants to watch, but not to play.

“You’re gonna do it,” David says, “and I’m gonna watch you do it.”

“You think you can fuck with my head, but you can’t. It won’t work.” Michael’s arms are crossed tightly; the talon-nails of one hand are digging into the skin of his wrist, raising bloodless gouges. He shakes out his hair and steps back, trying to look taller, bigger, but it’s not helping his case—

“You’re hurting yourself. Come here.”

Michael comes to him after all, braced for a scolding, but he reaches out to him anyway. David fumbles in the hem of his jacket.

“What are you doing?”

“I would be a pretty shitty friend, wouldn’t I?”

Flashing silver, clinking chains — David opens a gash in his throat with a safety pin, and Michael drinks.

*

They buy Star a dress from a gas station rack, pale blue, and she wears it over her torn-off jeans. Just over the border, past Henderson — you could make it in a night, if you kept your eye out. Two nights, if you had a place to crash in between — someplace dark.

Michael goes out in the daytime, out of some misguided bravado — this is it, Star thinks so loudly even David can hear it, he’s not coming back this time, but Michael comes back every time with cigarettes and plastic combs and paper maps. Checkout at 7 PM, no tip.

They stop to gas up the bikes and stretch their legs. David parks himself on the curb and thumbs through a paperback novel the size of a cinderblock. Star spreads out her skirts and pulls Michael in extra-close.

“Let me read your palm,” Star says.

“That’s bullshit,” David says.

Michael spreads his fingers. Star takes his hand in hers.

“You’re not left-handed, are you?” (Michael shakes his head.) “Your index finger is longer than the others, and it leans inward, like this — that means a strong personality,” Star says, and her voice sounds as if she’s blushing. “But we knew that. And you’ve got a bump here, a mount. A Mount of Saturn.”

Michael laughs, unexpectedly delighted.

“You’ve got a deep line of Mercury, here. That could mean a couple different things.

“Like what?”

“Good health, good memory, and a quick temper. You should see David’s.”

“David—” Michael says it, and halts. “David doesn’t really seem like a fortune-telling kind of guy.”

“He’s not very mystic. This is your union line, and your union line forks into two, here —" Now she must be blushing. Her face is hidden behind the dizzy curtain of her hair, and Michael shifts back in his seat on the gravel, knees apart in their pale denim.

“I’m going out,” David says, almost as a warning. Out where? Out in the night.

*

Long nights — the three of them smoking grass, bikes leaning together in a tangle, Star drinking cherry brandy from a plastic bottle, her head flung back and her long hair spread out over Michael’s lap. The smell of hot asphalt hangs on them even after they’ve retired to an air-conditioned tomb for the day. Michael’s grown too-skinny, he never takes off his dark sunglasses even when the door is locked and barred. He’s doing bad. Everybody who tries to quit gets it bad.

Bad blood. Michael was there for the Surf Nazi massacre, he could have joined in just like one of the gang, he watched — and he liked it. Why’s he so stuck up now? Why hold out? Here in the darkness, Star’s eyes are closed; there are faint little lines in her eyelids, luminous lines of blood under skin as thin as paper. She lies very still in the sheets; Michael shifts, and casts his arm around her, over her back.

“How old are you?”

“Old enough,” David says, with the forcefulness of a habitual answer.

“I mean, how old are you really?”

“Why do you care?”

“My mom always used to tell us — how she hitchhiked out to San Francisco and slept outside and panhandled. Summer of Love. Haight-Ashbury. All that shit,” Michael adds miserably. “Was that you?”

David lifts his shoulders in an indifferent shrug. When had it been? 1971, 1972 — it sure as shit wasn’t the Summer of Love. Long days, short hot nights. He can’t remember anything but the nights then. Good music, cheap pot, easy hunting.

“I was the first.”

“Were there any before you?”

David grimaces. “I told you, I don’t know.”

If there were, Max would have killed them. He would never have let them go.

Star’s awake — her eyes are open, shining like a cat’s eyes. Her voice is small. “If Michael had gone with you, Max would have gotten what he wanted.”

Max is right where he deserves to be — piled in the rubble, with six sacks of concrete dumped on top to hold it all down. Once more, with holy water. Michael rolls over, pressing himself to Star’s shoulder helplessly, and she guides his mouth down to her breast. He drags up his leg over Star’s side, lanky and careless — David presses himself flush against his back and mouths against the hard mountain-ridge of Michael’s shoulder. Breathing the smell of Star and feeling Michael.

*

The Strip is filthy, and the porno magazines and playbills skitter around your feet like snow — the three of them group together, but if their heads are lowered, if they don’t make eye contact, it’s a pose. They could own this place.

The heat of the desert at night creeps in at the edges — this place is Santa Carla for grown-ups. Nobody can make you go to bed. Penny slots, plastic sunglasses, mechanical tigers and mummies. Hell, bring the kids. Marko would like this place, he finds himself thinking — all the light and color, the psychedelic nightscape, the phony drive-in movie glitter and the endless traffic. He’ll have to take them here some day and raise a little hell, however of them happen to be left.

Men go walking here alone, and that’s a mistake. Men in the city, up all night, every night, around the clock — conventioneers, dishwashers, truck drivers on holiday, construction workers on strike. Legless veterans panhandling with resentment in their eyes, weatherbeaten kids sleeping in parked cars. And the girls — the suntanned girls with their sleeves rolled up, the girls on the street corners, the waitresses and dancers with the lines of high-cut, low-cut work uniforms smothered under sweatshirts and snugged under jeans. Hungry, angry girls.

“What about her?” David says, gesturing to a likely-looking woman like they’re talking baseball scores or comic books. She can’t be called a girl; she’s dressed for work, in flattened-down shoes and a collared shirt, but she’s terribly thin. Star’s eyes flash with recognition; Michael shakes his head.

“Why not?”

“What if she’s sick?”

“You’d be putting her out of her misery.” But that’s not what Michael is asking, and his disgust is plain on his face — not disgust at her, this broken-down woman with fierce eyes. She’s no different from the Santa Carla freaks — she could be somebody’s mother, that’s all, and that’s what’s getting under Michael’s skin. She’s somebody’s mother.

Michael’s sullen eyes flash on him. “She doesn’t deserve this.”

That’s sweet. Michael can’t hold out much longer, on drips and drops of borrowed blood. He’ll kill tonight, or he’ll starve to death.

“Your mom loves Laddie,” Star says, in non-sequitur fashion, grabbing for Michael’s hand. “They get along great. I wouldn’t have let him go if it weren’t true. She misses you.”

The back of Michael’s other hand brushes David as they go by. If they were on the boardwalk, he’d take that hand and not give a fuck who saw. Anyone who said shit about it would get their head kicked in like a beer can. Santa Carla, the town where nobody gives a shit.

*

They stalk a man through the parking garage of a cheap gaudy casino, right on the raw edge of twilight — still light enough to sting their eyes, to leave Star blinking away tears, suspended in. The wind whistles past them, hot and dry.

A heartbeat, pounding hard and fast, but not a healthy heart, blood wheezes through the blood vessels only with difficulty. Cheap shoe leather squeaking. He’s not running from them, he’s running from something else — slumped against the concrete barrier, breathing like a wounded animal. This guy used to be a high roller, now look at him — look at the sweat stains in his shirt, the smell of the casino floor pouring off of him. Maybe he deserves it, maybe he doesn’t, but he welcomes them with a horrible hopeful face — horrible hopeful eyes. Their feet aren’t on the concrete any longer. They could sweep in and—

The man isn’t looking at them; his face is turned to the darkness, but his eyes are cast up to the roof, like God’s watching.

“I knew you’d come for me. Take my watch — I mean it, it’s not a fake. Take my wallet. Take my car keys — they’re towing it tomorrow, the fuck do I care? Take it all. I don’t give a shit.”

“I don’t want your money,” David says, feeling his forehead crease.

“David,” Star says warningly. “Be nice.”

Be nice. Bullshit — David drops down and presses him down against the pavement, feeling his heartbeat through his cheap shirt. He’s hysterical; he’s delirious, he’s crazy. He’s an easy mark.

This man wants to die. With his cheap tie and his cheap shoes and his cheap shirt, he looks just like Max.

Star’s face twists, her eyes flash gold. The high roller moans a little. David tears the shirt-collar away from his sweating throat, and opens a trio of red slashes with his fingernails. The smell of blood is still exciting, even when it’s nauseating — for Michael it’ll be irresistible.

Star is speaking to Michael in a low voice, a gentle voice slurred by the presence of fangs in her mouth. “You can do it, Michael. It isn’t as bad as you think.” The bones have warped in her face, like a hand twisting into a fist; she’s beautiful that way.

Star lowers her head, showing him how. Flesh tears, veins snap like strings. Michael drinks.

Something in Michael sloughs off, in the moment where he becomes like them — like taking off a heavy coat, like wiping away a faceful of smeared makeup. This is the final version of Michael, this is who he is closest to the bone. They’ve delivered him into the world like a new baby — blood-smeared and miserable, here in the dark but not alone. He’ll never be alone again,

David kneels on the concrete, with the blood running in rivers past his knees. Star’s hand finds his, lacing across Michael’s stomach, and David grips her bone-wrenchingly tight. Michael opens his eyes, lips parting.

He kisses David on the mouth, filling his tongue with the taste of blood, and he kisses the backs of Star’s hands.

*

They’re going home. All the way down I-5 to Route 101, fly by night, all the way through to the bleeding edge of the coast in a stolen car. The keyfob is heavy in David’s hand, the money clip daubed in blood — call it a joyride.