'Come out here.'
He wished Billy could be here for the kill. He felt that Billy was half
of him, fifty percent of his flesh and and mind.
Without Billy, he wasn't fully alive at moments like this. Without
Billy, he could experience only a part of the thrill, half of the
excitement.
On his way to the elevator, Bollinger thought about Billy, mostly about
the first few nights they had known each other.
They had met on a Friday and spent nine hours in a private all-night
club on Forty-fourth Street. They had left well after dawn, and they
were amazed at how the time had flown. The bar was a favorite hangout
for .city detectives and was always busy; however, it seemed to
Bollinger that he and Billy had been the only people in the place, all
alone in their corner booth.
From the start they weren't awkward with each other. He felt as if they
were twin brothers, as if they shared that mythical oneness of twins in
addition to years of daily contact. They talked rapidly, eagerly. No
chitchat or gossip. Conversation. Honest-to-God conversation. It was
an exchange of ideas and sentiments that Bollinger had never enjoyed
with anyone else. Nothing was taboo. Politics.
Religion. Poetry. Sex. Selfappraisal. They found a phenomenal number
of things about which they held the same unorthodox opinions.
After nine hours, they knew each other better than either of them had
ever known another human being.
The following night they met at the bar, talked, drank, picked up a
good-looking whore and took her to Billy's apartment. The three of them
had gone to bed together, but not in a bisexual sense. in fact, it
would be more accurate to say that the two of them had gone to bed with
her, for although they performed, some times separately and sometimes
simultaneously, a wide variety of sex acts with and upon her, Billy did
not touch Bollinger, nor did Bollinger touch Billy.
That night, 'sex was more dynamic, exhilarating, frenzied, manic, and
ultimately more exhausting than Bollinger had ever imagined it could be.
Billy certainly didn't look like a stud. Far from it. But he was
precisely that, insatiable. He delighted in withholding his orgasm for
hours, for he knew that the longer he denied himself, the more
shattering the climax when it finally came. A sensualist, he preferred
to refuse immediate satisfaction in favor of a far greater series of
sensations later on. Bollinger realized from the moment he climbed into
the bed that he was being tested. Rated. Billy was watching. He found
it difficult to match the pace set by the older man, but he did. Even
the girl complained of being worn out, used up.
He vividly recalled the position in which he'd been when he'd climaxed,
because afterward he suspected that Billy had maneuvered him into it.
The girl was on hands and knees in the center of the bed.
Billy knelt in front of her. Bollinger knelt behind, stroking her
dog-fashion. He faced Billy across her back; later, he knew that Billy
had wanted to finish while confronting him.
He watched himself moving in and out of the girl, then looked up and saw
