Marissa shrugged, made a show of rifling through paper she didn’t seem to be reading.
“Besides, I only date black guys.”
“Go.”
“Especially if they’re related to you,” he said as he left.
“
• • •
That night, the dream came back. It was Ben’s only recurring dream, and in it, he was never alone. Anthem walked beside him and the land under their bare feet was dry, cracked and uneven. As always, Ben was dimly aware that they were traversing the long-submerged bedrock of Louisiana after it had been scorched dry by a nuclear sun. The blackened, tangled trees on every horizon always seemed to be the same vast distance away, tattered fringes of shadow against a cloudless, bloodred sky. Great swirls of paper defied the laws of gravity all around them; propelling themselves through the air like waterborne bacteria. And on every piece of paper the word MISSING screamed out at the wasteland in 36-point typeface. And on every piece of paper there was a photograph of Niquette Delongpre, smiling confidently in her fleecy pullover, a pair of Mardi Gras pearls around her neck.
And even though they were stark naked, their skin lacerated and oozing from a thousand lashes with origins unknown to him, Ben and Anthem kept walking through the swirls of desperate, pleading flyers. And with one hand held against the small of Anthem’s naked, bloody back, Ben urged them both forward through this wasteland of long-ago fire and perpetual loss. Then at some point, the papers would start turning to cinders the second they touched the scorched earth, and Ben would become aware that the man next to him was muttering something. Not just words but lyrics.
And though it would feel to Ben like he had joined Anthem in song, he was never able to hear his own voice, just Anthem’s, raspy and muffled, as if he were singing in his sleep, his mouth half buried in a pillow.
Ben woke from the dream as he always did, with a sense of certainty that comforted him and the lyrics of Anthem’s favorite Cowboy Mouth song cycling through his brain. Sure, the dream was full of blood and apocalyptic set pieces, but its message was always the same comforting incantation. No matter what happened, all he and Anthem needed to be on any given day were just two boys walking, wounds and all, one foot in front of the other, the other ready to reach over and right the other should he stumble.
The clock on the nightstand said it was 12:30. But the longer Ben stared at the glowing green numerals, the more his sense of peace departed.
12:31. The change of minute roused him suddenly. And then he realized what had awakened him, because he heard the noise a second time: the creak of a floorboard nearby. His apartment was one half of an old town house; the warped hardwood floors were sensitive. But this noise was too close to his bed.
He sat up, planning his next moves. First he’d pull the gun from his nightstand drawer, then he’d turn on the light. But before he could do either, a wave of darkness passed over the entire room. His first thought was that a plane had flown low over the house, but there was no way a plane could have blocked out the streetlights; everything inside the room—every shadow, every dull glare from outside—was suddenly gone. It felt as if the darkness itself had claimed him from within.
And then it was over. And the streetlight’s tree-branch laced halo on the floor near his bed seemed preternaturally vivid, the result of having been blotted out entirely for several impossible seconds by . . . he had no idea what.
He pulled the handgun Anthem had forced on him for his birthday one year, firing-range lessons included, from the nightstand drawer—
In the living room, he found the front door locked, the lock undamaged, every piece of unopened mail exactly where he’d left it on his desk. The kitchen sink’s usual mountain of unwashed coffee cups hadn’t been disturbed, and the window just above was still locked. No impressions in his humble collection of IKEA furniture.
His apartment was empty, the doors and windows locked, the only sound the slight, steady rattle of the AC vents overhead. But the conviction that he wasn’t alone was like a second heartbeat inside his chest. And he knew there was only one way to be rid of the feeling, and it didn’t come from inside a bottle. It came from his phone. Or at least that’s where it started.
The app had become a punch line among almost every gay man he knew, but it was effective, and within a few seconds of settling down onto his sofa, Ben was paging through semigrainy photos of other gay men like himself, most of whom were only a few blocks away, doing exactly the same thing he was. He swiped through a few familiar faces and lots of bare chests. Camera phones had shown the world there was no end of dehumanizing poses the male form could be contorted into before a bathroom mirror.
After a few minutes of searching, he hit on a potential target. A broad-shouldered linebacker type with the right dusting of hair on his pecs. They chatted for barely five minutes, each individual exchange barely more than a few words in length. No niceties, no flirting; nothing other than the almost split-second joining of two compatible and wildly superficial fantasies.
A few minutes later, he’d managed a quick shower, changed his T-shirt and boxers and was standing just inside the front when there was a flash of headlights turning onto his street. He’d dimmed most of the lights so he could peer out at his visitor without being noticed. When the guy stepped under the porch light’s bright halo, Ben was relieved to see the guy matched his profile pic; the same brawn, the same five o’clock shadow.
He’d executed his next moves countless times. Open the door, give the guy a slight smile, nothing too toothy or broad or effusive (or effeminate). Don’t say too much; who knows what turn of phrase could ruin whatever fantasy the guy had cooked up in his head about who Ben was or who he wanted Ben to pretend to be for the next twenty minutes or so? He’d offer the guy a drink, let him work his way toward the bedroom and then they’d be good to go.
Ben was halfway through this script when he realized that something about the guy was off. He wasn’t sweating or skittery like the tweakers Ben often had to turn away. Instead he was a blend of sullen and tightly wound that set off alarm bells in Ben’s brain. Hand jammed in his jeans pockets, surveying their surroundings carefully, as if he were inventorying the room. And he was big. Anthem big. But when Ben asked him if he wanted a drink, the guy asked for a beer in a breathy, even tone of voice that didn’t have a psychotic edge to it.
When Ben emerged from the kitchen, Corona in one hand, the guy was gone. The door to Ben’s bedroom was open. It was the only place the guy could have gone, so Ben stepped into the darkness after him. And that’s when the guy hit from behind with bone-rattling, breath-stealing force, sending Ben hurtling face-first onto the bed. The beer bottle flew from his hand and smashed to the floor. Before he could protest, the guy had driven his head into the pillow, one giant hand clamped on the back of his neck.
“Bite it, you little faggot,” the guy growled.
Mouth at Ben’s ear, the man growled, “You shut your fuckin’ mouth, you little faggot. You hear me? You
