The Worm in Every Heart (30 page)

Which is true. You don't.

No more than you need a shadow.

* * *

A sharp left turn, then Church Street again: Going down, this time. My Docs struck hard against the cracked concrete, again and again—each new stride sending up aftershocks that made my ankles spark with pain, as though that shrugged-away mess were somehow boomeranging back to haunt me with its ever-increasing twinge. And because I couldn't moderate myself, couldn't control either my speed or my boots' impact, the ache soon reached my chest—after a couple of blocks—and lodged there, throbbing.

Rhythm becoming thought, thought becoming memory; memory, which tends to shuck itself, to peel away. You get older, look back through a child's tunnel vision, and realize you never knew the whole that tied the details together. You were just along for the ride, moving from experience to experience, a flat spectacle, some kind of guideless tour. You remember—or think you remember—what happened, but not where, or why. What you did, but not with who. Details fade. People's names get lost in the white noise.

Reluctantly, therefore—for the second time in as many days—I found myself thinking about that shell of a thing I'd once been, back before the big split: That fresh-faced, fresh-scrubbed, fresh-off-the-boat Chink twink with his fifteen pairs of matching penny-loafers and his drawer-full of grey silk ties. And just as smiley-face quiet, as neat and polite, as veddy, veddy, Brit-inflectedly
restrained
as he'd always been, the homegrown HK golden boy mask still firmly in place, even without a Ba and Ma immediately on hand to do his patented straight-Asian-male dance for anymore . . .

Up ‘till he'd met Carra, at least. ‘Till she'd sat down beside him in study hall, her sleeves pushed up to show the desperate phantom scribble circling one wrist like a ringworm surfacing for air; looked right through him like his head was made of glass, seen all his ugly, hidden parts at once, and shown him exactly how wrong he'd always been about the nature he struggled to keep in check at all costs, the fears—formless and otherwise—he'd fought against tooth and nail all his relatively brief, bland, blind little life.

How restraint wasn't about powerlessness in the face of such terrors at all, but rather about being afraid of your own power. Its reality, its strength. Its endless range of unchecked possibilities, the good, the bad—

—and the indifferent.

I remember how freeing it felt to not “have” to watch myself all the time, at long last; nobody else was going to do it for me, and why should they? My first impulse, in every situation—as I well knew—was always to the angry, the selfish, the petty. I tried to be kind, mainly because I'd been so rigidly inculcated with the general Taoist/Christian principle that doing so was always the “right” thing
to
do. But even when I managed a good deed here and there, I knew it to be just so much hypocrisy, nothing more.
It was the least I could do, so I did it.

Parental love is a matchless thing; if it weren't for that, most of us wouldn't have a pot to piss in, affectionately speaking. But even at its most irreplaceable, it's still pretty cheap. Any ape loves their children; spiders lie still while theirs crawl around inside them, happy to let them eat their guts.

The only reason anybody unrelated is ever nice to anyone else, meanwhile, is as a sort of pre-emptive emotional strike—to prevent themselves from being treated as badly, potentially, as they might have treated other people. Which makes love only the lie two brains on spines tell each other, the lie that says: “You exist, because I love you. You exist, because you can see yourself in my eyes.”

So we blunder from hope to hope, hollowed and searching. All of us equally incomplete.

And after all these years, still the sting comes, the liquid pressure in the chest and nose, the migraine-forerunner frown. Phantom pain. The ghost without the murder.

But what the fuck? That's all it is, ever. You want to be loved. You tell other people you love them, in order to trick them into loving you back. And after a while, it's true. You feel the pull, the ache.

The vibrato, voice keening skyward. The wet edge. Every word a whine. Weak, weak, weak, weak, weak.

When I say “you,” of course, I mean “me.” This is because everything is about me. To me. Why not? I'm the only me I have.

Truth is, none of us deserve anything. We get what we get.

And the best you can ever hope for . . . is to train yourself not to care.

Ahead, Ryerson loomed; residence row, with a Second Cup on either side of the street and competing hookers on every corner, shivering aslant on their sagging vinyl boot-heels.

I paused at Gould, waiting for a slow light, and put one itch-etched palm to my chest—telling myself it was to chart the ache's progress, rather than to keep myself from jarring the light's signal free with a sudden burst of excess entropic energy. Felt the charge building in my bones, begging for expression. For expulsion.

Some opportunity to turn this—whatever—I felt myself tentatively beginning to feel safely outward, without risk of repercussion. To evict the unwanted visitor, wash myself clean and empty and ready for use again, like any good craftsman's basic set of tools; make myself just an implement once more, immune to the temptations of personal desire.

What had I cut myself in half
for
, in the first place, if not for that? Scarred my heel, halved my soul, driven Franz and Jen one way and Carra the other, busted the Black Magic Posse back down to its dysfunctional roots so I could be this arcane study group's sole graduating student, its unofficial last man standing. And all to immunize myself to stress and fear and lack of focus—to free myself from every law but that of gravity, while still making sure I could probably break that one too, if I just put my back into it. Dictator For Life of a one-person country, my own private Hierarchical Idaho.

Because if the effect wore
off
, however eventually . . . well, hell; that would mean none of the above had really been worth the effort. At all.

I hissed through my suddenly half-clogged nose at the very idea, but nothing happened. The ache remained.

And grew.

But: Something
will
present itself, I forced myself to decide, more in certainty than conjecture. The way it always does.

And sure enough—soon enough—

—something did.

Just past Ryerson proper and into the shadow of St Mike's, moving through that dead stretch of pawnbrokers' shops and photographic supply warehouses. I glance-scanned the row of live DV hand-helds mounted in Henry's window, and caught his lambent shade flickering fast from screen to screen to screen: Him from the theatre, from the Khyber. That particular guy. He Who Remained Nameless, for now.

But not, I promised myself, for much longer.

I was already turning, instinctively, even as I formed the concept—half-way ‘round where I stood before I even had a chance to recognize more than the line of his shoulder, the swing of his hair, the sidelong flash of what
might
be an eye: A mirror-image glance, an answering recognition. And stepping straight into the path of some ineptly tattooed young lout cocooned in a crowd of the same, Ry High jocks or proto-Engineers out for a beer before curfew, with gay-bashing one of the options passing vaguely through what they collectively called a brain. Who called out, equally automatic, as I elbowed by him:

“Hey, faggot!”

An insult I'd heard before, of course, far too many to count easily—not to mention one for which I currently had both no time and exactly zero interest, within context. So I tried to channel the old Jude, who'd always been so wonderfully diffident and accommodating in the face of fools, especially whenever violence threatened; dodge past with a half-ducked head and an apologetic, “no speakee Engarish, asshore” kind of half-smile, teeth grit and pride kept strictly quashed, as long as it got me finally face to face with my mystery man at last . . .

Except that Mr. Hetboy Supreme and his buddies didn't actually move, which meant I couldn't do much but hold my ground, still smiling. And when I took another look, the guy, my quarry, that ever-elusive, unimaginably attractive
him
—
he
was long gone, of course. Anyway.

And the ache was back.

“Faggot,” the doofus said again—like he'd always wanted a chance to really sound it out aloud, syllable by un-PC syllable. And I just nodded again, my fingers knitting fast behind me; weaving hidden sigils in that empty place where my shadow used to be, feeling them perfect themselves without even having to check that I was doing it right.

Immaculate. Effortless. Like signing your name in the dark.

“Something I can help you with?” I asked. Adding, for extra emphasis: “Gentlemen.”

One of them sniggered.

“Well, yes,” said the one with the big mouth, all mock-obsequious. “See, the guys and me were just thinkin' . . . ”

Unlikely.

“ . . . about how just seein' you come swishin' along here made us wanna, kinda—y'know—fuck you—”

Before he could finish his little game of verbal connect-the-dots, I'd already upgraded my smile to a—wide, nasty—grin.

“Over?” I suggested, coolly. “Or was it . . . up? The ass?”

More sniggers, not all of them directed at me. “You wish,” my aspiring basher-to-be snapped back, a bit too quick for his own comfort.

I shrugged, bringing my hands forward. Rubbed my palms together, deliberately. Saw them all shiver and step back, as one, as the skin ignited—and winked, letting a spark of the same cheerless color flare in the pupil's heart of either flat black eye. Allowing it to grow, to spread. To kiss both lids, and gild my lashes with purple flame.

And oh, but the ache was chest-high and higher now, jumping my neck to lodge behind my face: A hammer in my head, a hundred-watt bulb thrown mid-skull. Like a halo in reverse.

“Not particularly,” I replied.

Basher-boy's buddies broke and ran as one, pack-minded to the last. But I had already crooked a burning finger at him, riveting him to the spot, a skewer of force run through every limb. Using them like strings, I walked him—a reluctant puppet—to the nearest alley. Paused behind a clutch of trash-cans, popped my fly to let it all hang out. And leaned back against the wall, waiting.

“Down,” I told him. “Now.”

He knelt, staring up. I stroked his jaw.

“Open up,” I said, sweetly.

And kept right on smiling, even after his formerly sneering lips hit the neatly-trimmed hair on my pubic ridge—right up until my sac swung free against his rigid, yet helplessly working, chin. I wasn't thinking of him, of course, but at least I wasn't thinking of that
guy
anymore—or myself, either. When I felt my orgasm at last, I came so hard I would have thought I was levitating, if I didn't already know what that feels like: Off like a rocket, all in one choking gush. I held his head until I was done.

Then I stepped back, him still down on his knees in front of me, leaving him just enough room to pivot and puke everything I'd just given him back up on the asphalt beneath our feet.

My ache, conveniently enough, went along with it.

“You think you're going to do something about this,” I told him, as I ordered my cuffs and tucked my shirt back in. “Not that you'd ever tell your buddies, of course. But you're sitting there right now, thinking: ‘One day I'm gonna catch him in an alley, and he'll have to eat through a straw for a month.'”

Closing my coat, I squatted down beside him, continuing: “But the thing is . . . even now, even with me right in front of you, you can't really remember what I look like. And it's getting worse. An hour from now, any given gay guy you meet might have been the one that did this to you. Am I right?” I leant a little towards him, and felt him just stop himself from shying away; that little jerk in his breath, like a slaughterhouse calf just before the bolt slams home. “Can't tell, can you?” I asked, quietly.

He didn't answer.

“And do you know what that means?” I went on, sitting back on my heels. “It means that the next time you see somebody coming down Church Street, and you want to say hello—I think you're going to modify your tone a little. Lower your eyes, maybe. Not make any snap judgements. And definitely . . . under any circumstances at all . . . not call this person by insulting names. Because you never know.” I paused. “And you never will, either.”

Leaning forward again, I let my voice go cold. And whispered, right in his ear:

“So be polite, little ghost. From now on, just be very—very—polite.”

* * *

By the time I got home, one quick whiff was enough to tell me my neighbors were not only back, but already smoking up a storm. No '80's nostalgia dance mix filtering up through the floorboards as yet, though—so between the relative earliness of the hour and the obvious intensity of their hash-induced stupor, I figured I had about an hour before their proximity made it difficult to give the ritual I had in mind my fullest possible attention.

Because, morally repulsive as my pre-emptive strike on the Engineer might have been—even from my own (admittedly prejudiced) point of view—the plain fact was, it had done the trick. Back in that alley, the emotional cramp temporarily hampering my ability to plan ahead had flowed out of me, borne on a blissful surge of bodily fluids. And inspiration had taken its place.

So I picked up the phone, and discovered—somewhat to my own amusement—that I really
could
remember Franz's mother's number, after all.

“You're actually going to help?” He repeated, obviously amazed.

“Why not? Might be kicks.”

“Yeah, right. For who?”

“Does it matter?”

Planning it out, even as we fenced: use a two-ring circle system, with Jen sequestered in the inner, Franz and I in the outer. Proceed from Franz's assumption that Fleer was the demon in question, until otherwise proven; force him to vacate by offering him another rabbit-hole to jump down, one far more attractive to him than Jen's could ever be . . .