Afterlife (29 page)

He turned on the water full-force, as hot as it got, and the jets pummeled him. He swayed in the stream, almost dancing with himself. He felt terrific, though the crystal was beginning to wear a little thin around the edges. His butthole throbbed, but then, that was the price of admission, and in truth it hurt pretty good. Besides, Sonny knew how to compensate. In a day or two he'd check in with one of his fuck buddies and plow the shit out of him. Because life was a balance of power, something he'd known since the Second Cataract.

Not that he didn't have all the power here. Ever since he was sixteen years old, luring his Aunt Urania's husband onto the shoals of desire, he understood instinctively how a bottom stayed on top. Especially here, in the house of a vulgar man. He turned in the steam as Sean strutted into the shower. Sonny grinned lazily and reached for the soap. Vigorously he lathered Sean's tire-waisted body, inexhaustible as a geisha.

And Sean stood there dumbly, happy as a sheik in a harem. While Sonny soaped him down, he stroked the Greek with a meaty hand, lingering on the buttocks in a proprietary way. He had sunk two and a half mill in the Trousdale house, and three years later it was easily worth double. In truth, his whole life seemed to double every time he turned around, that was how rich he was. And yet this right here was the only reward that mattered: a man whose beauty took his breath away. It was what he deserved and what the world owed him. Though he couldn't leave Sonny alone, pawing him like a drunken suitor, he was also coolly appraising. For if he'd learned nothing else from having an ocean of money, he knew that the rich could own the beautiful.

It was close to 4
A.M.
when they stepped out of the shower. As Sonny toweled himself dry in the hall of mirrors, Sean leaned over the sink and blew out his nostrils, thick with bloody gunk from the crystal. He hadn't done as much as Sonny, but he did it all the time, so his sinuses were shot. He didn't seem to care how gross was the sound of his nose-flushing. On the contrary, he appeared to take genuine delight in being gross and vulgar and rich.

The evening hadn't even started till one, when Sonny was through at the restaurant. The second date, the second night in a row. Last night they had tooted a little crank in Sean Pfeiffer's limo, pulling up at this travertine palazzo at the top of the city. Sonny had seen immediately how very high the stakes were, and on the spot decided to go for the gold.

In a voluminous white terry robe, Sean moved to Sonny, who was toweling dry his hair. He watched him for a moment, sated but still famished, as if all that counted was figuring out how to use him next. Then he frowned: “What's this?”

Sonny's head emerged from the towel. Sean put out a stubby finger and raked the swirl of hair in Sonny's armpit. There was a small crimson spot about an inch from the tricep, slightly raised, that looked sore. “Nothing,” said Sonny, stiffening slightly at the offense. He didn't look at the spot himself. “It's a birthmark, why? You paranoid or something?”

He flicked his towel at Sean's ass, turning it into a playful moment, two guys horsing around in a locker room. The older man laughed and grabbed at Sonny, chasing him back into the bedroom, tumbling with him onto the bed. It was half a wrestle and half an embrace, but too late at night to take it either way. They were lying side by side, Sean puffing with exertion just from the little chase. Sonny dug a tickling finger between his ribs, put his face up close and said, “So you think I'm Typhoid Mary, is that it?”

Sean laughed, his belly shaking. Sonny was glad the fish-white body was wrapped in the terry robe, because he was sick of touching it. “Not exactly,” Sean replied, lazily nuzzling Sonny's neck, “but you lived with a guy who died, didn't you?”

Sean couldn't see the startled look in Sonny's eyes, like something wild in a trap. But he didn't flinch; he had too much control of his body for that. Instinctively his hands parted the robe, and he began to play lightly with Sean's nipples. Sean groaned in protest, his tits having gone through a long delicious session at Sonny's hands before they got down to serious fucking. Tits were the only topwork Sean Pfeiffer ever allowed, the only thing close to yielding. Now Sonny kept the pressure exquisitely light, the softest echo of a deeper throb, till Sean lay back on the pillow with his eyes half-closed.

Anyone else might have been glad to consider the subject dropped, but Sonny said quietly, his voice like a lullaby, “You mean Ellsworth? We were just roommates.”

“I heard you were lovers,” Sean murmured in reply. He hadn't got rich by losing the thread of conversations, no matter how nice his body felt.

“No way. I mean, like maybe we jerked off a couple times, but he never fucked me. I'm real picky.” He gave the nipples a final twist, perfectly walking the tightrope of pleasure and pain, and Sean hissed in answer, reduced at last to a sort of white noise. “I need a man,” declared Sonny, releasing the pressure points and closing the discussion all at once. Ellsworth, whatever else he was, had clearly not been what was needed.

Sean Pfeiffer gave a tremendous sigh of contentment. He began to breathe more rhythmically, surfeited at last and ready to sleep. Sonny leaned up next to his ear and whispered, “I want to wake up in the morning with you inside me.” The ghost of a shit-eating grin suffused Sean's face, as if this last remark would ensure an X-rated dream or two. Then he was out cold, the strain of forty-six grubbing years visible now in the puffs and sags of his face.

Sonny pulled back and reached around to the bedside table. He'd hardly touched his flute of Dom before the session got going in earnest. Now he just wanted to savor his champagne. He'd put in a double shift tonight, Monte Carlo and here, back to back. And he had barely slept the night before, wired as he was from the crystal. He'd been running on pure adrenaline all day. He probably should've crashed and taken a major nap, but he'd gone to the gym instead and put in his regular two hours. It was almost as if he wanted to gauge his loss of power after a night of sex and drugs.

He passed the test just fine, benching as strong as ever. The only tangible effect was how spaced he was, jangled and slow on the uptake, which was why he neglected to pass on the message from Mark to Steven. And couldn't remember the name of Steven's new boyfriend, though he kept bumping into him all through the house.

He sat up and leaned close to the table, where a skim of white powder covered a small hand mirror. Enough for Sonny to scrape together a last line. He toyed with that for a moment, figuring it would give him the rest of the night to think. He even felt a perverse fascination with how it would be tomorrow, after
two
nights sleepless. How it would be, in other words, to push the limit here, play a little Russian roulette with the perfect tone of his body.

Strange, since he really wasn't into drugs. Not that he was so clean either, but he only took what his tricks would feed him—a joint here, a couple hits of amyl. For a while there in his early twenties everyone seemed to have coke, but that was passé now, at least among the hard-bodied types he played with these days. It really took finding a sleaze bucket like Sean Pfeiffer to get drugs thrown into the package. And frankly, Sonny was grateful for the carnal boost of the speed.

But the champagne was enough for now. He wandered naked into a living room the size of a barn, with half-acre splatter paintings on facing walls, in which obscure violent figures foamed up red and fought with beasts. Sonny didn't get the paintings at all, but then, neither did Sean Pfeiffer, who only required them to be expensive. Sonny crossed the room with a certain caution, knowing there was staff in the house, including the hulking limo driver who doubled as a bodyguard and looked as if he ate West Hollywood fags for breakfast.

Sonny hoped he wasn't tripping invisible wires, especially when he moved up three stone steps into Sean's office. A swirling Nouveau desk stood on tiptoes in the bay window. Sonny sat naked in the glove leather chair, brought the champagne glass to his lips, and tilted back to drain it. He liked the feel of the leather kissing his body and wondered what it would be like to lie naked in the back of the limo. He'd save that idea for Sean, who could ravish him as they purred through Beverly Hills.

Idly but methodically, he pulled out the drawers on either side—blue boxes of Tiffany stationery, business cards and letterhead for the cable company. Nothing so concrete as a balance sheet that would tell him in black and white what Sean was worth. He'd have to break into the office on Wilshire to root out that kind of detail, and even then he'd probably need an accountant. That didn't seem fair, given the fact that all his own assets were concentrated here, naked in this chair. Already Sean knew just what he was getting, after only two nights' feasting. If they were going to keep it on an equal footing, man to man, a financial statement seemed only fair.

Not that Sonny thought of himself as a gold digger, or not in the usual sense. Oh, he liked the feel of the palace around him, the privileges and accoutrements of empire. But he wanted no
things
. His own body was all he ever desired, the only object worth possessing. Sean Pfeiffer was power rather than gold, a prince on earth with a walled kingdom, and Sonny's perfect match, who wanted out of the world. Sonny had caught Sean at just that moment when all his domain was ashes in his mouth if he couldn't have love.

Sonny knew a terminal romantic when he saw one. Beneath the Neanderthal manner, the drivenness about money, Sean Pfeiffer's heart was shaped exactly like a valentine. Love to him was purely of the body, measured by beauty alone. Sonny would make him fall hard, like an eagle plummeting out of the sky. Tit for tat: his body for a kingdom.

He pulled open the bottom drawer on the right, full of prospectuses and promos. He wasn't looking for anything now, especially not any further clue to how Sean Pfeiffer ticked, since he knew all that already. He flipped through the second-class matter, bored by the very sight of print. Reading had never taught him a thing. Underneath was a black vinyl pouch, about six inches square. Sonny lifted it from the drawer and opened the flap.

It was full of pictures, but even so he wasn't burning curious. He didn't care what the past looked like, or who Sean kept for a keep-sake. Only the deepest distant past had any resonance at all, beyond the reach of any record save what could be carved on a temple wall. But he couldn't not look either, the last blip of the crystal pushing him past his huge indifference to the world of the non-self.

The pictures fluttered out in the palm of his hand, a couple of dozen Polaroids. Men, but not their faces. Crotch shots—flashing their dicks and bound-up balls, bending over to show off their shaved holes, the red welts on their cheeks visible even in the crude half-light of the flash. The final submission being the picture. Sonny went through them one by one, unmoved, unshockable. He only felt a certain weariness to see how rapt Sean Pfeiffer was, how wed to all the ritual. There was nothing here that Sonny hadn't given himself to, one time or another, but it needed an awful lot of heat, and not the manufactured kind he was putting out for Sean.

He flipped one more, and the next was a woman. Finally, something that raised an eyebrow. Christ, he was bi. Sonny nearly laughed, to think there was anything in a man that could still surprise him. An entire series of women, mostly blondes, naked like the men and just as crudely objectified, but no S&M. They were posed modest and girlish, touching their breasts and smiling shyly, knees together. Not carnal at all—in fact, nothing that could be remotely construed as dirty.

Sonny felt an involuntary sneer of contempt, recalling with disdain the string of married men who'd hungered for his ass, all the way back to his bag-boy days in Fresno. They kept their whores and madonnas separate, even as far as separate sexes. After twelve years in the trenches, Sonny still wasn't especially gay, not in the sense of brotherhood, but he was a thousand lifetimes more evolved than those who were neither one thing nor the other.

And then he came to the last picture.

Another blonde, but he knew right off from the prickle of heat that rose up the back of his neck. Anyone else would have said they were all the same, the boys in thrall and the bashful women, but Sonny would have recognized her anywhere, even without the green shock that zigzagged like a lightning bolt across her bangs. Romy. Her cat's eyes were red in the Polaroid glare, but her smile was fixed on him alone, full of the pearls and agates with which she had cast his runes. His key to the XVIIth Dynasty, his window on the journey to his rightful place, commanding the land below the Second Cataract.

Whenever you come to an oasis
, she said,
think of Romy
.

The joy of connection was so intense it almost choked him. He slipped all the pictures back in the pouch and closed the drawer, not even retaining the image of Romy, because he was free of things. He was all power as he rose from the desk and capered across the great hall. His life was his own again, completing the circle at last, his journey to the place he owned in every incarnation. He glided into the bedroom, drunk on the promise of sanctuary. Sean Pfeiffer lay on his back and snored greedily, as certain the world was his as Pharaoh, even in sleep. They would make a great team, he and Sonny, synchronized beyond the zodiac. The Greek would be transient no more.

He floated across to the bathroom to kill the lights and caught his myriad beauty in the mirrors one last time. He stretched his arms over his head, and his eyes went like a laser to the red spot under his arm. Of course it wasn't a birthmark. A month now and it hadn't gone away, and the lymph node under it swollen like a golf ball. The only way out, he'd known all along, was to find again the river and source of his ancient fate. The one thing that would freeze his beauty, aligning himself with a destiny deeper than all the dying men of West Hollywood, wed to a single incarnation.