God's eye view
By: Chris EiseleJuly 23, 2008
Looking down from on high, it becomes obvious.
The City is a looker, measuring a sultry 39-31-38 by a leggy 119-49-19, and lays with arms thrown joyously upward over a head tilting slightly back in exultation. The legs slip a demure toe into the water on one side while spreading wide to the mountains on the other, a burlesque invite to tourists. Long ago, she swallowed the outlaying collections of homes like so many slices of cake, and while her top and thighs may be stacked, her center still is a lean, river-belted girdle, shoving the dense population up or down as chance and good breeding allows.
She may not work the same corner of the street as her over-played, opulent Showgirl of a neighbor who laid in splayed, decadent and hedonistic glory just a touch south, but she was still a whore. The City had sold her soul to men years ago—first for gold, then silver, then convenient travel by rail. When she opened her slots and bled cash from the Wheat, she became an accomplished grifter as well as golddigger. The final trick she pulled was to open her purse and stuff everything that comprised modern convenience inside and issue bills of lading to all who wanted to reach a hand in.
And behind every transaction, every roll in the shade, every handshake and smile she gave, like a pimp with a golden smirk, was Mr. Lake. The first Mr. Lake had owned the hotel, restaurant, stable and most importantly, the bridge. His was the hand that had to rise to allow goods and services to flow from her head to her feet and beyond. Not ones to suffer any competition, there had been and always would be a Mr. Lake who sat astride the city holding court with the various elements of business that had developed and that the Lakes involved themselves with since the city had been a mere babe in the woods. From Lake Mansion bred power, money and influence.
Deep in the viscera of the City lays the District, half a dozen or so blocks loosely held as the home of the alternative lifestyles set—the hipsters, the homosexuals, the wanna-be anarchist hippies. It is a collective of shared security, a ghetto without walls, and the one, lone bastion of deviance against an otherwise white, middle-class, middle-age, husband-wife-and-two-kids mediocrity. The District is a place to party hard, sleep late, and never worry about tomorrow.
That the Lake family Mansion bordered on the edge of the District is not lost on the inhabitants of either enclave. Over the years, a silent cease-fire has developed, with both sides refusing to engage the other in any sort of provocation, pretending largely that they mutually don’t exist.
However, like dice in the City, even the surest of bets often come out craps.
***
Gavin Lake sat alone in the VIP section of Top Tea, the nightclub partial to this season’s glitterati and low-tier gays alike. The VIP section was an indulgent mix of bottle-service, leather booths and lax smoking laws. His cigarette was sending unused curls of smoke into the air. The glass in his hand was a smooth brown of scotch interrupted only by the hazy cubes of ice clinking inside. His clothing defined “club indulgent” with a dark-grey tailored suit over a crimson shirt, worn open-buttoned and without a tie. His aviator glasses were down over his eyes, protecting him from overhead lights and probing looks. His trademark smirk snuck its way onto his face when he looked down at the dance floor.
On the floor, a press of bodies surrounded Jake Summers and Tyler Williams. It was their first time at Top Tea since the attack two months ago and they were enjoying a bit of local celebrity as their friends all welcomed them back. They were dressed for the club as well, with Jake wearing a pair of distressed jeans and a T-shirt with the phrase “USDA Choice” blazoned across it while Tyler wore a tight polo and a baggy pair of skater-length shorts that hit him at mid-calf. With manicured nails, hair and smiles, they sparkled from within the group surrounding them. With a smile and a nod, Jake indicated to Tyler that they should head to the bar and get a drink.
At the Top Tea bar, Adriana Fiorelli was throwing her head back and laughing at something Kate LeBlanc had just pointed out. While the music was far too loud and covered up the joke, Kate’s wicked grin and point at a nearby baby-dyke in a ratty wife-beater and jeans with a shaved head implied volumes. The ladies had decided that their couture of this evening would be on the high side of sensual. Adriana was wearing her black jacket with tails along with black slacks, though this time she’d eschewed the need for a shirt and was counting on the adherence of tape to ensure her modesty. Kate was wearing a pair of pin-striped black trousers with a set of suspenders over her black “FAQ” tank-top. They had both decided to sport rock-star kohl on their eyes making Kate seem goth-chic and Adriana a sumptuous exotic challenge. Adriana’s iPhone vibrated on the bar and her face fell from humor to simmering anger as she read the message.
Blocks away from Top Tea, the flying fingers of one of Adriana’s sister soldiers was sending her a semi-live report of a police arrest of the group she and Kate had started in order to patrol the streets of the District and prevent any more assaults from happening. It was a dedicated group of thirty young women who wore walkie-talkies on their hips and used their phones with crack efficiency in tipping the police off to potential threats. Apparently though, the criminals were catching wise and starting to fight back. Luckily, The Antianeira, as they called themselves, were more than capable of defending themselves. Working in teams of two, they watched each other’s backs and the streets. When one got in trouble, sending a message to Adriana was standard protocol.
Back at Top Tea, Adriana busied herself with sending off a notice to go politely with the police and remain silent and to demand a lawyer—also protocol—and then sighed. Kate noticed the change in her lover and waited until just the right moment to shake an empty shot glass at the bartender and slide in for a kiss from Adriana while she waited for her drink. The pair had the night off, and Kate was damned if she’d let something like the arrest of a fellow Valkyrie interrupt it. Adriana agreed, and to prove it broke the embrace only when Kate’s drink had started to sweat condensation from the heat in the club.
The phone in Gavin’s coat pocket started vibrating. After a moment, he tore his eyes away from Jake dancing on the floor and looked at the caller-ID. With a scowl, he pressed the “Ignore” button. He poured some more liquor into his glass from the bottle on the table and took a sip. When his phone vibrated a second time in as many minutes, and from the same number, he paused and remembered to smile before he answered. A few moments later, he flicked his phone shut with an air of annoyance, shot back the rest of the drink, and poured another without a wince. His phone vibrated in vain on the table in front of him as he settled himself into the shadows of the seat, the glasses hiding his glittering glare. After another moment, Gavin grabbed his phone with a quick lunge and keyed in a number.
Margo Lake slammed the phone back into the receiver after letting the connection on the other end ring for almost a full minute. Suddenly the trappings of wealth she had carefully amassed and arranged inside the Mansion looked like a gaudy, over-wrought circus of the rich at risk due to the whims of a petulant, pickled punk. With a shift of her narrowing eyes, she looked to the silvery-haired gentleman who was standing on the other side of the desk and gave him the slightest tilt of a nod. Edward Hobbs bowed and left the room silently, drawing the phone from his coat like a sword from a sheathe as he did so.
Down on the streets of the District, a man known as Johnstone was laughing slightly to himself as he watched the police responding to the disturbance Adriana’s team had involved themselves with. He was standing, ironically, in an alleyway he’d launched an assault from two months earlier. Suddenly, the phone he’d been given chirped. He sank deeper into the alleyway and answered the call. When he stepped out a few minutes later, his stride was brisk and businesslike.
Crossing the same few blocks he had used prior caused Johnstone to lament the stupidity of the idle rich—what if there was a witness whose memory would be suddenly jogged? However, as he arrived in the pool of light, the long black car pulled up right on cue. He didn’t say a word as the back window lowered a fraction and a thick envelope issued from within. He flicked a wicked-looking knife from his pocket as the car rolled away and slit the throat of the envelope. Inside was a list of names, a schedule and a smaller envelope thick with non-sequential hundred-dollar bills. With a slim, mean smile, Johnstone went to work. He spun on his heel and vanished into the alleyway shadows, the phone he’d started dialing on illuminating his face with a sick, green glow.
Back at the bar at Top Tea, Adriana smiled at Kate until a couple of young men newly arriving at the bar caused her eyes to slide away from their contemplation of Kate. With a shock and a start, her mouth dropped open. She turned back to Kate and crooked a nod in the direction of the couple and stepped away from her barstool. As she crossed toward the pair with Kate in tow, the brown-haired one fished his cell phone from a pocket, and then got an annoyed, confused look, shaking his head dismissively before returning it.
***
“Excuse me,” said a female voice colored in tones of smooth whiskey.
Jake had heard the voice before, but couldn’t place it. It was vaguely familiar, yet strangely distant, as if his memory refused to place it. However, the reaction he and Tyler had received since their arrival back at Top Tea meant there would be more than a few chance encounters tonight. The fact that this one appeared to be with a woman was a slight surprise.
Jake turned toward the voice and abruptly froze. His drink slipped from his fingers and slopped noisily on the bar. Tyler saw the reaction and looked at the woman who had caused Jake’s shock, a glare of menacing warning on his brow and a quick dismissal on his tongue.
Kate saw Tyler assume what she liked to call “Boy Puff” and stepped around Adriana while assuming what she termed a “Deep Fuck-Off Vibe.” However, before either of the two of them could let slip the dogs of homosexual internecine warfare, Jake and Adriana reined them in with a word.
“Kate,” said Adriana sharply.
“Tyler,” said Jake simultaneously.
Both guard dogs pulled up short and turned toward their partners with an inquisitive tilt of the head.
Adriana moved first.
“It is you,” said Adriana. “I’m glad you are okay.”
“How do I know you?” asked Jake. “It’s all hazy.”
“The last time I saw you,” replied Adriana, “I was in a red dress, and you both were semi-conscious.”
Jake blinked in shock and fell silent. Tyler and Kate, however, had had enough of the oblique references.
“What the hell is going on?” demanded Tyler.
“That’s what I want to know,” chimed Kate.
“You wouldn’t remember, Tyler,” Jake said, his voice just barely audible above the club’s thumping music, “you were out cold. I felt something hit me, and everything got watery…then I saw you, and there was a shadow…you were talking to it…and it hit you…you went down. Then the shadow vanished,” he pointed to Adriana, “and she was there…only it was all red and sparkly around her.”
“Those were the sequins,” Adriana said gently.
“I thought you were a dream,” said Jake.
“Nope,” said Kate busting in, now that she’d figured it all out, “just an angel. You two must be the guys whose lives she saved.”
“I’m Jake,” said Jake, “and thank you.”
“Tyler,” said Tyler. “Thanks.”
“I’m Adriana,” said Adriana, “and this is my girlfriend, Kate.”
The boys didn’t know what to say, but Kate was far too entertained to not keep the moment happy, so with a cheerful wave of her hand, she summoned over the bartender and then leaned over toward Tyler.
“I hope your boy can hold his liquor better than that,” she said with a conspiratorial grin and a nod at the mess at the rail, “because I think you two have some welcome-back-to-life drinking to do. What’ll it be?”
“Vodka-cran?” said Tyler.
Kate gave him an artfully disappointed raise of the eyebrow until he relented.
“Whiskey,” he said.
“Damn straight,” said Kate.
“Not if I can help it,” said Tyler.
The pair burst into laughter. Jake rolled his eyes. Adriana gave a sly smirk at Jake and leaned toward him.
“I love it when children play together well,” she said, “don’t you?”
“Seriously, thanks,” said Jake in a voice that made Adriana’s smirk vanish.
“Don’t mention it,” she said.
Jake opened his mouth to protest but Adriana raised a finger.
“I mean it, Jake,” said Adriana, “just for one night, enjoy what it’s like to be alive, to be here. Worry about the hangover and the rest tomorrow. Now what will you have to drink?”
“He’ll have a shot of whiskey with me if he knows what’s good for him!” shouted an exuberant Tyler as he turned to give a shot to Jake. Kate handed a shot to Adriana and then held her own out to the center of the group. As the three other shots joined Kate’s in the center, it was Adriana who assumed the mantle of toast-mistress.
“La morte mi troverà vivo,” said Adriana with a wicked grin.
Jake and Tyler were confused for a second until Kate translated with a chuckle.
“It means,” said Kate, “’Death will find me alive.’ I’ll drink to that!”
Tyler smiled and clinked his shotglass. “Cheers!” he said.
The shots vanished as each of them drank them back in their preferred fashion—Tyler and Kate flung theirs back and smiled at the burn, Jake winced after shooting his and Adriana drained hers without making the slightest change in expression.
“I think,” said Tyler feeling the sense of buzzing energy radiating from their little group, “that I am going to get drunk with a pair of beautiful women tonight.”
“Yeah,” said Kate with a smirking leer, “shame we’re already taken!”
“Good thing I’m already taken too!” said Tyler as he threw an arm around Jake’s shoulders and swooped in for a kiss.
Jake only resisted for a moment, his mind swimming with the memory of the assault, the image of Adriana, the whiskey and the feeling of Tyler’s lips lightly brushing against his. The thoughts pressed in on him from all angles, waging a war from behind his eyes. Finally, the internal battle vanished as Tyler kissed him into the moment. Jake tasted the slight sweetness of the shot on Tyler’s lips, the lightest lingering of tobacco from the cigarette Tyler had smoked before they came into Top Tea.
Jake felt the heat around him rise as he and Tyler continued the embrace. They held the kiss until it risked crossing into being an embarrassing public display of affection and then threw caution and social ramifications aside and plunged headlong into the terrain of joyous celebration of each other. Jake’s heart was pounding in time to the music, his whole attention focused on the kiss, when a whistle shattered his focus, moment, and embrace with Tyler.
“Get a room!” shouted Kate, sending another whistle into the air.
“Shut up, Kate,” said Adriana, “use those lips for a better purpose. Kiss me like that.”
Kate looked at Adriana’s eyes, mysteriously smoking and intense and felt her own temperature rise. When Adriana slowly smiled a wicked grin and licked a lip, Kate felt her heart slamming against her breast. Hanging from the precipice, Kate shot a smirk at Tyler.
“Be a good boy and get us another round of drinks?” Kate said. “No hurry though, I plan on being occupied for a little while.”
Tyler signaled the bar; Jake laughed in relaxed enjoyment. The girls shared a kiss until the next round came.
***
Gavin snapped his phone shut and slapped it on the table. Giving a glare at the foursome at the bar rail beneath him, he proved that looks, no matter how well aimed, could never kill. Otherwise, the girls would have been corpses and Tyler a smear on the long, black bar. It was Jake’s phone, however, that would have melted to component atoms on the spot due to the intensity of Gavin’s stare.
“Check your fucking messages, idiot,” said Gavin quietly.
***
Jake had felt the phone vibrate for the last five times it had rang. Each time it was the same number, Gavin. After Gavin had given up on calling, the texts had almost filled his cell to capacity. Finally giving in to temptation, Jake broke his embrace with Tyler by angling him toward the bar. With a sly motion, he tilted his phone to check the texting records and flicked it back into his pocket.
“Ty, babe,” said Jake in a feigned, slightly drunken slur, “we should get going.”
“Put the spurs to him, Doc!” shouted Kate before planting a buzzed kiss on Adriana’s cheek.
Adriana raised a clinical eyebrow while Kate winked. With a flick of the wrist, Adriana produced a white business card.
“Call us if there is any trouble,” she said.
Jake collected an honestly, happily drunk Tyler and headed toward the door.
***
“Finally,” said Gavin. He smoothly rose to his feet, snagging his phone as he did so. He tucked it back into his coat pocket, flicked a tip from his wallet onto the table and grabbed the bottle of scotch. He turned toward the VIP door, discretely placing the bottle inside his coat as he did so.
***
From all corners of the District they came. With grim intent, the four of them each arrived by different means, and none on horseback. However, for the oblivious revelers in The District, the effect would be the same.
They had been selected—chosen—from the murky depths of the City underground and placed specifically on a chess board larger and more intricate than they cared, or needed to ever know. There was no need for a spear to know why it was thrust--only that the heart was there, it was here and the motion required was that way.
They met in the virtual space of a silent conference call, and had no idea what each other looked like. Weeks prior, they’d been assigned their targets and had tailed their victims to ground in anticipation of the voice that would set them free to unleash their rage. As one, they paused their racing thoughts at the gate and listened with feral intensity for the word.
“Go,” said Johnstone over the conference call.
***
It was a scene that was planned to repeat exactly five times that night:
A gay couple, the targets, would leave a bar or a nightclub, or even step outside their doorway into the calm, cool evening. Seconds later, a silent shadow of a man wielding a pipe wrapped in thick leather would descend on the pair. The conflict would be swift, efficient, and provided no one interrupted, deadly.
In four attempts, the targets were executed perfectly.
***
Johnstone hefted the pipe from deep within the alleyway and smiled the grin of a waiting tiger. His targets were going to leave the damn homo club soon and had to walk right in front of the alleyway in order to walk home. He’d chosen this precise spot to intercept them, though he’d been leery of the repetition.
Johnstone hated repeating himself.
“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath, “Fuck. Fucking leave, you fucking faggots.”
However, he hated waiting more.
In the way of time for hunters, seconds and minutes stretched as the adrenaline of the moment hit Johnstone’s system. His body feasted on the banquet of performance enhancing hormone. His pupils dilated, pulling the shadows around him into sharper relief until the exit of the alleyway was a golden doorway. His heart began to thump and pound in his chest. His face lost color as the blood redirected toward the primal systems of muscle, bone and sinew. His frame ached for the release of movement, but his suddenly placid mind reigned in the flowing deadly potential of his body.
He became a statue cast in quicksilver, barely restrained.
Suddenly, the golden doorway in front of him was interrupted as the targets swept across it on their way down the inevitable path. Johnstone tightened his grip on the pipe and flowed like a panther from the shadows toward the golden doorway.
***
Jake’s senses were firing off a mass of information, and none of it was good.
Here Jake was, on a street in the District, walking at night under streetlights. His lover was at his side, and though both had been drinking, Tyler was drunker than he was, thanks to Kate’s enthusiasm. There were alleyways on their right causing terrifying memories to rise from the shadows as they passed.
Each alleyway was a yawning black abyss waiting to vomit forth the same horrifying creature that still dogged his nightmares. It would be a tall, black thing, with an evil rasping chuckle that came from a monstrous Cheshire grin that caught the moonlight and glowed incandescent. Around it, the shadows would dance away, afraid to even associate with something so wrong. Its claws would be wrapping themselves around a long, black shape of a weapon that was, to Jake, a creation forged of darkness and hate. Jake felt the drip at the back of his neck as he broke out in perspiration.
Forcing the memories and fears away, Jake clutched tighter to his drunken boyfriend and bravely walked up the street. After a few blocks, the feeling of overwhelming dread lessened and Jake gave a sigh of relief as he shouldered Tyler into the archway leading into their apartment building and reached a hand hastily in his pocket to grab his keys.
Tyler mumbled semi-incoherently as the door clicked open. Jake could tell his boyfriend was at the intersection of drunk and unconscious, so he pulled him close and pushed the door open with his hip. Tyler managed to rouse himself enough to give a drunken grin and plant a happy kiss somewhere near Jake’s ear.
“You’re hot,” said Tyler, his voice a drunken smear. “I love you, Jakie.”
“Thanks, Ty,” said Jake as the door clicked shut behind them. “I love you too, drunkie.”
They hit the stairs as Tyler scoffed. “I’m not drunk,” he said, throwing an arm wildly, “I’m fantastic!”
With the doorway to their apartment finally sealed shut and locked, Jake exhaled. Then he sat down on the couch and cried silently, so as not to wake Tyler who lay unconscious in a nearby chair.
***
Back in the alleyway, Johnstone’s glare seethed in quiet rage at the calm eyes glinting opposite him. The eyes were connected to a bright smile that lived in a face even Johnstone had to admit was attractive—though he’d never do anything with a fag, he promised himself. The shadows swallowed the rest of the person opposite him, saving the bar of light that clearly illuminated the arm connected to the hand holding the jagged edge of a shattered scotch bottle just under his chin.
As Johnstone tore his eyes away from the pair opposite him, the bottle glinted slightly in the light when the arm shook it slightly. He could almost feel the first bite of glass on the skin of his throat, so he decided his options were as slim as the distance between the night air and his jugular vein. As the person on the other end of the bottle paused, Johnstone’s face fell into a confused frown.
“Whatever she’s paying you,” said Gavin, “I’ll triple it, on one condition.”
“What is that?” asked Johnstone, deciding that the time for pretending innocence was over.
“Tell the people you are working with to stop—and then disappear, forever.”
Johnstone appeared to think it over. Regardless of the delivery method, it was a good deal. That amount of money, properly spent, could arrange for him to set up shop in a new city—maybe even start a little organization of his own. There was only one problem.
“Can’t do it, kid,” said Johnstone, “it’s too late to call them off.”
“Then it’s too late for you,” said Gavin. He pressed the broken bottle into Johnstone’s neck until it drew a drop of blood.
“You think you can just kill me,” said Johnstone, an edge of panic dripping into his voice, “just like that?”
***
Gavin stepped from the alleyway and lit a cigarette from a silver case he retrieved from his coat. He inhaled slowly, and then exhaled in a controlled motion, letting the tension wash over and out of him. After a moment, it was gone and only Gavin remained. Then, with a smooth, calm step, he walked up the street toward his waiting black Audi.
His phone in his hand, he keyed in a number and waited for it to connect. He spent several moments talking to the person on the other end before remote-starting his car and settling into the driver’s seat with a fluid motion.
He slowly pulled away into the night, throwing the leather-wrapped pipe on the seat next to him.
---
©2008 by Chris Eisele, all rights reserved. Used with permission by yourgayreno.com
Coming up in Episode Nine: Everything’s coming up roses.
