Venetian Masks Read online

  The ink covered each arm from the wrist all the way up over the roundness of Cleve’s shoulders. The patterns were mostly abstract, some of them twisting around like a dragon’s tail, some spiraling like something from an Escher print. Wavelike designs reminded Jeff of something Japanese, while the rows of arches looked like Venetian windows. Most of the ink was black, but there were spots of bright color as well: an anatomically correct red heart, an orange flame, a green bird, a blue spider. Jeff couldn’t tell whether the tats had been planned all at once or done in bits and pieces, but the designs blended harmoniously, some of the patterns almost seeming to move across Cleve’s skin.

  Jeff didn’t realize he’d moved closer for a better inspection of the art until he discovered Cleve’s arm in his hands. It was warm and smooth, which was slightly jarring—he’d unconsciously expected to be able to feel the ink as well. But when he turned the arm over and stroked the underside of it, he did feel something. Some of the tattoos had been done with scars in mind, not so much disguising them as incorporating them, making them part of the whole. One scar was long and slightly depressed; it ran for nearly the length of Cleve’s forearm. The others were raised lines, much smaller and more numerous. They went crossways.

  “Cleve?” Jeff asked softly.

  At first Cleve didn’t react at all, although his body had stiffened. But then he sighed quietly, gently pulled his arm away, and offered the other. That one had only the crossways scars.

  “Arm got busted pretty bad when I was a kid,” Cleve said in a flat, emotionless tone. “Stepdad. And the others…. I guess I was fourteen, fifteen when I did those.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “You feeling sorry for me?” They were standing so close that every one of Cleve’s words was a puff of breath against Jeff’s face.

  “No. I’m just thinking, the kind of bastards who would do that to their kid…. Fucking monsters.”

  Unexpectedly, Cleve gave him an almost shy smile. “Thanks, baby.”

  Jeff didn’t quite understand what the gratitude was for. He gave in to another impulse, though, taking Cleve’s hands in his, flipping them over, and pressing his lips to the tender insides of his wrists. “I’m glad you survived them.”

  “Me too.”

  Cleve pulled his hands away and then used them to push Jeff back a few feet. Keeping his gaze locked on Jeff’s, he unfastened his own jeans and pushed them down along with his underwear. He stepped gracefully out of the clothing, leaving himself dressed only in a pair of white socks. His cock was already hard, his thigh muscles broad, his legs covered in dark hairs.

  “Is this gonna be a solo show?” he asked, reaching to lightly stroke his thick shaft.

  Jeff lost the ability to speak. Somehow he managed to get out of his own clothes—very quickly and probably tearing them in the process, but who the fuck cared?—and he threw them into the corner of the room. He stood there, as naked as Cleve. More naked, because Jeff had peeled off his socks. And the weight of Cleve’s avid scrutiny made a flush spread over Jeff’s chest and neck and cheeks.

  “Fucking beautiful,” Cleve groaned. He hadn’t stopped the motion of his hand, and as Jeff watched, a single bead of clear fluid appeared at the reddened tip of Cleve’s cock.

  Jeff was not used to this kind of thing. Before Kyle, most of his sex had been quick fucks in dorms or back rooms, the kind where only the minimum amount of clothing was shifted. And with Kyle, well, the lights had been out, the blankets pulled up. They hadn’t looked at each other, hadn’t seen. Hell, maybe that had been their problem all along.

  Cleve was more perfect than any of the pieces of art Jeff had seen in Museo Correr, and far more valuable.

  They moved together, hands brushing lightly against shoulders and sides and flanks, resting briefly on hips before moving to asses. Jeff rubbed his thumbs against Cleve’s nipples, pinched them lightly. Cleve made a long, low sound and drove him back to the bed, toppling him backward, and then straddled him.

  For a long time after that, they teased each other. They licked and stroked, but never quite long enough, never exactly where the other man really wanted it. They writhed, begged inarticulately, knocked all the pillows off the bed. Jeff’s vision only focused as he lay supine on the mattress, Cleve’s knees on either side of Jeff’s shoulders, Cleve’s magnificent ass poised just over his face. The dusky little hole was already slick with saliva, its muscles loose and ready, but still Jeff took his time, watching with fascination as his fingers worked in and out of Cleve’s body. Cleve shuddered and swore when Jeff brushed against his sensitive bundle of nerves, and, too quickly for Jeff to stop him, he twisted around, scooted down, and impaled himself on Jeff’s condom-cloaked cock.

  “Sh-shit!” said Jeff. “So… God, you’re so good!” And Cleve was, rising and falling above him, every line of his body taut, one ripe lip caught between sharp teeth. Jeff allowed his left hand to wander over Cleve’s chest and belly while he used his right to form a tight sheath around Cleve’s cock. And Cleve’s gaze never left Jeff’s face, not for one moment, not even when Cleve jerked and cried out and spurted into Jeff’s hand.

  Jeff’s movements became uncoordinated after that. Cleve was still riding him when he came, and Jeff shouted so loudly all of Venice must have heard.

  Somehow they separated from each other, then discarded the rubber and pulled the pillows back onto the bed. They lay with limbs entwined, too enervated to move. Jeff buried his nose in Cleve’s hair, which somehow remained untousled. “Will you stay tonight? Please?” Jeff whispered.

  After a long silence, Cleve whispered back. “Yeah.”

  THE dream began peacefully enough. Jeff was in the backyard of his Sacramento house, digging a hole so he could have his own Grand Canal. He was using an ordinary shovel. His hands hurt and sweat poured down his face, but he was working hard because if he had a canal, he could become a gondolier, and then he’d be able to afford his mortgage. His only real concern as he worked away was mosquito abatement. He was going to need some sort of mosquito permit from the city.

  But as he tossed another shovelful of dirt to the side and looked down, he realized he had uncovered a corpse. There was nothing left of the body but bones, but he could recognize the person’s identity anyway from the clothes he wore, which were in perfect condition. “Kyle,” he said in his dream. “So that’s what happened to you.” After considering the matter for a few minutes, he decided he wasn’t sad. “It’s all for the best anyway.” He dragged the body out of the hole and tossed it onto the dirt pile, then continued digging.

  He’d worked only a few more minutes when he unearthed another body. But this one sat up and smiled at him. “Thanks, man,” said Cleve, shaking the dirt from his perfect hair. He was naked and had no tattoos at all. He held up his arms so Jeff could see the undersides, and as Jeff watched, bloody slices and gashes healed and disappeared.

  “I survived so far,” Cleve said. He hopped out of the hole on his own and, after glancing at Kyle’s body and shaking his head, waved at Jeff and walked away.

  Jeff wanted to follow him. But his canal wasn’t finished yet, which meant his house was in jeopardy. “Gotta keep working,” he said.

  “Careful!” Cleve shouted from far away. “You never know what you might dig up.”

  Which was true enough, Jeff decided, but he didn’t stop. He did pause, though, just long enough to see his parents and his cousin Ashley and his boss and a bunch of his former friends, all standing on his back porch and watching him. His mother waved and smiled. Jeff ducked his head and plunged the shovel into the ground again.

  Where the edge of the blade entered the dirt, blood began to flow, as if he’d wounded some great beast. “Oh no!” he said as he looked around in panic. He had to refill the hole—and fast!—but his dirt pile had disappeared. The soil crumbled away so that a round red pool formed at his feet. And then, exactly like something from a horror movie, two bodies came bobbing to the surface.

  “Now look
what you did,” said someone on the porch.

  Jeff woke up screaming.

  This time, though, something was grabbing at him, holding him in place. He fought wildly, trying to wrest himself free.

  “Jeff! Jeff! Christ, calm down!”

  After a few more seconds, his brain finally processed the words and recognized the voice, and he remembered where he was and stopped fighting.

  “C-Cleve. Sorry.” He was panting hard.

  Cleve was half on top of him and seemed reluctant to let go of Jeff’s wrists. A small trickle of blood was running from his nose onto his lips. He licked it away.

  “I hurt you!” said Jeff. “Fuck, Cleve, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

  “I know.” He chuckled softly and sat up, straddling Jeff’s hips. He poked gingerly at his nose. “I’ll survive.”

  An awful sound escaped Jeff’s throat, a sort of distressed mewl, and he shuddered beneath Cleve’s weight. “Don’t—I’m sorry. I forgot to take my pills.”

  Cleve frowned at him for a few long moments before dismounting to the floor. “Hang on,” he said and padded out of the room.

  Jeff would have been afraid that Cleve was fleeing—who could blame him?—but his clothing was still in a messy pile on the bedroom floor. Jeff glanced at the bedside clock. It was barely past three. He heard water running briefly and a slight clatter coming from the kitchen. Then Cleve reentered the room with a glass of water in one hand and a can of beer in the other. The blood was gone, Jeff noted with relief.

  “Here,” Cleve said, handing him the glass. Jeff sat up and took a grateful swallow.

  The mattress dipped as Cleve sat next to him. “You don’t have any ice, but I guess this’ll do.” Cleve gave a small grin and held the can against his nose.

  “God, Cleve, I’m really—”

  “Sorry. I know. It’s okay, really.” He put a cold hand on Jeff’s shoulder and squeezed. “Hell of a dream. You have ’em often?”

  “Yeah. I’m supposed to take these sleeping pills. They sort of… mellow things out a little. Kept me from beating the crap out of Kyle in my sleep, anyway.”

  “God, babe. That sucks.” He set the beer can on the nightstand and scooted down on the bed, tugging Jeff down with him. Jeff almost spilled the rest of the water but managed to set it aside. And then, because Cleve seemed to actually be encouraging him to do so, Jeff nestled himself against Cleve’s body, cradling his head between Cleve’s chin and shoulder. Cleve smelled like sex and clean sweat and steak, which was a surprisingly nice combination, and his hands smoothed Jeff’s hair and upper arm. Jeff tried to remember the last time someone had comforted him like this, and couldn’t.

  “What fucked you up so bad?” Cleve asked him quietly. “Not ass hat?”

  “No. This… this predates him.”

  “Was it some guy named… sounded something like Michael, but—”

  “Mikerew,” Jeff interrupted. “Did I shout it out? I probably said Mikerew.”

  “My crew?”

  “Mike-rew,” Jeff sounded out slowly. “It’s a combination of Michael and Andrew. My brothers.”

  Cleve was silent for a while. “Thought you were an only child,” he finally said.

  Jeff didn’t bother to point out the many lies and half-truths that Cleve had given him over the past days. Instead, he swallowed and, because the room was dark and he didn’t have to look in Cleve’s eyes, began a tale he’d told only once before.

  “I was fifteen. I had my learner’s permit and I thought I was really hot shit. And Mikerew—that’s what I used to call them, ’cause they were twins and the name drove them nuts—they were eighteen and freshmen at Berkeley. They had this piece of crap old Mustang that they bought so they could drive home to Sac on weekends. They spent a lot of time fixing it up, but it was still a piece of crap.”

  Cleve was still tenderly stroking him, running fingers through his hair. There was nothing sexual in his touches. Jeff wondered if anyone ever consoled Cleve like that. He continued his story.

  “So it was this beautiful day in October, a Sunday. Mom had an open house—she’s a Realtor—and Dad hadn’t retired yet. He’d just flown out for some meeting in Denver. My brothers were home for the weekend, and I kept whining at them to let me drive their car. But they wouldn’t let me ’cause it wasn’t legal. I was supposed to have someone at least twenty-five with me when I drove.” He remembered how stupid that rule had seemed to him at fifteen, how unfair. He’d passed driver’s ed with flying colors, after all. He knew how to drive.

  “You talk ’em into it?” Cleve asked.

  “After hours of begging, bitching, and groveling. I don’t remember why it was so important to me right then. I mean, I could’ve waited until Mom got home. But I didn’t want to wait.”

  “You were fifteen.”

  “Yeah. Andrew drove us out of the city, out into farmland—I guess so there’d be less chance of a cop seeing us or me running into someone else. When we were out in the middle of nowhere, we switched seats. Mike was in the back. We had the radio on really loud and we were laughing and it was great. I felt like… like I owned the world. I was driving down this road that ran along a levee. Big cloud of dust flying out behind us, but I wasn’t really going that fast. I was a couple miles under the speed limit. Cops even verified that later, from the skid marks I guess.”

  Cleve’s voice was as soft as his touches. “What happened?”

  “Tire blew.” Jeff distinctly remembered the sound of it, the way the steering wheel leapt in his hands and the car took on a life of its own. He remembered the rush of fear that flooded his mind and body. He didn’t remember what he did next. Did he try to fight the skid? Or did he panic completely and let go of the wheel? Didn’t matter much in the end, he supposed. The car flew up and over the dirt embankment. “We ended up in the canal.” He remembered that too—cold water pouring in through the open window, stealing his breath away. Even now, all these years later, the memories made his lungs labor and his throat burn, and it was only Cleve’s continued petting that kept him from breaking down.

  “I got out okay.” He didn’t remember that part at all, although he must have somehow fought free of the seat belt, squeezed through the window, grabbed onto the slippery concrete canal bank, and hauled himself out. “They found Andrew the next day, a couple miles downstream. Drowned. Mike never even made it out of the car. He got too banged up on impact and was probably unconscious the whole time. And I was fine.”

  “Except for fifteen years’ worth of horrible fucking nightmares.”

  “Yeah.” Jeff sighed against Cleve’s shoulder. “Except for that. You know, I kept expecting my parents to blame me, to hate me. But they never did. They never even yelled at me over it, not once.”

  Cleve didn’t say, It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident, which was what Jeff’s parents said, what the rest of the family said, what the shrink said. What Kyle said. Instead, Cleve held him a little more tightly and kissed the top of his head. “Sucks like a motherfucker, baby.” And somehow that comment was exactly right.

  Jeff even managed a weak chuckle in return. “Yeah. It really does.”

  “Fifteen’s a fucked-up age anyway.” Cleve sounded far away. “That’s how old I was the first time I fell for another boy. I’d been kinda fooling around since I was thirteen—even tried girls a couple of times—but then this new kid moved in next door. Tall, blond, seventeen. Trouble. My stepdad caught us making out and he beat the shit out of me.”

  Jeff caught one of Cleve’s arms and traced his finger along the deep scar. “Was that when you got this?”

  “Nah. That time I was eleven and I… fuck, I don’t remember how I pissed him off that time.”

  Cleve hadn’t given Jeff unwanted pity a few minutes earlier, and Jeff didn’t give it back. He kept stroking Cleve’s arm, though, just as Cleve continued to caress Jeff’s.

  “When Mom came home from work, the bastard told her what he saw me doing. ‘Not gonna hav
e no faggot living in my house,’ he said. ‘You a faggot, boy?’ I told him yeah. Mom watched while he grabbed me and fucking threw me out the door. She never said a word.”

  “Did you ever try to… reconcile with them? With her at least?”

  Cleve just laughed bitterly in response.

  After a few minutes, Cleve tipped Jeff’s chin up and kissed him. This kiss was surprisingly sweet and tender, and Jeff was startled by the roughness in Cleve’s voice when he spoke. “Wish I’d had your kind of normal a long time ago, Just Jeff. I wish….” He didn’t finish his thought. Instead he gently pushed Jeff away and got out of bed. “Want your pills now?”

  Jeff didn’t want to end up hitting him again. “Yeah. Please. They’re in the bathroom. I take two.”

  Cleve fetched him the meds and waited as Jeff washed them down with the water that remained in the glass. Then Cleve climbed back into bed, squeezed up against him, and pulled up the covers. As the warm waves of sleep washed over him, Jeff thought he heard Cleve say something, but the words were too muffled by water to understand.

  WHEN Jeff woke up again, he was alone. The other side of the bed was empty, its pillow cold. Bright morning light stole into the room, illuminating a floor free of any clothing but his own. More than that, the entire apartment had that strangely hollow feeling that a place has when nobody else is there. Jeff had become intimately familiar with that sensation.

  He got out of bed and pulled on his discarded boxers, grimacing slightly at the itch of dried lube and semen around his groin. When he entered the kitchen, the scene was pretty much as he expected: his wallet lay on the table, open, emptied of cash and credit card.

  Chapter 9

  FOR a long time, Jeff sat at the kitchen table in his underwear, forehead propped in his palms. He was so busy thinking about what was missing—all his cash, his MasterCard, and Cleve—that it took him a while to notice what wasn’t missing. His debit card and driver’s license were still there. When he got up to check his dresser drawer, he found his passport and spare credit card. All of his other belongings were present and accounted for as well: his iPhone, his Kindle—still on the living room floor after the previous night’s wrestling match—and the Longines watch his parents had bought him for his thirtieth birthday. His laptop was still on the kitchen table.