David Levien - City of the Sun

“You don ’ t put your gun up proper one motherfucking day, your lockbox isn ’ t closed tight, or your boy ’ s watched you open it one too many times and knows how to do it, and that ’ s what you motherfucking get.” Behr reached for his drink. They both saw the tremor in his hand then, and Behr pulled it back and put it under the table. “He was in a coma for three weeks before he died. Three goddamned weeks.” Horrible images played in his mind while he fought his uneven breathing.

“It would ’ ve ended quick with this.” He placed a hand, now stable, he thought, onto the tabletop. Beneath it was the black silhouette of his gun, the Bulldog. 44. “In case of accident, or if you have to use it, you don ’ t want there to be any question. That ’ s my takeaway. How ’ s that for stupid?” Behr made the gun disappear and then his tequila. He tapped his wristwatch, a stainless steel Omega Speedmaster. “So this is the sum total of my family. Wife gave it to me for our fifth anniversary. It ’ s all that ’ s left. Guess it was better made.” There was a mad look on his face that he could feel and was sure Paul could see.

“Ah, Frank,” Paul said, unable to offer anything else.

“I ’ m drunk enough.” Behr stood.

The night was dark black. Whatever streetlamps there were in the town must have been uniformly broken or extinguished at a set time, as none of them threw any light. They made their way intuitively back toward their motel, turning down one street, rethinking it, turning back and going down another. They rounded a corner and walked along a long chain-link fence that surrounded a used-car lot they recognized from earlier in the day. Suddenly, a blur of black fur and white gnashing teeth came smashing against the fence. A pair of yellow-eyed guard dogs, growling low and throaty, had come out of the darkness and went after Behr and Paul. The animals bounced off the fence, only to lunge again. Paul had jumped back out of instinct while Behr had turned to face them. He hooked his fingers through the fence and let out a growl of his own, which was lower and more menacing than what the dogs had mustered. Behr ’ s hands on the fence gave the dogs ample opportunity to snap at him, but instead the dogs shrank back. They shimmied down on front paws and tried to put up another wall of growls. Behr began barking at them. He sounded like a deranged human mastiff. Paul stepped up next to him and grabbed the fence. He started barking, too, his sounding like a frenzied hyena ’ s. The real dogs, fear-ridden and confused, let out squeals and disappeared back into the darkness of the lot.

After their fingers had gone white from gripping, Behr let go of the fence and started laughing. Then Paul started in laughing, too. It came in waves. They snorted and howled, doubling over at the waist. Eventually whatever was funny about it petered out and there was only silence. They straightened and headed back to the motel, where sleep awaited, black and dreamless.

Don Ramon Ponceterra took lunch alone on his tiled veranda, the quiet bubbling of a small fountain and the occasional bird the only accompaniments to his meal. The camarones had been excellent, and as he forked sliced mango into his mouth, he considered the liver spots on the backs of his hands. When fall came Don Ramon would turn seventy years old, and while most of his contemporaries had gone fat and sedentary and bald, he was still slender and vigorous and had a fine head of silver hair. It was only the cursed spots on the backs of his hands, thickening into a brown pattern like the belly of a brook trout, which reminded him of his years. The sight disturbed him and conjured visions of the dark labyrinths of oblivion that awaited him if he did not act.

In his life as a businessman he had made countless acquaintances. He had known landowners, merchants, traders, manufacturers, cattlemen, and the like, and each group thought Don Ramon a mere entrepreneur like them. Until he was in his midforties, that perception was entirely accurate. He was financially well off and scrupulously polite; an immaculate dresser; he had daughters and a son; he owned land, donated to the church, and was a sponsor of the fiesta.

But then the change came, his awakening. It coincided with his rereading of the classics and coming across the concept of the “philosopher-king,” as Socrates had put it. While that term was a bit grandiose for a modest man such as himself, Don Ramon recognized the truth in it. He discovered that a man could live his life by the highest precepts, even if a deteriorated society could not grasp them. Now, very few in the world truly knew him or understood how he remained so youthful in aspect. It was this secret of his that drew his thoughts to the rubio.

Many potros had come to him over the years. It would be impossible to remember all the boys. For most, the brevity of their stay, and their inevitably failing health, made a lasting relationship unlikely. It was quite sad. Still, there had been three who had become truly important to him. They had gone from the occupation of a few weeks to that of a few months to several years. Those three alone had had the potential to become true acolytes. As the ancient Greeks knew, the intellectual intercourse between learned men and the young boys in their charge, and the physical consummation of said relationships, was superior to any other bond. While many men thought women and the offspring they bore were the path to immortality, Don Ramon knew that the vitality that sprang from his mentorships was the true road.

But those three opportunities had passed bitterly. One of the catamites had perished by his own hand. Even now Don Ramon could remember the pale morning light in the room when he discovered the young man hanging by his bed sheet. The second, regrettably, had been a disciplinary accident. And the third, perhaps the most regrettable of all, had merely disappeared, escaping into the wind, never to be heard from again. He had probably perished in the desert. The distress these endings caused Don Ramon had almost been enough to discourage any further attachments. But then he felt the march of time and the cobwebbed fingers of death reaching out for him, and he knew that he needed to continue. The call to become the evolved, the truly Platonic man, would not quiet within him.

So a few years back he had begun the lengthy search for the next in a line of magical consorts who would keep him forever beyond the grave. Despite the establishment of a complex infrastructure (for the truth was that his gift in the organization of businesses was real, and even in this, a profit-generating enterprise was of paramount importance), and despite the dozens of spiders he had crawling all over the earth on his behalf, each working with great energy to bring him the special individual he sought, he had nearly given up hope of finding him. That is, until the rubio had been delivered unto him.

Don Ramon sipped his rioja. It was a bit sharp. He didn ’ t prefer his wines so young. Though he didn ’ t know the rubio ’ s name, as he never learned their names, and he didn ’ t know where he was from, that information did not matter to him, either. He only knew that this one glowed. Some might have suggested that Don Ramon was blinded by the fair hair and fair complexion, but that was foolishness, the kind of superficial assumption that an uncomprehending world was all too happy to make. It was another, inner quality that this one possessed. Don Ramon had spent long hours sitting in the dark with the rubio. Conversation was difficult due to their languages, but beyond that, words were wholly beside the point. There was an aura one could feel from another that told the whole story. In this case the tale was one of eternity. Even when sitting in the same room, simply sharing the same air, he could feel the rubio ’ s healing youth. Remaining chances were few, though. This time there could be no mistake. And so Don Ramon had been exceedingly cautious with him, saving him, waiting for the sign of acquiescence that would signal the beginning of the physical union that would heal him. It had been many months and he didn ’ t know how much longer he could wait. He had turned to several of the others for relief of his corporeal urges, and as always that had left him feeling incredibly youthful and vigorous, yet disgusted. He hadn ’ t wanted to spoil the rubio with that. No, with the rubio he needed nothing less than complete acceptance. If he could achieve this, Don Ramon felt he could truly live forever.