Adam Haslett - Union Atlantic

“Actually … I know Mr. Fanning. From Finden.”

“From Finden? I see.”

He glanced at his watch, as if recalculating the odds on a particularly complicated bet. Nate understood that he wouldn’t be asked to explain himself any further, and that this was probably a bad thing. “Well,” Mr. Holland said, “I need to see Doug. So if he drops by, maybe you could tell him I’m downstairs.”

He was already back through the door when he turned, as if halted by the belated awareness that their acquaintance required some parting pleasantry. “Anyhow,” he said, “say hello to your parents for me.”

AS THE CAR came to a stop in front of the hotel, Doug’s phone rang.

“Are you in the building yet?” Holland asked.

“Yeah, I’m here. Are we closing the deal with Taconic?”

There was a pause and it sounded as if Jeffrey were holding his hand over the receiver. “So, yeah,” he said. “Good that you’re here. Just sit tight, another forty-five minutes, an hour maybe. I just have to go over a few more things with the lawyers and then we’ll all meet in the ballroom.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing. The deal’s fine. I just want you close at the end, that’s all.”

A liveried bellhop opened the car door and Doug passed through the revolving glass into the lobby. Beyond the elevator bank, to the right of the front desk, two heavyset white guys in navy-blue wind-breakers were talking quietly to the hotel manager. They had wires in their ears and walkie-talkies on their belts. They weren’t secret service and they didn’t look private. FBI, maybe. Definitely federal.

Doug considered walking back onto the sidewalk and hailing a cab. But if they were here for him, how far would he get? Not today or tomorrow, but next week or next month? He would need time to arrange things, on his terms.

As soon as he entered the room upstairs, Nate came up off the bed, all eagerness and alarm.

“I kept trying your phone,” he said. “I didn’t know where you were.”

Doug tossed his briefcase on the couch and crossed to the window. Nothing unusual down on the street. No squad cars or agents. He regretted now having let Nate come here but when he’d told him he would be staying in the city for a while, he’d practically begged. He had arrived with a suitcase and a bag of books, as if they were on vacation together.

As a practical matter, Nate had been expendable as soon as he’d delivered the files back in July. And yet in the months since they had spent as much time together as ever. Doug had kept telling himself that getting off helped him sleep. That Nate was just experimenting, and he was just killing time. But the more he used the boy’s body, the more frustrated he’d become.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“Why? Is something the matter?”

The collar of his faded blue polo was tucked under on one side and his hair, as usual, was a mess.

“What did you do?” Doug said, sliding his thumb down Nate’s smooth cheek. “Shave?”

“Yeah. You think I’m too scruffy. It’s my Ritz-Carlton look.”

He took hold of Doug’s hand and guided it down to his hip. “You look good in that suit,” he said, stepping in close, their faces just a few inches apart.

His gall rising, Doug turned Nate around and pushed him forward onto the bed.

“After this,” he said, “you’re leaving. You understand?”

When Nate had removed his shirt and jeans, he rolled onto his back.

“What are you doing?”

“I never get to look at you,” Nate said.

Doug grabbed him by the backs of the knees and pressed his thighs to his chest, bending him open. Holding him down like that, he fiddled with his own belt and trousers, amazed and repulsed by the endlessness of the boy’s need. He spit in his hand and entered him with a single jab. Nate winced, his eyes watering, but Doug kept going. This was the thing — why he had kept him around. To tackle a male body, one like his own boyish self, to push it and get at it, his dick and this fucking just a means to the end. To fuck weakness, to pummel it.

Even as he seemed about to cry, Nate kept his eyes open, staring straight at him. Doug reached his hand down to cover the eyes, but with surprising force Nate peeled the hand back and kept looking. It was unbearable. He jabbed harder, pushing air from Nate’s lungs, forcing him to gasp for breath. And still he wouldn’t look away. A surge of nausea rose up through Doug’s body as he hovered over him, threatening to drain all his energy, making him wish for a moment that those eyes were the barrels of guns that would finish him here and now. But time kept on and he was sweating and Nate came on his chest and stomach and Doug emptied himself into him and pulled out. And then Nate, spread-eagled on the bed, arms out to the sides, looked once again as he had before, like a lamed foal awaiting its owner’s merciful bullet.

Doug wiped himself off and pulled his trousers up, watching Nate rise from the bed and disappear into the bathroom. The ringing of the shower water blended with the ringing of his phone, which he ignored.

Nate was quiet when he returned, dressing with his back to Doug, who flipped on the TV in search of news.

A few minutes later, from over his shoulder, Doug heard him say, “I got you something.”

“What do you mean?”

“A present.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know. I felt like it.” Coming around to Doug’s side, he handed him a small wrapped box. Doug removed the gold ribbon and tore away the paper. Inside the case was a pair of black-and-silver cuff links.

“You’ve got all those cuff shirts. But you always wear the same links.”

Doug closed the case and put it aside.

“This game,” he said, “it’s over.”

“It’s not a game to me.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re a kid. You think that what you feel matters.”

“It does.”

“I’m doing you a favor. You can’t see it now, but I am. You want to be defenseless all your life? You want to be the chump? You like sleeping with guys — fine. But take your heart off your fucking sleeve.”

Standing up, Doug grabbed his jacket and briefcase from the couch and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

At the entrance to the ballroom, a security guard asked him for ID.

“You’re not press, right? There’s no press allowed.”

Teams of lawyers were arrayed around an enormous oblong table, their seconds seated behind them like congressional aides. The young associates whispered in their bosses’ ears, as a guy in suspenders at the head of the table read aloud from a paragraph of the contract projected on a screen behind him.

Save for occasional naps on their hotel beds, the lawyers had been in this room for three days straight, fighting over the details of the acquisition, down to the last indemnification.

At a desk in the far corner of the room, Holland’s secretary, Martha, was typing furiously on her laptop.

“Where’s Jeffrey?” he asked her.

“Doug,” she said, seemingly alarmed by his appearance. She pointed to her right. “It’s the second door down. Good luck.”

Another security guard, this one a man Doug recognized from the office, opened the door for him and he entered the windowless antechamber. The two men from the lobby, still wearing their blue windbreakers, sat on folding metal chairs. They stood as he entered; he heard the door close behind him.

“Douglas Fanning?” the older of the two asked, as his partner removed a pair of handcuffs from his belt.

“Yeah,” Doug said. “That’s me.”

Across from Henry, Holland rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward, interlacing his meaty fingers, the extra flesh of his neck pinched by his shirt collar.