Rupert Thomson - The Five Gates of Hell

Reid leaned over and placed a white capsule beside Nathan’s champagne glass. ‘That’s for you.’

‘What is it?’ Nathan asked.

‘It’ll make you feel good.’

Nathan hesitated.

‘What’s the matter?’ Reid said. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

Nathan smiled. ‘I don’t know you. Why should I trust you?’

‘You’re here. You might as well.’ Reid leaned forwards, opened his capsule and tipped the contents into his champagne. He raised his glass to Nathan and drank the champagne down. He poured a little more champagne into his glass, swirled it round. He drank that too.

Nathan nodded. ‘You’re right.’ He did exactly what Reid had done. ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

Reid showed him.

When he switched the light on, it multiplied. There were mirrors everywhere. He could see himself from every side at once. If he stood in a certain position he could see clones of himself vanishing into misty green infinity. He felt an excitement building in him now. He’d been in this situation before, in the water. Sometimes you got taken by a current, a rip that ran at an angle to the beach. You didn’t fight the current, you went with it. You went with it, waited for a wave and then, when the wave came, you took it. You rode that wave right out. Out of the current, back to the shore. He’d done this kind of thing before. He could relax.

When he walked back into the room he was smiling. Reid was smiling too, his head resting against the back of the sofa, his face almost parallel with the ceiling. Smiling with lips that even now, somehow, Nathan knew he’d kiss. He sat down. The champagne had risen in his glass. He drank some.

‘You all right?’ Reid asked him.

Nathan sat down. ‘I’m better than all right.’

‘Is there anything you want to know?’

It was a strange question. Nathan couldn’t think. He looked at the man on the sofa instead. His hair, his tie, his smile, his suit, his gloves. ‘Those gloves,’ he said. ‘Are you trying to hide something?’

‘Not hide,’ Reid said, ‘protect.’

‘Protect?’

Reid rose to his feet, moved towards the drinks cabinet. ‘I’m a hand model. I have to protect my hands. And also,’ and he smiled, ‘I like the way things feel when they’re on.’

‘Things?’

‘Yes,’ Reid said, ‘things.’

He opened another bottle of champagne and brought it to the table. ‘You’ve probably seen my hands a hundred times without even knowing it. Holding an electric razor, lighting a cigarette, slipping a diamond ring on to a woman’s finger.’ His smile widened. ‘Nobody sees my hands,’ he said, ‘except the general public.’

Nathan was about to return the smile when something happened to the wall. It bulged as if it was only paper-thin and there was a great weight of water behind it. Or not water, maybe, but a heart. Because the wall was moving in and out. Some kind of massive heart sluggishly beating. Then darkness poured inwards from the corners of the room, until only he was lit, nothing else. ‘It’s dark,’ he said, ‘it’s getting dark.’

‘Don’t worry,’ came a voice, ‘it’ll soon be light again.’

And instantly the darkness began to lift. He could see the sofa again, his glass on the table, the man across the room. It was as if the voice had worked a miracle.

‘That was really strange,’ he said.

‘What was?’

‘The way you said that, and then it happened. That’s what I do when I save lives. Someone’s drowning and I swim out to them and I say, “Don’t worry, I’m here, you might drink a bit of water, but you’re going to be all right.” That’s sort of what you just did to me.’

‘I’m surprised the parlours haven’t made that illegal,’ Reid said.

‘What, lifesaving?’

Reid smiled. ‘It’s not exactly in their interests, is it?’

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ Nathan said.

‘The last time I saw you down there, on the beach,’ Reid said, ‘you were with a guy in a top hat.’

Nathan laughed. ‘Oh, that’s Jed.’

‘Kind of strange-looking.’

‘Yeah.’ Nathan had a sudden vision of Jed driving over the bridge at night. A dark-purple car, its pale driver wearing a top hat and a radiator smile, its back seat heaped with dead skin.

‘He a friend of yours?’

‘No, not exactly. I knew him years ago, when I was about twelve. I didn’t see him again till last week. Ran into him in a bar on Second Avenue.’

‘Small world.’

‘He acted so weird that night. He kept saying he’d got plans.’

‘To do what?’

Nathan shrugged. ‘He’s after someone’s blood or something. He came out with all kinds of stuff. Seemed like most of it was bullshit.’

‘He sounds like a pretty desperate character.’

‘You should’ve heard him. He stayed over last weekend. Told some big story about how he’d killed someone. He had this tattoo on his wrist. Said it was the date he did it. The hand he did it with.’

‘He’s not still staying, I hope?’

Nathan smiled at Reid’s concern. ‘No. We threw him out. Same day I met you. I expect he’ll be in touch, though. He owes me eight dollars.’

‘Maybe he won’t be in touch,’ Reid said.

Nathan grinned. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

‘It’s strange,’ Reid said, ‘some people just fasten on and you don’t feel a thing.’

Nathan leaned forwards, reaching for his drink. That feeling had returned. His head moving much slower than his body. He sat back again, without his drink. He felt dizzy, as if he’d stood up too suddenly. It was just another rush, he told himself. It would pass. He stared at the sofa. It was some dark colour, there were no patterns, it couldn’t play any tricks on him.

‘You know something else I noticed when I looked through the binoculars?’ came Reid’s voice.

He couldn’t look. He could manage only one word. ‘No.’

‘I noticed how beautiful you were —’

He could look away from the sofa now, back into the room. The blood was sprinting through his veins, it was like a relay race, he saw a runner kick off a curve, hand the baton to another runner, who kicked again, a relay race all round the tight circuit of his blood.

‘Your body—’

The room ballooned away from him, the walls were sails filled with wind.

‘— and your face —’

His skin beneath his clothes, so comfortable. And Reid standing over him. Hair like a cloud. Dark like a storm coming. The ceiling above him concave, domed, and one gloved hand reaching down.

And down again, on to a bed. He lay back, passive. Cool sheets under him. A gloved hand moved to his fly, he felt the metal button give, he heard the rasp as the zipper threads split open. He held his breath. Felt his cock lift and the caress of leather. And then, almost as if he had passed out, maybe he had, he was naked. He shut his eyes and listened to the passage of those gloves across his skin. It was so hot. He looked down. The gloves, their palms were dark, it must be the sweat from his body. He whispered it, and Reid said he’d never noticed that before; he liked it. Nathan lay back again, saw an open window with a surf beach beyond, it was somewhere that he’d been, it was the same sound. He saw the tops of trees hurled by the wind and didn’t remember this. And now Reid’s mouth closed over him, a tightness, slow and tight. A flickering, like leaves, on the soles of his feet.

Reid rolled him gently over, on to his belly, and he felt Reid slide between his buttocks.

He lifted his head, said, ‘No,’ and then louder, ‘No.’

Reid murmured something.

He turned on to his side, moved down the bed. He thought he heard music somewhere, asked what it was, but Reid said it was nothing. He took Reid between his fingers, between his lips, he did what he liked people doing to him. It was so strange being on the other side of things, he’d forgotten the salty taste of it, the power of those final moments just before it came, when the muscles arched and sang, the lick and snap of railway tracks when a train’s approaching.