22

Andrew sat alone in the subway car, mindless of his blood-soaked shirt and hungering for the Pilar. No amount of trauma overcame the healing power of provoked strings.

The setting sun cut an orange line down Astor Place, a radiant border between painful realities and comfortable detachment. He wandered the street in a daze, his arms colliding with pedestrians. Saint Marks housed its regulars, shiftless and waiting for anyone to liberate them from the checkerboard doldrums.

The clerk called after him. “You can’t leave that music on in your room.”

Andrew wheeled about, his bloodied shirt giving the man pause.

“Even if it’s that classical shit,” he said, suddenly friendly. “You can’t leave it on if you ain’t here, al’right?”

Andrew trotted up the stairs as the Pilar’s beautiful noise beckoned.

Outside his door, terror took hold.

All of his locks were gone.

The music ceased when he pushed his way inside.

Sash stood there, a slate jacket draped over his suitcase. His snow-white dress shirt flared about his arms, its hem tucked into those gray trousers somewhere behind that matching vest. The man looked exquisite, holding a Pilar violin in one hand and a bow in the other.

Andrew slammed the door.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Sash sat on the bed and laid the instrument across his lap.

“This is my piece,” he said of the Pilar and, with the bow, tapped the pistol with a charred condom on its barrel. “This is also my piece.”

Andrew refused to look at it, even now.

“How did you get in here?”

Sash set aside the Pilar and its bow and pulled a cigar from his vest pocket. “You locked your room with my locks.” He tapped his temple. “I have the combinations here,”

Andrew thrust out his jaw.

“Why’d you order Samil killed?”

“I gave no such order.” Sash stood slowly as if cognoscente of Andrew’s agitation. He moved to the window above the AC unit and forced it open. “You didn’t bother looking across from you when you hid under that table. I was in the elevator when the firing started, Andrej.”

In his mind, the elevator doors closed as Radek crashed through the lobby. A gray pantleg revealed itself as the panels met in the middle. Andrew swallowed hard, the noisy traffic from the open window unable to drown out his thundering heart.

A stiff breeze ruffled the quilt hanging above the bed.

“Samil told federal officers about the job in Hudson Valley,” said Sash, cracking his neck with odd elegance. “He showed up as their driver wearing a wire. In the middle of the job, police arrived and arrested Niko and Radek,”

Andrew whispered, “Radek got out,”

“Cyril sent some girl to bail them out, and when Radek got out, he and Cyril found Tadeshi at Samil’s.” Sash ran a hand over his bald head. “Cyril tried to keep Tadeshi calm,”

“No one calms Tadeusz,” Andrew said, his anger rising. “I’ve only known you people a few months, and I could see that much,”

“You people,” Sash chuckled softly. “You are something different from us?”

Andrew crept around him.

“I didn’t know the Pilar was yours,” he said, grabbing it from the bed.

Sash set that eye upon him. “You’re not going to ask to keep it?”

Andrew desperately wanted to keep it.

It felt so good in his hands.

Andrew sat on the bed, placing the instrument and bow into the wooden box. He then slid that box onto the condom-covered gun.

“I must know why.” Sash sat on the bed, moving the box and exposing the gun. “You’ve always been so forthright, yet you held back this one thing,”

“I want you to leave,” said Andrew.

“You told Radeki you were twenty,” Sash said, his eye on the floor. “Niko and Samil said the same,”

Andrew took the violin box in his arms.

“I’m asking you to leave,”

Sash’s bright blue eye imprisoned him.

“I just want to know, Andrej,”

“Seventeen,” he cried. “Now get the fuck out!”

“You were bound for White Plains,” Sash spoke calmly. “Why didn’t you get there?”

Andrew narrowed his eyes. “Why are you asking me this shit like you’re owed some kind of explanation?”

“You left home and never went back, why?”

“What do you care?”

“Because your mamka deserves better,” Sash scolded.

To this, Andrew offered no words.

“Good mothers are rare in this world, Andrej.” Sash unbuttoned his vest and stood, removing it slowly. He draped it over the condom-clad gun. “She deserves better than this from her only son.”

His words punched a hole in Andrew’s.

“She didn’t raise you to be around pigs like us,” Sash spoke softly, undoing his wrist buttons. “Your time with us, is this punishment for something you did?”

Andrew set the box down.

“If you don’t go, I will,” he said, rising to the door.

Sash’s grasp felt like a vice, and Andrew moved with it, rolling back onto the mattress and flipping upright in fear-fueled courage.

“Don’t you fucking touch me!” he growled.

 He reached under the bed, snatched up his black violin case, and then hurled it at Sash. The bald man ducked it, letting it hit the wall and fall to the floor.

“Do you know what kind of day I’ve had?” Andrew screamed.

Neither spoke a word then, the only sounds were the rugs tapping the walls and noisy afternoon traffic that snuck into their bubble from the open window over Andrew’s head. Sash pulled his unbuttoned dress shirt down past his shoulders.

“When I was eight, my mother insisted I learn the fiddle. I did this to make her happy.” His shapely chest stressed the ribbed undershirt. “My father left before I could walk, so making her happy was the most important thing in my world.”

Accented words continued as lean, muscular arms rose to remove the undershirt, exposing the black patches of hair in the pits.

“When I turned twelve, my mother started hearing voices. Sometimes, she’d be fine. Other times, not so fine.” Scars marked his back as he retook his position at the foot of the bed and opened the wooden box. “When I played for her, she was fine.”

Dull blue tattoos decorated his corded abdomen.

“When I was fourteen, I wanted to be with my friends for the Passover holiday. I told her I’d be home to play for her after school, but I went out with them instead.” Sash’s voice grew distant, that blue eye drowning in a pool that wouldn’t overflow. “I got home and saw our neighbors crowding around the stoop.”

Andrew brought his knees to his chest, hugging them.

“She had covered the windows with towels. Killed our cat and nailed it to the front door. The constable told me to get in there and calm her down.” Sash took the violin from its box. “This was on the table. She asked why I would not play for her.”

A tear fell from his lone eye.

“It wasn’t her, you see. It was one of those voices that became her.” Sash took up the bow stick. “She grabbed this and beat me terribly.”

Andrew’s nose began to burn.

“She caught my eye with the end here.” Sash dragged a finger over the frog and its stained hairs. “It gouged me so deep that my eye came out with it.”

Andrew’s lips began trembling.

“The constable tackled her to the floor, and she screamed as they hauled her away. All the voices in her head screaming, some of them damning me as I sat there bleeding.” He cleared his throat and nodded. “My uncle collected me from hospital. I lived with him for many months until he put me on a train one day and told me to visit my mother.”

Sash returned the bow and closed the box. “Uncle put this box in my hand and said, go play for her at the sanitarium.”

Andrew reached for the box.

“I didn’t get off at hospital.” Sash pulled at the clasp on his pants before sliding them down his legs. “I rode the train to Gdansk. I lived on the streets and fed myself once a day on what I stole from people’s pockets. I learned many things, some good and most bad, but I never learned to forget.”

Andrew took up the violin as Sash tossed his folded trousers on the floor.

“That’s how I got here,” he said, turning his eye on him. “How did you get here, Andrej?”

Andrew cradled the Pilar in his arms.

“I met Oleg about three months before I graduated high school,” he said, voice shaking. “He would show up at parties with these boys,”

Sash reached over and wrapped his hand around the Pilar’s long fingerboard.

“They always had drugs, so I avoided them,” said Andrew, letting the man take the violin. “Oleg chatted me up one night, so I blew him. He was bad news, but I didn’t care because only women get stuck with bad men, right?”

Sash rose from the bed and began playing the first four bars of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata. A fantasy in black underwear, he stood there, his powerful arms working the bow stick with that gorgeous wood tucked under his chin.

“It was just once, or so I thought.” Andrew’s voice grew bones, and his eyelids fell as the melody Sash played turned dark. “I was on the Parkway when he came running out of the woods. He said his car broke down.”

The bow cut across the strings, tempo gaining momentum.

“At the rest stop, I bought us some food, and he asked me to pull into the woods so he could piss and get rid of the trash. I drove into the trees where my car would fit.”

Sash’s chest glistened as his arm pulled and pushed.

“Oleg yanked my keys from the ignition and started hitting me. I’ve never been hit like that before in my life.” Tears cut down Andrew’s cheeks. “It hurt so much.”

Strings thundered as the composition intensified.

“He got into the back and pulled me over the seat. I just needed him to stop hitting me.” Andrew rubbed at his eyes and dragged the back of his arm across his nose. “I knew it wasn’t him inside me,”

The serene bars in A-Major began.

“It burned so bad. I was bleeding,” Andrew’s voice dropped to a whisper. “But then, it stopped hurting.”

Sash lowered the bow and violin to his sides, bringing silence.

“It stopped hurting, and I,” Andrew studied the man’s taut shoulders, scarred back, and trim waist. “I don’t know what happens to me when I fuck. You know that movie with Paul Newman, where he says he keeps drinking until he hears that click?”

Sash placed the Pilar back in its box.

“It’s the opposite for me.” Shame flooded Andrew’s soul. “Something clicks when I’m fucked, and then I can’t stop.”

Sash stepped to the black violin case and took out the neglected instrument. Skilled hands adjusted the pegs while gently dragging the bow over the strings. Andrew took up the Pilar and held it tightly to his chest.

“I didn’t care what was inside me after it started feeling good. I bucked back and let it fuck me,” Andrew whispered. “Oleg laughed, said he would make a fortune pimping me out.”

Sash began the Kreutzer composition again with an angelic calm.

“I hit him, but he hit back harder. He crawled over the seat and started the car.” Wind parted Andrew’s hair as his lips twisted. “It fell out of his pocket and went under the seat.”

Like a choppy film, Andrew saw himself grab the gun, condom still on its barrel. He took aim at the back of Oleg’s platinum head and pulled the trigger.

“What kind of man,” he sobbed. “Gets off from being raped with a gun?”

Sash stopped playing, and his profile regarded Andrew without judgment

“Your body isn’t your soul, Andrej,” he said, his voice steady. “I have been raped three times in my life. One of those times, my body enjoyed it enough to come.”

Andrew stared at him as he spoke.

“My soul did not like it,” said Sash. “But my body is not my soul,”

Sash tucked the wood under his jaw.

“The newspaper on the bed, it’s yours,” he added.

Andrew unfolded the weekly print as Sash played something new.

‘Police Call Off Search for Missing Collegiate.’

It spoke of his going missing in May and then told of how his mother called the police last month when she received his voice message. An addendum mentioned finding career criminal Oleg Paraskevich dead in the local man’s car just south of Exit 172. A bullet wound to the head. Police sought the young man for questioning, with assurances that the missing local acted in self-defense and authorities did not consider him a murder suspect.

“What is that you’re playing?” Andrew let the paper fall to the floor. “It’s beautiful.”

Sash stopped and returned to the end of the bed.

“I wrote it to play for my mother at hospital.” A disgraced eye found him. “But, like you, I got lost along the way.”

Andrew crawled over the bed, closing the distance between them. Sash’s head warmed his hands, and that glass orb felt smooth against his tongue.

“Andrej,” Sash’s lips offered a taste of tobacco.

He dragged his mouth down Sash’s chest, relishing the man’s fingers in his hair. He pushed Sash to the wall before straddling his thighs. Andrew pulled his shirt over his head while Sash tugged at the snap on his jeans. Once Sash freed him, Andrew pulled their cocks together and retook Sash’s mouth.

Neither could stop. Stop the wanting, the feeling, the tasting.

Andrew tugged their arousals in his hand, two captured snakes weeping at the tips. He couldn’t say how many moments passed until Sash’s pleasured groan led to a mess on his smooth chest. The very sight of it spitting between them led Andrew to make it worse.

Covered with sweat and dried tears, Andrew dragged a finger through their mingled seed and brought it to Sash’s bottom lip, spreading it like a balm. Sash rubbed his lips together, glossing them before Andrew stole a taste of their sticky tang.