They cooked three meals a day that summer. It became a friendly competition between them, small interludes of fun and creativity to break up the listless bright, hot summer days. One morning, Felix rose at six to make a smoked salmon frittata and a carafe of iced coffee. After breakfast Ned strolled to the farmers market and bought fresh kale, spinach, and arugula that he washed, dried in a salad spinner, and added to the Cobb salad he served for lunch. He picked up a bottle of Vouvray to pair with dinner, a light meal of cod baked in parchment paper with olive oil, green olives, and Herbes de Provence plate with haricot verts and couscous. Fresh peaches from the farmers market were served for dessert, cut into wedges in shallow white bowls and lightly drizzled with Grand Marnier. They dined on the patio in the backyard beneath a canopy of Edison lights with Nancy Wilson singing through the Bose speaker. After dinner they repaired to the front porch where they stretched out on the wicker couch and read. Long ago they decided the summer was too hot for reading chunky novels; they endured enough of that during the school year. Instead, the husbands glided through short story collections and paged through articles in their favorite magazines and journals that had stacked in a tower by the front door: The Point, The New Yorker, The Gay and Lesbian Review, National Affairs, Dissent, The Atlantic, The Nation, and Granta. Occasionally one of them dashed off an M/M romance or a mystery novel borrowed from the library, nothing that required too much effort, the kind of books they’d be too embarrassed to store on their own bookshelves. If the husbands were feeling especially relaxed or spirited, they would shake up cocktails, maybe even spark up a joint. If Frida, the widow who lived in the house on their right, was sitting on her porch, she might saunter over and join them, and they’d stay outside until midnight trading recipes, gossiping about the neighbors, complaining about taxes or the gasbag in the White House. If Owen and Nora, the young, married neighbors on the left, were outside, they’d smile perfunctorily through their perpetually exhausted faces. The quartet would chit chat about gardening or complain about the neighbors or the clowns in Congress, then creep back inside. Owen and Nora seldom sat on their porch anyway. They were the parents of year-old twin boys, and one of the babies was always squalling. Up and down the block, the husbands could look through their neighbors’ wide-open windows and see what trashy reality TV show they were watching. Let them stay inside—Ned and Felix loved the feel of having the block to themselves, lounging amid the thick heat, perfumed by blossoming flowers and petrichor, holding court with symphonic cicadas and Nyx, the jet-black outdoor cat that belonged to a neighbor two blocks over. She would often pad onto their porch, rest beside them on the floor, and swat at mosquitos for a while before slinking off to her nocturnal adventures. Sometimes the flimsiness of Ned and Felix’s shorts and T-shirts against their firm, muscled bodies got them horny, and they scurried inside to fuck: a loud, aggressive, primal fuck that roared to the entire neighborhood that they were married Black gay men, successful in their careers, debt-free, flush, healthy, handsome, well-traveled, brilliant, loved, and blissfully happy.
Overlapping sabbaticals. Felix (tenured English professor) was beginning his just as Ned (tenured communications professor) was bringing his to a close. Felix had yet to start work on his novel. Ned had just put the finishing touches on a manuscript he promised to Routledge Press. They taught at different universities in the same large city, worked similar schedules, knew the same group of intellectuals, writers, artists, and activists, a retinue that grew each year. At the close of each semester a student would graduate, and the husbands could finally accept their friend request on social media. Favors flocked to them. A colleague wanted Ned to sit on a panel she was putting together for a conference in Montreal. The writer of a book Felix gave a sterling review to insisted on taking him out to lunch. They hosted a party at their home in early June and hired a caterer, bartenders, and a DJ. The backyard garden was in its glory: roses, hostas, morning glories, and hydrangeas, in various colors beckoned to be admired. The DJ, one of Ned’s former students, played a hip hop/electronica mix, and guests drank craft cocktails and snacked and chatted merrily. Inside, the house was packed with friends and colleagues who collectively represented two dozen colleges and universities from across the nation. People ate and drank to excess and exchanged business cards, laughed, debated, reminisced, confessed, and sang. Two guys hooked up in their basement. A straight couple hooked up in the guest bedroom. They were discreet about it. The husbands didn’t know any of them. They didn’t mind.
It was a summer of ease and excess, one men like them, raised within the jagged angles of ghetto life, deserved. They listened to a jazz playlist Felix had curated: Anita O’Day, Melody Gardot, Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae, and Nancy Wilson. They tromped around barefooted, took cool showers whenever the urge found them, fucked together, jerked off alone, read, wrote, cooked, worked out, ate, gardened, boozed, napped, left their phones unanswered. Rays of sunlight blessed their home each morning and at night they held court on the porch hoping for a visit from Nyx. Life was that simple.
The afternoon of Friday, July 11, at two fourteen p.m., Felix, barefoot, wearing blue chino shorts and an Old Navy T-shirt, stepped onto the front porch with a glass of iced tea and a copy of Heads of the Colored People and discovered a dozen unopened condoms scattered on the floor. Ned was in the kitchen crushing rosemary, kosher salt, black pepper, and garlic in a pestle and mortar for a marinade. Felix opened the screen door and asked Ned to come out. When he did—somewhat annoyed at having his dinner preparations interrupted—he looked down at the spectacle on the floor and balked.
“Kids?” Felix asked.
“Nasty ones,” Ned replied.
“Maybe the mailman is trying to tell us something.”
“Letter carrier. He’s a she and I doubt it.”
“This is just so weird.” Felix scratched his goatee. “Practical joke?”
“Could be.” Ned took a gulp of Felix’s iced tea then handed it back.
“You know anybody who would do this?”
“The performance artists are your friends, babe, not mine.” Ned rubbed a mosquito bite on his arm.
Felix shook his head. “This is not their jam.”
“Yeah. The only statement this makes is that we should stop taking PrEP.”
“Well, we’re not doing that.”
The husbands stood on the porch transfixed by the condoms that gleamed in the sunlight like gold coins. They looked up and down the street: nothing. Blocks away they could hear children playing but no one was outside.
“Must be kids,” Felix said, assuredly.
“Somebody needs to beat their butts,” Ned said. “And find a better place for their rubbers.”
Felix bent down to collect the condoms, but Ned told him not to touch them with his bare hands. He went back inside and returned with a broom and dustpan, into which he swept up the offenses and discarded them into the Dumpster in the alley behind their house. Later that night, Felix grilled the chicken Ned had marinated, and they ate it with lemon and feta orzo and steamed broccoli. By the time they were drinking gimlets on the porch later that night, Jane Monheit was singing “Dindi” through the Bose while Nyx curled up a few feet away. The condoms were a distant memory.
A week later, after returning from the farmers market with a canvas bag filled with pears, rhubarb, strawberries, and tomatoes, Ned opened the mailbox and went through the day’s post. He and Felix paid all of their bills online; most of the mail they received was junk and advertisements, but they never knew when a book sent for review or a postcard from a friend on vacation abroad would arrive. Ned flicked through the coupons and circulars, and among them he saw a white envelope bearing no name, stamp, or return address. It was completely blank. He set his bag down, opened the envelope, and found a white sheet of paper folded inside. Printed in large Times New Roman were the words STILL WANT MY CUM? Disgusted, he tossed the missive on the ground when he saw that whoever had sent the note had streaked the page with semen.
◆
Exhibiting his usual calm when confronted with a crisis, Felix told Ned there was nothing the cops could do. He concluded that a dozen errant condoms and an anonymous dirty letter didn’t rise to the level of a threat. But after a round of bickering, the cops were called. The officers asked the husbands if they had any enemies, anybody with a grudge against them, maybe a former student. The few unbalanced people they knew hadn’t stopped taking their meds, to the best of their knowledge. In any case, none of the bipolar, schizophrenic, or neurodiverse friends, acquaintances, or admirers within their circle would want to harm them. Those who didn’t like Ned and Felix at least respected them, and no one who hated them would employ such unsophisticated, gimmicky tactics. True, academia, in this day and age, was about as cutthroat as a gladiatorial match, but Ned and Felix couldn’t think of anyone who would want to harrow them this way. They were stumped.
Two days after the fluid-smeared letter arrived, on a sultry night on the front porch. Ned and Felix downed two bottles of chilled Sauvignon Blanc, lit up a couple of Black and Milds, and broke their cardinal rule. They started to consider former lovers and the possibility of revenge. They had been together for nearly twenty years and monogamous for all of it, with the exception of Recess: a year-long indulgence in men, secrets, and outré sex, complete with clandestine lunches and day-drinking. All of it exhilarating yet none of it fulfilling. Felix had said the writer in him needed to assign a name to their experiment with open marriage. So he settled on Recess because it was only meant to be a brief time to release pent-up cravings in their otherwise satisfactorily routine sex life; it would be a respite from bourgeois propriety, respectability politics, and rote lovemaking. Until Recess they felt they were mimicking the lives of straight couples, as if they were capitulating to the kind of beige lives they had spent their careers lambasting. Before long, Ned had joked, they’d be wearing Dockers and voting Republican. Recess would jumpstart their queerness.
It was an experiment that began by accident on a weekend getaway to Michigan. Edgar and Will, artist friends of theirs from Detroit, were driving up to the lake house they owned in Saugatuck and invited Ned and Felix to come up for an autumn weekend of antiquing, deer stew, and cocktails. Very Ralph Lauren, Will had written in the text message invitation, all campfires and Fair Isle sweaters and hot apple cider spiked with Japanese whiskey. They’d cook, go dancing at the Dunes, smoke some weed, marvel at the autumn leaves, and chill. Nothing major. The couples hadn’t known each other long. Felix and Edgar, a multimodal artist, had presented on a panel at AWP the previous year titled Poverty Porn in Contemporary Black Art. Felix commented on Sapphire’s Push and Edgar, with his far-out Afro, goatee, and an ankh tattooed on the back of his hand, inveighed against The Blind Side and The Help. They kept in touch through periodic emails and phone calls. Felix and Ned assumed it would just be the four of them that weekend, two gay couples indulging their bougieness in the Midwest’s gay resort spot. They packed a couple of overnight satchels and hiking boots, rented an SUV, and took off.
When Felix and Ned arrived at Edgar and Will’s house, they were surprised to find two other couples there: Tony and Milo, from Madison, and Ray and Firouz, another couple from Chicago. Edgar and Will said there was plenty of room for everyone, and there was. Each couple had their own bedroom and bathroom. They got along great. Edgar and Will grilled burgers (they couldn’t find deer meat) and they all drank beer and wine and passed around a joint. They talked about films and plays and art, yacked about Ariana Grande, Madonna’s latest album, Nancy Pelosi, and RuPaul’s Drag Race. They trashed the “fascist Cheeto in the White House.” The evening coursed along in a relaxed, convivial manner.
Around midnight, while they were still drinking and smoking weed, Felix watched Edgar follow Firouz into the kitchen. The house was open concept; no space on the main floor was walled off except the bathroom. Felix, like a spy, slightly drunk and stoned, watched Edgar push Firouz, a veritable juggernaut, up against the stainless steel refrigerator. He kissed him full on the mouth. Firouz, in response, squeezed Edgar’s ass. Then Edgar knelt down, unzipped Firouz’s jeans, and began to suck him off. A jolt went up Felix’s back. He elbowed Ned, who was deep in a conversation with Milo about the latest Scorsese film, and pointed at the pair in the kitchen. That’s when Will, passing the joint to Ray, said, “It’s about fucking time. You two have been eye-raping each other all goddamn night.”
“Guess it’s on,” Milo murmured seductively before he cupped Felix’s crotch and kissed him. Felix jolted from the couch but Milo pushed him back down and began to suck his neck.
They weren’t eight men anymore. They were an orgy, and orgies have lives of their own. Felix and Ned quickly got swept up into the action. Will pounced on Ned, kissing him and squeezing his thigh. Milo unzipped Felix’s jeans, reached inside, and stroked him. Firouz already had Edgar bent over the quartz countertop, pants down to his ankles, thrusting hard. And Tony and Ray were jerking off side-by-side near the fireplace, their wide eyes, illumined by firelight, enjoying the spectacle. Only seconds had passed, but Felix and Ned, catching sight of each other, pushed Milo and Will away. Ned quickly made up an excuse about being too stoned. Felix said nothing. The sparkle didn’t leave Will’s eyes. He shrugged, wished them both a good night, then stretched over to the other end of the couch to give his attention to Milo. None of the others noticed Felix and Ned hastily climb the stairs. The cacophony of grunting, moaning, and slapping flesh lifted up to their bedroom.
Ned, lying face-up on the bed, groaned, “I can’t believe you brought me to this shit.”
“How was I supposed to know?” Felix said, gulping water from a plastic bottle on the nightstand. “It’s not like Edgar and Will gave off orgy vibes.”
“Really Felix? Gay artists with lots of money and gym bodies?”
“So.”
“And you were loving it.”
“Like you weren’t?”
“Do you want to go back down there?”
“Do you?”
“Fuck this.” Ned turned off the lamp on his nightstand and rolled over.
They lay in angry silence and the voluble sounds of the orgy coming from downstairs. In the morning they got up early, packed, left a phony note about an emergency, and drove back home before the others woke up. No words passed between them the entire drive.
In the days that followed, Felix and Edgar fought about the incident. They sent emails to each other, text messages, and handwritten missives on Post-it notes. Then, for a while, they were spitefully silent. After a few days, when each man had calmed enough to think clearly, they arrived at a solution: Recess. They agreed that if one or both of them were out of town, they were allowed to have sex with one other man. No barebacking, no friends, no attachments, and never in the house. Most of all they could never fall in love. The men they chose weren’t supposed to be anymore more than bodies meant for sex. They would try it for a few months, follow the rules, no questions asked.
A year later, Ned found yellow discharge in his underwear. Felix felt razor blades when he urinated. Each husband accompanied the other to his respective doctor. Prescriptions were filled and taken, and the maladies quickly passed. Recess was over.
◆
They had lived in the house for seventeen years, long enough for everyone in the neighborhood to know who they were, form opinions, and clock their habits. Ned and Felix attended each block party and socialized with their neighbors whenever an opportunity presented itself. If any of them objected to living on the same block as two gay Black men, their disdain never reached the husbands. Their house was the best on the block: a three-story Queen Anne with six bedrooms and four bathrooms they spent years restoring. The house was far too big for them—Owen and Nora often joked that they should swap houses—but they enjoyed the space, the abundance the house offered. Ned and Felix each had his own library and bathroom. They had turned a bedroom on the second floor into a conservatory filled with hosts of plants. A detached garage in back was separated by their wide backyard, lush and verdant. For two men raised in ghetto squalor, accustomed to small, cluttered rooms, shabby furniture, and roaches, their home was paradise on Earth. They would never leave it.
Three nights after they received the letter, Frida banged on their front door and shouted for Ned and Felix to come outside. Ned opened the door. “You guys need to call the cops,” she said through deep pants. She was clutching her chest and her face had gone white and bloodless. “It’s out back, guys.” She had to catch her breath. “Your garage door.”
The three of them rushed out the back gate and met the ugliness tagged in black spray paint on the door of their detached garage: NIGGER FAGS!!!
For Felix, the feeling wasn’t like being stabbed in the heart, as Ned would have described it. It was like ten thousand paper cuts slashing him everywhere, all over, at once. Ned experienced an implosion that sucked in his organs, his mind, and his spirit. A tear fell down his check; Felix, numb all over, could only stare. The collective accumulation of their talent, intellect, money, connections, and prestige disintegrated and left them both breathless and exposed in the sultry night where only Nyx, slinking through the alley, could move.
◆
“It’s a hate crime now,” Office Lando said as she stood akimbo in their living room.
Felix tensed up. “So what will you do?” He stood by the back door ready with a brush in one hand and a can of white paint in the other to erase the ugliness once the officer gave him permission.
“Until we know who this is, there’s not much we can do.”
“We’re getting threats and y’all can’t do anything?” Ned was almost in tears.
“I think you guys need to get security cameras. If we knew who the perpetrator was we could go over and give them a talking to. But without that we’ve got no leads, nowhere to go.”
Her partner, Office Stuart, a portly man with a silver mustache, entered the living room. “Nothing outside that I can see. Not even a bottle top. You fellas in good with your neighbors?”
“We get along with everyone,” Felix assured them.
“That’s now,” Office Lando said. “What about the past? Old students? Anybody?”
The reasonable thing to do, the action that made the most sense to the husbands, was to interrogate their Recess men. Reluctantly, each man secretly met with his most recurrent lover during that period. No sex, just answers.
◆
Ned wouldn’t allow himself to believe Firouz was the culprit, but he called him up anyway and asked to meet at a coffee shop in Edgewater. Ned arrived a half hour early, managed to get a table secluded in back near the unisex bathroom, sipped his iced tea, and waited. The fact that Firouz wanted to meet after Ned had so definitely told him it was over, yes, he meant it, no more hook-ups, no more calls or texts, made Ned doubtful it was him. For the first time in two months he put on jeans and hard-soled shoes despite the August swelter. He thought about wearing a button-down shirt and a blazer, anything to cover his body and make him look as unattractive as possible to Firouz.
As usual, Firouz arrived late with a scowl of annoyance etched into his face. His movements always fascinated Ned. He walked like the Tin Man newly revitalized with oil: above the waist he was stiff yet below the waist his strides were quick and fluid; his legs and feet vigorously locomoted through space. He kept his eyes and head in constant motion, roving this way and that, anticipating every possible threat. When Ned saw Firouz enter the coffee shop he rose and sat in the chair opposite. Firouz would demand they go to another spot if he couldn’t sit in a chair facing the door. He was still wearing his checks and apron and the aromas of roast lamb and Zatar wafted from him. He dropped himself in the seat and without hesitation or a greeting, picked up Ned’s cup of iced tea and took a gulp. He stretched out one leg and leaned back, surveying the shop and tracking his eyes up and down Ned’s body, appraising him.
“Why you call me?” His voice was clipped and halitosis burst from his mouth when he spoke.
Ned rolled his eyes and folded his arms over his chest. “Nice to see you too.”
“I’m on break, Neddy. My uncle kick my ass more and more. Sorry, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Is it okay?”
“Yes, okay, okay. Damn.”
Sitting across from him now, Ned searched his memory for an explanation of how two such different people managed to conduct a year-long affair, though affair seemed too dignified a word for the string of pornographic encounters they carried out. Firouz and Ray had broken up not long after the events in Saugatuck. Soon after, Ned received a text message from Firouz by complete surprise. After two exchanges—deciphering Firouz’s written English was always a cumbersome task, save for smut and swear words—they started sending each other pictures. Ned’s were restrained, nothing more suggestive than shots of his bare chest. Firouz reciprocated with a flurry of dick pics, close-ups of his anus, and videos of him masturbating. When they began sleeping with each other, it was on the condition that Firouz never photograph or film them. Ned even took the precaution of arranging all of their trysting places, lest Firouz conceal a camera somewhere in the room. Firouz took offense to this, but Ned was adamant.
“Look,” Ned began, “I know what I said last time.”
“You say a lot, Neddy.” Firouz took another greedy drink of Ned’s tea. He decided to just let him have it. “Always too much you say.”
“Can I finish?”
“Forever the big words, the schedules. You retetitive.”
“What?”
“What? What you mean what? I know big words too, my friend. You anal retetitive.”
“Anal retentive, Firouz. And I—”
Firouz groaned and waved his hand as if he was swatting away mosquitoes. Ned watched Firouz’s bicep flex, felt his lust stir, then chided himself for it.
“Still the supersmart guy, huh? You are forever the same, Neddy. I good for fucking—you love a good Firouz fuck—but I no good for you, those big smart friends of you.”
“You never understood, man. How many times do you need me to tell you we were just fuck buddies? I’m married.”
Firouz smirked and dragged a hand through his dark hair. “Guess I’m no good side bitch, huh?”
Ned sat up straight, shoulders back, and leveled a steely gaze at Firouz. With the back of his hand he slid the cup of tea aside, mimicking a pissed off cop in a TV show. “Are you stalking us?”
“What you mean?”
“Don’t play. Your English isn’t that bad. Someone who’s very angry at us has been vandalizing our house and sending threatening messages. Is it you? If it is, just stop it, okay? I’ll call the cops. I’ll call ICE. I swear.”
Firouz stared blankly for a moment then took the cup of tea and chugged it all before he slammed the plastic cup down. “You think because I am Arab Muslim I mess with your house? You and me we fuck like crazy, what, six, seven times and you think I am hooked on you? I’m crazy person? You think I’m terrorist?”
“Look, Firouz, don’t start up with the stereotypes, okay? You’re not gonna win that argument with me.”
“See, this why we don’t fuck no more, Neddy. We have a good time, we fuck good, then you start with all the race stuff.”
“I didn’t start it.”
They sat in brutal silence for a few minutes.
Firouz looked straight at Ned; his green eyes bored deep into him. “You so lucky, Neddy. You and your man. Big house, big jobs, big money. You two like kings. You talk about being a Black gay in this country. You know what it was like for me in Iran? How I leave, got here? You and your man have so much, it’s just so much, and you complain. All the time we are meeting you are complaining, you know, my friend? You complain, I fuck you good, then after you complain some more. You call me here today after so much time, so many months, and you don’t want no more fucking. You want to complain more, complain about condoms and bad words.” He brought his fist down on the table hard, sending a jolt of fright up Ned’s spine. The other patrons in the coffee shop stopped chatting and working on their laptops to stare at them. All noises ceased except Brittany Spears singing through the speakers.
Firouz’s face reddened as he launched into a tirade. “Why you do this to me? Tell me this, eh? Rich American cocksuckers—all of you! All the time complaining, so much you are complaining. For what is it, eh? I work many hours, so many hours. Always I am dirty with the foods. And you and your man are to complaining? Fuck you, Neddy! Fuck you!”
It was only after Firouz had stormed out of the coffee shop that Ned realized he had never told him about the condoms on the front porch.
◆
Part of the thrill of being with Edgar was his eclecticism. A maximalist in the best sense, Felix could be certain of only one thing each time he stepped off the freight elevator that took him up to Edgar’s loft: the encounter would be unique, never replicated. The first time he visited the loft, he got off the elevator and ambled down the long, wide concrete corridor. His eyes cast down like a timid virgin entering a whorehouse. The three condoms tucked in his back pocket were an ambitious overestimation. He rounded the corner to enter the loft and came face to face with a seven-foot tall stack of VHS tapes. He found Edgar several feet away smashing the tapes with a rubber mallet, unspooling the film and stapling it to a giant canvas. Another time, Felix arrived and Edgar sitting at his large workshop table making a hoop dress out of plastic forks.
Edgar altered his appearance with each project. He was a kaleidoscope of a man, and that also appealed to Felix. When they first met, Edgar sported an Afro: a soft, militant sphere of hair anchored by a neatly trimmed goatee like his own. Weeks later he had traded the Afro for a mane of thick dreadlocks. Months later, irritated by the dreads, Edgar had shorn all of his hair, even the goatee, resembling a turtle that had been disgorged from its carapace. A few weeks after that, he’d grown a slanted high-top fade that made him look like a nineties Bobby Brown. Four hairstyles for the four cycles of their relationship during Recess.
Felix hadn’t spoken to Edgar in two years. He gave no reason for breaking things off, never mentioned the intense highs and lows of their encounters or even the health crisis that put an end to Recess. He simply stopped texting Edgar, and Edgar never texted him back. Felix preferred to remember his time with Edgar as the final caprice of a man about to enter his stolid middle years. They had enjoyed a year of clandestine evenings lounging in Edgar’s loft drinking cocktails, smoking weed, listing to seventies soul on LPs, and having furious sex: months of dissipation brought to an abrupt, inauspicious end that left him numb to all that was familiar and comforting to him before. Perhaps Edgar felt the same way, and perhaps that was motive enough for him to seek such calculated revenge through creative, sinister stalking. They exchanged two text messages after Felix and Ned spoke to the cops. Felix asked if he could come over. Edgar said yes.
This time when Edgar got off the elevator and walked into the loft, he saw another large canvas, this one painted red with vertical slashes of black and white. The Commodores’ “Easy” was playing and Edgar, hair sculpted in an Afro once again, was standing in the kitchen area dressed in tan coveralls.
“You like ginger?” Edgar asked as casually as if they’d only been apart for seconds, not years.
“Sure,” Felix replied.
He scanned the loft. The view of the city from this height never failed to impress him, the L and all the skyscrapers crowned by a periwinkle sky ready to drench the city. The floor-to-ceiling windows that wrapped around the twelve hundred square foot space of Edgar’s loft were its best amenity. A century ago, the building was just another warehouse in Fulton Market. Now it was home to Edgar and two other artists. Each tenant occupied an entire floor, yet they seldom saw each other. Across the vast space, next to Edgar’s bed, Felix saw two large suitcases.
“Going on a trip?” Felix inquired.
“Just got back from New York,” Edgar said over his shoulder. “I was just out there chilling with some friends. Trying to connect with some gallery folks.”
“All about that hustle, huh?”
“Gotta be, man. Keep your name in them streets.”
Felix stepped into the kitchen area and watched as Edgar muddled thin coins of ginger in a Boston shaker. He poured in half a cup of Monkey Shoulder, lemon juice, a glug of thick amber syrup, and a big splash of Laphroaig. He shook up the concoction, double strained it into two chilled rocks glasses over a jumbo ice cube and handed one of the glasses to Felix.
“Damn, that’s good,” Felix said after a sip. “Did you come up with this?”
Edgar shook his head. “Had one of these in Brooklyn and got the recipe from a friend. It’s called a penicillin.”
Felix took another sip. The ginger woke up his palate.
“What you know good, babe?” Edgar asked, his speech languid and seductive even when he didn’t mean it to be. “Ain’t seen you in a minute.”
“Sabbatical. Got some writing done, other stuff. Gotta hustle, like you said.”
Edgar smiled and raised an eyebrow and nodded as a show of solidarity. Then he walked over to the turntable and changed records. Soon, Al Green was singing throughout the loft. They both picked up their cocktails and took long sips. Felix could feel his body warming to the concoction and relaxing. Edgar motioned for Felix to sit on his couch, and as Felix lowered himself beside him, he could feel his whole body relax. Taking another long drink from his gingery cocktail, the myriad worries and anxieties that normally assaulted him day and night gradually dissolved. He felt revived by the memory of liaisons with Edgar that always left him pleasantly spent.
“What’s your latest project?” Felix asked as he stretched on the couch.
Edgar snuggled up in the crook of Felix’s arm and shrugged. “I’m dry right now.”
“So what’s this?” Felix asked, raising his chilled glass before he took another sip.
“Artistically dry, I mean,” Edgar clarified.
“You got ideas for days, though.”
“It’s a tragedy, man.” Edgar said. “I was getting into some hypertext stuff with charcoal, but I put that shit on pause. I pride myself on being able to work no matter what, but I’ve been stuck on some crap lately. My dad died.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“He was a raging homophobic asshole, babe. Probably haunting somebody right now. Don’t be sorry. I got a call from one of my half-brothers two weeks after ol’ dude died. They didn’t have a funeral, just a memorial at my dad’s sister’s place. I didn’t go.” He ran a finger along Felix’s lips. “So why are you here?”
Felix exhaled deeply then told him everything, relaying each detail of the stalking and the fear and anxiety it caused him and Ned. Edgar, motionless, listened attentively before he put his glass down and narrowed his eyes to ruthless slits. “You honestly think I would stalk you?” He smirked.
“Are you flattered?”
“To be honest, yes. A little.”
“Hey, be real, okay. You pranking us or what?”
“Felix—”
“If you are, just stop, all right?”
“Sorry, babe, but it ain’t me. I believe in karma too much to play revenge games.”
Felix regarded him for a moment, trying to determine if Edgar was being honest with him. He knew Edgar had talent, resources, and accomplices. “You swear you’re not stalking me?”
Edgar leaned in close, lowered his eyes, and bit his lower lip. “Baby, I’m stalking you right now,” he whispered. That’s when Felix let him kiss him full on the mouth, letting Edgar’s swirling tongue convince him.
◆
A few nights later, the husbands were jolted out of bed by a cacophony in the garage: bestial howling and snarling, metal clanging against metal, a malevolent orchestra of primal and mechanical sounds. They went to the window and saw the lights in the garage rapidly flicking on and off. Moments later, they heard furious sounds of smashing, like glass being shattered.
“I’m going down there,” Felix said before he ducked under the bed.
“Don’t,” Ned said. “I’ll call the cops.”
“I’m going.”
“Stay here.” Ned grabbed his cell phone from the nightstand but before he could call 911, Felix reached under the bed and took a Sig out of a locked box. Ned balked; he didn’t even know a gun was in the house. He wanted to protest but his words caught in his throat.
Felix looked up at him. “Forget the lecture.”
They rushed down the stairs together. Ned had the presence of mind to turn off the alarm system. After that, they strode into the backyard, past the banks of flowers in full bloom, emitting their succulence and sweetness, and made their way cautiously toward the detached garage. They flinched when they saw Nyx race across the long stretch of thriving grass and foliage that separated the garage from the house. She stopped to hiss wrathfully at the commotion in the garage then turned and fled.
Gun in hand, Felix crept outside toward the garage with Ned, step-by-step, beside him. Ned was gripping a hammer he had hastily removed from the cluttered utility drawer in the kitchen. What good a hammer would do when Felix had a gun, he didn’t know, but he wanted a weapon of his own. The closer they approached the garage the more the flashing lights and the howling, screeching, and banging from inside intensified. Each man knew that whatever was harrowing them could only be a monster—a stalker, a poltergeist, or some other malevolent force. Whether it was human or supernatural they didn’t know, but it didn’t matter. They had no choice. They had to confront it, and they had to put it down, kill it, exorcize it. No one else could do it for them, no one else could ally, no one was coming to save them. Evil is crafty and relentless. It does not rest. It would never stop coming for them, which meant they had to stay just as crafty and alert, resourceful and armed, warriors in defense of something larger than themselves.
Side by side, the husbands approached the garage. At the side door, each man raised a foot and kicked it open.