the limits of her silver leotard: We practice all the way up until the day of the Fling and then we all go out to a movie together a few hours before it starts. You know, to relax. It’s like a tradition.
I could not move, not even when they emerged. Rhino came first, trailing by the hand a fragile-looking redhead popping lozenges into her mouth—most likely a singer concerned about her voice. Woody was next, flicking popcorn bits from his shirt. The redhead was the first to see us, and she clawed at Rhino’s simian arm. When Rhino saw, he reached over and shoved Woody. Celeste was smacking hand sanitizer when she felt Woody’s nudge, and she was able to return the small green bottle to her purse without taking her eyes off us. The sanitizer went in, her plaid pink BlackBerry came out.
The details were easy to improvise. See, one of the homos was crying because they’d just watched a sobby romance. And see, they were sitting there in the dark because where else can two fags make out? Foley was unaware of being watched until the flashes made him lift his face. It was Celeste, her smart, open-toed, special-day shoes planted directly in front of us, snapping picture after picture—flash, flash, flash, flash. Her eyes gleamed. Flash, flash. She looked hungry. Flash, flash, flash. As if documenting this tawdry vignette from Mere Reality would excuse her from it forever.
She winked at me over the phone and it was like the drop of a guillotine. Panic severed as easily as fingers. A tingling calm settled through my bones, allowing me to see with a clarity usually relegated to specifying. Woody and Rhino: their gestures flew only at Foley. Celeste: her camera flashed solely in his direction. The noses of the Incorruptibles were trained to detect fear, and in my metamorphosis to the Son I had lost that musk. A new target, therefore, had been chosen.
I could taste their blood. I lapped at it like a kitten at milk.
You can’t change a rotter’s upbringing. Gottschalk—revenge—had been bred to humiliate, Woody—revenge—to dish out punishment, Celeste—revenge—to devour anything that stood in her way. Now I realized that I had been bred for a cross purpose—revenge, revenge. There would be no circulation—revenge—of these photos—revenge—on Monday. There would be no spray-painting—revenge—of vulgar words upon Foley’s locker. Revenge—revenge—there would be no beatings in locker rooms and—revenge, revenge—in parking lots. In the dim—revenge—movie theater hallway—revenge—I lost—revenge—all feeling—revenge—in my body—revenge, revenge—yet was somehow—revenge—aware that my face—revenge, revenge, revenge—had stretched into a smile.
24.
THIS IS THE DAY Woody Trask dies. I can taste it right off: the burning away of bile from the back of my throat. He doesn’t know it yet. That’s what makes it so exquisite. His death will not be physical, but it will be death nonetheless. He will never think the same way; he will never do the same things to others; it will be years before he is able to wake up without screaming.
Corruption of the Incorruptibles. I dug all night. You should have seen it.
I have planned it so carefully it’s like being there to see it. It’s like specifying so hard I can cut across time and space. He wakes up late. It’s Saturday, a day he hates because there are no built-in crowds to cheer him on. He plods around home in bare feet and stops for a moment to stare at a photograph under a refrigerator magnet. He scratches his balls and picks his nose. He doesn’t recall its being here before.
I put it there. I was in his house and found it at the bottom of a drawer. I couldn’t resist. The photo, you see, is of Woody as a child, maybe six or seven years old, squatting in a sandbox with other children. It’s amazing how some faces retain their basic elements over time, and I’m sure that two of the sandbox boys are now kids Woody torments at every opportunity. There’s a chance that he will gaze at the picture until he drifts into a remorse so deep that he hangs himself from the workout machine in the basement. But that’s unlikely. He is too lost in arrogance to see anything in such images except weaker children deserving of their pitiful lots.
He doesn’t notice what’s written on the back of the photo until after he’s showered, shaved, and dressed. Unable to get the picture out of his mind, he flips it over. At first he thinks it’s