Sex, booze, and blood were in the air as the clock at St. Louis Cathedral tolled 11. It was Halloween, and Bourbon Street never shirked a night of the deceased. Orange and black wove through the royal blue on the street lamps, and the tourists were dressed to fuck the dead. The wet cobblestones slid under my shoes as I passed a Slut-o-ween-themed bachelorette party. The Gay Quarter was just ahead, and I had other plans.
Oz was a nonstarter when I reached St. Ann Street. The beats thudding into the street promised a night of headaches. I turned away from the river instead. I'd gawked at the rainbows overhead as a child, afraid and thrilled at what lay beyond the ancient facades. But now I was home, and home was for me, and I was for home. You can take the boy out of New Orleans, but tonight, New Orleans would be getting back inside this boy.
I slowed after a few blocks at the sight of the Silver Fox. Skeletons draped over the wet overhang, a lone thigh bone dangling next to the golden column out front. If I recall correctly, it used to be called Rawhide. From the looks of it, the rebranding came with a bit less leather. Then again, if I wanted leather and loud, Oz was waiting behind me. Gay enough with seating would do nicely.
No bachelorette parties: nice. Purple light sparkling on a disco ball: nicer. A house of harness-sporting bears and queens on the rarified and older side of gay: outstanding.
"Tonic and lime," I said with a wink when the bartender got around to me.
"And a Sazerac neat, on me," said a familiar voice right beside me. No one had been on my side of the bar when I walked up, and no one had approached. But there he was, right there in the flesh. The gorgeous, marble, gleaming flesh.
"You…" I trailed off, gazing at my new, or rather, old companion. In high school, Rick had been a year older than me, with glasses and a crease in his brow that spoke far louder than his pastel hair dye and nails. In the sinful 21st century, his bare, shimmering blue eyes left me speechless. His age was an accessory, an afterthought. Rick's smile was knowing, playful, his chiseled jaw under dark soft stubble he'd regally permitted to frost over. The thin hair I remembered was crisp, sculpted, even full. He wore white with a touch of lace under black, and the same studded leather choker I remembered adorned his elegant neck.
La plus ça change, indeed.
“You,” Rick repeated, and his voice sent an shiver down my scalp. Then his smile widened, his cool fingers brushed my hand, and I grabbed him in a fierce embrace. Dear God, he was cut like a brick wall. My hand lingered on his shoulder, thoughts already racing through my head of the muscle underneath the lace.
The arrival of our drinks saved me a few precious seconds of making a tongue-tied fool of myself. Rick’s fingers curled around his glass with the delicacy of a surgeon, the liquid eerily motionless as he raised it to me.
“Your life everlasting,” he said. I bit my lip at his tiny, regal nod. He didn’t drink; the glass was simply at his full, moist lips, and then it was less than it was.
“That used to be my drink when I came back to town,” I said. Wispy memories curled in my head, the Sazerac Hotel, the Intercontinental, the clients since elected to federal prison. I gulped down half of my tonic, suddenly parched.
“Before you tamed your thirst?” Rick asked. His question was as inscrutable as his eyes were brilliant, neither a challenge nor a welcome.
“Before I found finer tastes,” I returned. The past was over, and the present with Rick was an unfinished question. “You still in that old house on Upperline?” I added.
Rick’s silent moment lasted an eternity. His glittering eyes swept lazily over me, appraising, speculating…hungering. Our eyes locked as he raised his sazerac to his lips once again, and then the empty glass slid out of his exquisite fingers onto the bar.
“I found finer tastes,” Rick said in a low, growling heat. The golden studs on his choker rippled as he cracked his neck. He turned, and I followed. Of course I did.
We were out in the night, Rick gliding over the slick cobblestones a step ahead of me. St. Ann Street was empty. Of course it was.
St. Louis Cathedral struck midnight, and we were inside a damp, moldy foyer. The rickety half dozen locks opened silently at a bare touch from Rick’s gold-braided hand. Of course they did.
The loft across the threshold was a dark outline of ancient finery. A stately writing desk and chaise lounge right out of the Sun Court anchored the living area. Farther back was a resplendent dining table on lion’s feet, and I could just make out a four post bed in the near-total darkness.
I stepped into the past, and soft lamplight bathed the gold leaf and mahogany in the room. My lone shadow trailed along the floor, up the lavender wallpaper.
Lone?
I spun around, but Rick was still in doorway, just short of the threshold. His eyes gleamed with the lamplight; had they really been that blue in high school?
“Aren’t you going to come in?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
Rick nodded slowly, as if I had finally given the right answer after a night of Socratic frustration.
“As you wish, Kazmierz,” he said.
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