Free The Burning Plain by Michael Nava Page A

fucking cab?”
    “You could stay here,” I said, repeating an offer I’d made earlier, but his mood made me less enthusiastic.
    “I have an appointment.”
    “With the man who left those marks on your back?”
    “Maybe,” he said, his eyes suddenly cold. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
    “Why are you so angry, Alex?”
    “Did I say I was angry?”
    “It’s like you’re punishing me because you felt something in there,” I said, gesturing to the bedroom.
    “Hey, don’t get carried away,” he said, impatiently. Outside, a car horn honked. “I’m not the one who was doing the feeling in there.”
    “What do you mean, ‘don’t get carried away’?”
    He moved toward the door. “Remember what I told you, Henry. Acting and hustling are the same thing. You play a part.”
    I restrained him as he reached for the door. “It didn’t feel like you were acting.”
    He shook himself free. “You got off, didn’t you? That’s the important thing.”
    “Don’t say that.”
    He half-closed his eyes and murmured, “‘It is me, Henry. It’s Josh.’”
    “That’s not what it sounded like.”
    “You were two seconds from coming,” he said. “You heard what you wanted to hear.”
    I stepped back, stared at him. “You asshole.”
    He laughed. “Oh, come on, honey. I gave you the ride of your life and I didn’t even charge you.”
    “Get out of here.”
    “Okay, but next time you want to fuck your boyfriend, baby, call La Toya’s psychic line.”
    I grabbed him by the back of his collar and threw him against the door. He slumped to the floor, holding his hand over his nose. Blood seeped from between his fingers.
    “Fuck,” he said, getting to his feet. “I think you broke my nose.”
    “Jesus,” I said, appalled. “I’m sorry. Let me get you a towel or something.”
    “Don’t touch me.” The cab honked again. He grabbed at the doorknob with bloody fingers and yanked the door open. “Man,” he said, shaking his head. “Are all you fags crazy?”
    He slammed the door behind him. I heard him say something to the cab driver and then the car sped off, wheels squealing. A drop of his blood dripped from the door knob to the floor.
    I fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up, late the next morning, a bitter sourness puckered my mouth. My head throbbed. The house was silent, but it was more than the usual morning stillness. This quiet was as dusty and thick as a tomb. Dazed, I wandered from room to room. There were dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, mold in the shower, a layer of powdery film over the furniture, and the air was rank. In the bedroom, the sheets were stained with semen and a bottle of lubricant had fallen on its side and spread a puddle of goo on the floor. A condom floated in the toilet bowl. I opened the medicine cabinet, searching for aspirin, and was confronted by row after row of Josh’s medications. Pills, syrups, ointments, hundreds, thousands of dollars’ worth. I picked a bottle at random: Xanax, prescribed for the anxiety attacks that consumed him when his head cleared from all the other drugs long enough for him to realize he was dying. I poured the pills into the sink, then grabbed another bottle, Prozac for depression, and then an ointment I had rubbed on the parts of his body where his flesh had begun to necrotize. I didn’t stop until the medicine cabinet was empty.
    “Are you all right? You look like you’re suffering from sunstroke.”
    I looked at the woman who had spoken, puzzled by the inflections in her voice that were both Southern and English. She was sitting on the stone bench in the courtyard of the Columbarium of Radiant Destiny, with the messy remains of lunch beside her: an apple core, balled up wax paper, a rind of bread. She was wearing a white blouse, a foamy, flowered skirt, Birkenstock sandals and a red straw cowboy hat over messy gray hair. Her face was pitted with small, deep scars and deeply seamed but the architecture of her bones